"Oh, you have a new Chinese guy? Where's the old one, what happened to him?"
He's gone off to sit for his exams
"So the new Chinese guy is to replace him?"
Yes, he's our new pre-reg student
"These Chinese, they're all over the place aren't they? Taking over everything!"
Yes
Yes yes yes. Yes, we 'Chinese' are taking over everything. We're coming over in our derelict junks in mass emigration droves to escape an oppressive, abusive government for the prospect of a land where the streets are paved in gold. The White Man's land.
I expected the pharmacy to be the last place I'd ever hear such a thing.
It's hurtful in a way that these people don't understand the amount of professionalism, education, time, money, qualification and skill that has to be put into the job. Instead of a badge of merit, all they see is a skin of colour.
I'd close one eye for the sake of that man's age (he's probably from an older generation mired in a segregation-al way of thinking), yet it's heart wrenching when you hear racist comments being thrown about as casually as boobs at a Madonna concert, no matter how much thick skin you think you've grown.
Growing up in a world with ever-increasing dissolution of borders made possible by the Internet and ease of travel, being small-minded and bigoted is definitely no means to survive. Maybe it's naivety or the fact that I don't see it as a problem, I do get surprised at the amount of hostility shown by human beings to one another over something as trifle as race.
If you do as they do, you're branded as one who has given up their own identity to curry favour with another nation - a traitor to tradition.
Remain as you are, and you'll probably be the stupid chink behind the counter with the weird accent no one can be bothered to understand.
And in my job, you need to get people to listen.
Sadistically, I do get an awful jolt of glee, especially in a country that prides itself so much on freedom, democracy, equality and merit. At the end of the day, it is this system, YOUR system, that enabled me to do what I do today. It's pathetic to think that so many abuse the system to live on benefits and handouts, or wallow in their own pride refusing 'demeaning' jobs thereby depleting the workforce, and foreign nationals have to step in to do what you don't want to do.
And then the blame game continues, a vicious cycle.
So let's be clear. I provide a professional service that took a considerable sum of money in education and living expenses to obtain the credentials for. I work hard, I am polite, I am law-abiding, I pay taxes.
In short, I do my job. A job I earned.
And you have no right to demean me for doing so.
Sir Andrew Green, Migration Watch chairman, said migrants from the eight former Soviet-bloc countries which joined the EU eight years ago, including from Poland, Slovakia and Lithuania, "tended to be disproportionately young, well-educated, prepared to work for low wages and imbued with a strong work ethic".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/9003320/Immigrants-are-not-causing-UK-unemployment-says-NIESR.html
It's funny how those qualities are represented to be a negative thing in this context. It's times like these you really wonder what the hell is going on with the world.
