About 5 years ago, I noticed a small shift in our customers. It made me feel awkward, but I thought it was just me. Over time, it got more awkward.

I've been doing this job for years, our customers know me, nothing's changed. So why were more and more of our customers insisting on talking to the "boss?" Worse yet, they wouldn't take no for an answer.

Over and over again, the boss came into the office - and I stood there watching customers treat him in a such an overly familiar way, it made me squirm. The boss handled it just fine, but not me.

Our shop is swamped, all the time. The boss, the shop manager and the bookkeeper (me) keep the place running like a clock. The boss is our genius and if he is not in the shop it messes up everything. If the schedule slips, I'm scrambling to shift money around to pay overtime - and that's how snowballs got into hell, so I confronted it. That's when the guys realized I needed some explaining.

Of course I didn't get it, I'm the only white person who works there! I had no idea what was happening. All I knew was our customers were acting really weird (and it was costing us money).

Uh oh, the guys were right. Our white customers were the only one's insisting they talk to the boss. Somehow or other, making small talk with the boss made them feel better, good, or ??? (I have no ideas what they got out of their ridiculous behavior). I also didn't care.

Look, we fix cars, not egos. We earn a living doing work, not making small talk. Handling the boss's money is my job and I was not backing down. Paying overtime so white people can talk to a black man is insane!. Finally we agreed, if customers did not want to talk to the manager or me, they could go somewhere else - but we were not losing any more money to help them out of their ??? thing.

Eventually, customers got the message and things settled down. Several customers got so nasty with me, I had to bark hard to back them off. I threw one man out - get out until you get yourself together - out, out out. The guys will never let me live down that little episode (they mock and mimic me like a comedy team).

Anyways, when I read your essay, I got a little better understanding of what happened. I'm still not backing down.