Big Daddy and I like to road trip. It’s our thing to do. We’ve been to some amazing places, met some pretty incredible people and usually have a great time. Recently, we were headed to Bunn, North Carolina. To visit family. It was reason enough to go explore and so we did.
Like with most road trips we frequently stop. Sometimes out
of necessity. Others times just to explore. On this day, we stopped because the
gauge on the gas tank was low and I had to use the restroom. When traveling
through rural areas of the south we are particular about where we do and do not
stop. Only once in many, many years do I recall ever stopping anywhere that we
didn’t feel comfortable. Most places, people are very welcoming.
I have always trusted the BP brand. More times than not the
restrooms at a BP gas station are clean and the staff are friendly. When we saw
the BP logo, we stopped, confident that this time would be like all our other
times. Sadly, it was not.
BP outlets are neither owned nor operated by BP. BP provides
petroleum and petroleum products to branded marketers, in this case Cary Oil
Co., Inc. and under a marketer franchise agreement, the BP marketer supplies
their customers with petroleum. Privettes Grocery, where we stopped, is the BP
marketer.
Privettes Grocery sits on a corner lot at 4650 Old US Highway 64 E in Zebulon, NC. The
expansive building is indicative of its Southern surroundings. It was typical
of many convenience stores, cluttered with sundry items from bubble gum to motor oil.
Two women stood at the counter and when I entered, neither spoke, barely
lifting their gazes to acknowledge that I’d entered. It was a glaring customer
service flaw.
I was in one of my cheerier moods. I greeted them both and
then asked where I might find the rest room. There was just a moment when the
two exchanged a look and then one of the women pointed out the window and said,
“You have to go out there.”
I followed where her finger pointed and for the first time noticed the green
and white porta-potty sitting in the parking lot. There was
a moment of stunned silence before I responded. “Excuse me?”
She repeated herself. “You have to go out there.” And then
just like that she returned to what she was doing and I had been dismissed.
It was a cold-water moment, my cheery mood squashed in the
blink of an eye. The whole thing reeked, and not of Southern hospitality. Knowing that I had no intentions of using anyone’s porta-potty
I thanked her and turned to leave. As I did, a young white woman appeared from
one of the aisles and asked the other woman if she could use the rest room.
That woman pointed her toward the back of the store and told her to help
herself. My cheery mood suddenly shifted again and it took every ounce of
fortitude I possessed not to do something I knew I would later regret. Instead,
I gave them both a look and left. From that door back to the car, my blood boiled
and before I could get my seat belt buckled I was raging as I told Big Daddy what had
happened.
I agonized over it for days. I tried to justify their
reasoning for doing such a thing. I made excuses for the bad behavior. I
genuinely wanted to believe that the moment had been a fluke of sorts. I tried
to dismiss how they had made me feel. I prayed that maybe I had been mistaken
about their intent. And then, when it weighed so heavily on my spirit that I
knew I couldn’t just let it slide, I tweeted BP and expressed my outrage. I
posted on Facebook about my experience. I refused to just let it go. In this day
and age, that anyone would be treated in this manner is appalling. I could not,
in good conscious, not say something.
BP’s brand is as important to them as my brand is to me.
They needed to know that their brand was being represented in such a negative
light. I don’t know that I was prepared for the responses I received. People
have flooded my time line and inbox to express their outrage. Others have
castigated me for making this a “race thing”. Residents in Zebulon have shared
that this store is notorious for treating customers so abhorantly. Some have
stressed that they don’t discriminate against any one race. Everyone is treated
rudely and being told to use the porta-john is dependent on the clerk of the
moment and not the color of one’s skin. That may well be their truth, but it
still doesn’t make it right.
BP Consumer Relations reached out within three minutes of my
tweet, asking me to direct message them with details of what had happened. They
responded promptly, promising an investigation and advising that I would be
hearing from the station’s branding jobber. The branding jobber reached out
less than an hour later. She has also responded to others who reached out to
share my story, demanding answers for what had been done. They have been
apologetic, expressing over, and over again how sorry they are. They have promised
an investigation and I trust that one will happen. What I don’t trust is that
anything will change.
BP cannot control the attitudes that would allow anyone to
think it’s okay for some patrons to be treated one way, while others are
treated differently. We hope that the attitudes in that small town is not indicative of BP's business policies. I have always trusted that when I stopped at a BP station that I would be treated fairly and respectfully. And, regrettably, this experience has fractured that trust. But I don’t fault BP for what happened. As someone else noted, they are in an
untenable position, having no control over the actions of one employee, on one
shift, in one store, that they do not even own.
I fault the management at Privettes Grocery and a community
that stands by and says nothing when they should know right from wrong. I fault
those who allow injustice to happen and refuse to say anything out of fear or
ignorance. Racism is alive and well and pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t
serve any of us well. Discrimination is real and turning one’s back instead of
facing it head on doesn’t work no matter how hard one might try. I fault a
culture that sees diversity as a liability and a handicap instead of understanding
and embracing our differences. So, I cannot trust that anything will change.
To quote my dear friend, Mary Parrish, “I don't think we will ever truly wipe out discrimination. There will
always be some underclass (black, queer, Hispanic, Jew, Muslim) that bears the
weight of someone else's misplaced anger, their perceived powerlessness. As if
there can't be an "us" unless there is a "them." But, the
promise of America is not in what we are, but in the very fact that we
constantly strive to be!”
I just wish more of us strived to do and be better.
