Today my 17yo lost another layer of innocence and I am PISSED! So here’s the story. On Monday, my daughter received news that her aunt passed away. She has a job @FoodLion and knows that she needed to inform the front end manager that she needed time off from

10/22-10/25. Now keep up, auntie passed on 10/12. She goes into @FoodLion and attempts to submit the time off request and was told the front end manager wasn’t in the store. So she leaves a post it stating she had death in the family and would need to be out of town NEXT week

This morning, she receives a group message NOT from the front end manager but some random office person that has called her “aggressive” in the past because she didn’t allow her to speak to her crazy. So anywho... this random responds that front end manager is out...

And she must ask for time off ten days in advance, so she needs to get someone to cover her shifts because the schedule is already made... so couple of problems here:
1. No empathy 2. Auntie didn’t exactly let us know the time was coming.

3. The note wasn’t left to you! So she sends all these texts with exclamation points. My daughter asks that she stop using exclamation points because it feels like she is yelling and would like for her to stop. Instead of acknowledging this... she sends

ANOTHER text saying “not yelling at you. Just using punctuation while texting. I’m sorry you thought that!” Y’all!! So my daughter responds “this has become an exercise in futility...we both know an exclamation point is used to exclaim...which requires an

Elevated voice...no one says “help!” quietly...but you got it. Thank you for all your help. So old girl then screen shots the convo and sends it to the front end manager CRYING. Front end manager then calls my kid and asks her

Don’t you think your response was SASSY?! Sassy!!! Yes I am triggered! Every scene from some Jim Crow era movie went through my head when some white person asks a black woman “who you sassin gal?”. So never mind my kid asked that you stop yelling at her

Let’s get to you need to know your place... my kid didn’t know how to respond in this instance and agreed that she was being “sassy”. Hence the convo we had to have where we discussed labels commonly placed on black women in the workplace. I explained

That what she dealt with today was passive aggressive and NEVER allow anyone to label you when you are simply advocating for yourself and expressing how you felt. You felt like she was yelling and that issue was never dealt with...

It’s EXHAUSTING AF to deal with these microagressions as an adult but then now having to teach my daughter how to navigate this bullshit is overwhelming and sad. But the one bright spot, the manager was super supportive and she has her days off.