If you follow me on Facebook then you'll know that I have a semi regular series entitled things you'll only hear in Boston Bowl. Now normally these are funny things like one of my staff members telling me that she wonders how she managed to get grated cheese in her phone case, to the weird ones like do you think it's weird that I'm wearing my brothers underwear, to random things that customers say like "I hope you don't finger my Guinness while I'm gone". I could go on here but let me assure you they are all 100% genuine.

All of them are things that I find funny, however recently I've been shocked by something that I've heard a customer say. I've been working in the hospitality for over 20 years and I can count on one hand the times I've completely lost the plot at a customer. Being called a stupid c**t and spat at by someone triggered me, I'm guessing it would with most people. I lost it when a known child sex offender tried to come into the bowl and started abusing me for not letting him in when young children were about. I lost it when a customer threw a glass at a co-worker and the last one until recently was when a guy tried to jump the bar and grab a bottle of vodka from behind it. Now on all these occasions I went up like a bottle of pop, as my nan would say, shocking people as most of the time I can normally restrain myself and often try to use my words instead of violence to sort the problems out. Possibly because of my lack of physical intimidation but mostly because my mum drilled it into me from a young age to treat people how I would like to be treated. 

On all of the above incidents I lost control of my emotions, throwing the sex offender out phyiscially, throwing a glass back at the man, taking a swing at the spitter before security got to him and hitting the guy with a bottle on his arm again I would have done more but the bouncers got to him before I could. Now this brings me on to the situation I found myself in very recently one that has shocked me to the core.

It was a normal Saturday at work and the centre was relatively busy, I was enjoying myself, like I always do when I'm busy at work. I was in a good mood, I'd had a couple of parties in that had gone really well, customers were leaving with a smile on there faces, which in the industry is what the aim of the game is. I was called in our soft play area by a member of staff after being told there was an incident going on. I went in and overheard a small child, no older than 6 yell at my staff member f**k off n****r.

Now I don't have to tell you why this is wrong, if you don't think it is then your not the sort of person that I wish to be involved with. What shocked me was the age of the person, this is someone who has spent less than a decade on this planet and has already been indoctrinated into thinking that way. It's abhorrent to me and most of society would think the same. Upon hearing this sentence being shouted at a young female member of my staff, someone who shouldn't have to deal with such narrow mindlessness just because of the colour of her skin. 

The blame can't be laid at the child's feet, this is obviously something that has been taught to him, something that his parents or other family members have shown. This is where my anger flared up. I obviously told the child to take me to his parents and when confronted with me telling them that I have no option but to ask them to leave they wouldn't accept  responsibility and told me that they first of all there son didn't say that sentence and when told there were at least 20 witnesses to the incident was to try and brush it off. I held firm but I could feel myself getting more wound up at them arguing that there son should be allowed to say whatever he wanted to, I raised my voice and told them that were not welcome in my venue any more. They were more concerned with trying to get there money back, they kept repeating that they'd only been in the building for ten f*****g minutes and they wanted there f*****g money back.

It's here where I lost my temper and told them to get the hell out, there would be no refund and they were not welcome back. Congratulations people, in the fifteen years I've worked there you are only the second people I have barred from the building. They didn't go quietly and kept yelling that it wasn't fair and he didn't know what he was saying. The staff had never seen me so worked up, yelling at a customer to get out, apparently they didn't think I had it in me, but it's just wrong isn't it?  I do believe Ferris Bueller said it best

“Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself

Racism is one of the worst things in the world today, look at the history of the world, the wars fought because someone thought someone else was inferior to them because of a skin colour, we're all the same at the end of the day, we all have one heart, two lungs, two legs, two arms and I just don't get it. Much the same as I don't get how people can kill other people for having a different opinion, why can't they just agree to disagree?