A man in Dallas, Texas has been caught on video harassing a Macy’s employee and calling her “Arab” after reportedly asking the woman to wrap his present for free.
A Twitter user shared the video on Monday:
https://twitter.com/rickyy_____/status/1077386906508410882
The user, who wishes not to be identified, confirmed to the Daily Dot that the event took place on Christmas Eve.
“The customer was being hostile to the employees because they didn’t wrap his present along with the purchase,” he said. “No one had really paid attention to him until he started bringing their language/ethnicity into it which is when a woman came and stood up for the other woman. The man started to threaten to call the police, so I began recording to have evidence that the employee and woman did nothing wrong.”
The first video shows a woman talking to the man, asking him to leave the store. To which the man responds, “I am going to call security on you.”
A woman challenges him to do so, while the other woman, who appears to be the employee, tries to politely hold her back.
“If you don’t like because there’s not a gift box, leave the store,” the female customer says to the man. “Leave her alone.”
He says again, “You are a customer!”
“I don’t care, you’re disrespecting her and you’re making her feel bad,” she says to him, pointing towards the employee.
The video, posted on Twitter on Monday, has since received more than two million views. The Twitter user told the Daily Dot there were about 10-12 people standing support for the employee. Some of them can be heard agreeing with the female customer the couple of times she asks, “Am I right, guys? He is disrespecting her!”
The man says he couldn’t understand her because she was “speaking Arabic.” The Twitter user did not confirm whether she spoke Arabic.
https://twitter.com/rickyy_____/status/1077389009104584706
Another man, who appears to be a customer, intervenes, calling the man out for his behavior and for questioning what his issue is with the woman’s language.
The accuser then calls the crowd a “bunch of Democrats.”
“I’m in America I want people to speak English to me,” he says in a second video to the first woman who confronted him.
“All I asked for her to do is speak English with me,” he says.
The employee, although appearing to be flustered, still tries to continue with her service, reassuring him that she can take him to the appropriate department for packaging his gift.
“All you Arabs! And Democrats! Go back where you came from!” he says, after some people in the crowd start laughing upon learning that the whole situation ensued because he wouldn’t spare one dollar for the packaging a gift.
“I cannot see how many Arabs came out of the woodwork,” the man says, slowly starting to leave.
“Dude, you’re the snowflake here,” a person behind the camera says.
“Fuck you!” he says, showing the camera his middle finger. “Put me on YouTube.”
Two employees who answered the phone at each of Macy’s Dallas branches said on Wednesday afternoon they weren’t aware of any such situation.
A Macy’s spokesperson told the Daily Dot in an email that they are investigating the incident:
“We believe our Macy’s employees and customers should be treated with dignity, respect, and kindness. We aim to create a welcoming environment and we apologize for what occurred in our store.”
In a year brimming with similar incidents recorded and shared, it immediately went viral on Twitter, and the man even earned himself a hashtag: #GiftBoxBobby:
I work in retail & the meanest, ugliest customers are middle age & older white men. I am white woman so asked men I work with if they agree & yep white men are the worst. Plenty of white men are kind but if theres ugliness 9.5 out of 10 its white man. They think world owes them.
— JC (@JSCearbhaill) December 25, 2018
Good for the lady and the young man who stood up for her. She has to try to be nice because her company requires that. I just don’t get why people can’t just be at least civil to each other.
— belle (@mamaT6399) December 26, 2018
that Lady deserves ALL the respect for being the first one to call bobby out 👏🏼 and i done lost it when the guy gave the $1 😂
— JENSI🇵🇸🇲🇽 (@jensivantage) December 26, 2018
https://twitter.com/skofarrell/status/1077722104605364224
For the Twitter user who posted the video, it was the solidarity that mattered.
“Overall, it wasn’t a pretty situation as you can tell,” he told the Daily Dot, “but it truly made my day seeing a crowd of people … stand up for what’s right.”