https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/the-difference-between-a-karen-and-a-becky-explained-1842708257

As told to IRC, with some elaboration:

I had some species of apoca-Becky encounter yesterday.

I made the foolish decision to venture forth to the closing of a JoAnn's (50+% off everything left, last day 5/28). Opening time was noon; I arrived at 12:06 and waited for 2 hours in socially distanced line; I foolishly forgot any sort of seat.

02:53 PM neilathotep oh no, closing for good!?
02:53 PM azurelunatic Just that one location
02:53 PM neilathotep oh ok
02:54 PM neilathotep i was wonderin since it seems they are doing some gang busters onlline


Some nice chats with a neighbor in the line, most people in line masked or with masks ready for inside.

By the time I got inside I was already sore and tired, because these days I can about manage 5 minutes standing without much pain. But they were doing a good job with managing the number of people inside and people were being courteous.

I didn't score an iron or a cricut (my goals) but did get innumerable rolls of ribbon on 80% discount, and fleece at 60%. I set myself a hard budget and came under it.


02:57 PM neilathotep ooh ribbob
02:57 PM neilathotep a blowout cricut would be cool


Unfortunately all the discounts were store-only and had to be keyed in individually, which meant I was standing at the register for what felt like 20 minutes but was probably only 10. It had to go in 2 transactions because the combined number of items + discounts apparently makes the register computers super laggy. So by the time I'm all checked out I'm balancing some ridiculous bags of fleece on the cart and hobbling painfully.

My audio processing is bad at best, and worse when I'm distracted or in pain. When some short little old white lady with hair that reminded me of Mama on a bad hair day popped up by my side, it took me time to figure out that she was asking if I was okay. I wasn't, but not in any way that needed help, so I said I was okay.

She kept bobbing along next to me, telling me I was beautiful, and had a beautiful spirit, and my hair was beautiful (I will agree to that, although it was a mess from all the wind and the colliding with shelves due to excess bolts of fleece).

I recognize the tone as that of someone who is not going to leave you alone unless told to. This is now above and beyond the standard unpleasant interaction of being in public while visibly disabled. (Person sees an obvious disability/struggle and offers help, thinking they're going to be a savior, and gets angry when the help is not accepted.) It had a very desperate vibe to it, like a social vampire who has drained her usual victims and is starving during the socially distanced apocalypse.

I reach my car, she's still following me, so I tell her to step back. She's not wearing a mask, of course. It takes 5 or more times repeating for her to actually get out from within arm's reach. She's arguing that she's not too close. She's small enough that under normal circumstances I wouldn't feel threatened, but I'm in pain and have already used up my physical confrontation energy on trying to get around a tight corner with the bolt of fox fleece (no other people involved, just too many bolts of fleece stacked badly), and she's not wearing a mask and I'm probably not even supposed to be venturing forth thanks to my various underlying conditions.


03:03 PM neilathotep yuck


She eventually huffs off around the corner of my car, and I lose track of her while I'm focused on loading my car in a way that doesn't slam the cart into the shoddy parking of the person next to me. I stomp the cart back to the store, because it looks like they only had about 10 carts circulating (one for each person allowed in the store, I guess, but some people were using 2 to hold their scores), and it's just courteous to return the carts under those circumstances. The cashier thanked me, and I took the opportunity to say that there was a lady out front hassling + not respecting distancing, and it took repeated requests for her to step back.

"Oh, that's not good," says the cashier. I agree.

I pop back out, and I hear her voice again, she's in the line holding forth at street preacher volumes about how we are all in this together, and we must love one another and we will get through this! and we are all beautiful -- ESPECIALLY HER [sic], and she indicates me.

I wave back in the time honored fashion.

https://www.ascii-middle-finger.com/
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The lady amps up the volume on the "love", and at this point I fucking snap.

At the top of my not inconsiderable lungs, I inform her and the line in general that she was following me way too close and would not leave me alone after I told her to, and I had to tell her so multiple times before she backed off.

She tried to insist that she was following social distance because she was standing far enough away from her line-mates.

That didn't signify, and anyway I was fucking done, so I stomped off to my car.

Then I heard some applause behind me, and I figured that perhaps she had uttered some devastating bon mot in my absence. That was aggravating, but at that point, what can you really do?

I figured that I would take her picture so at least I would have an external memory of what she looked like. (See: faceblindness.) I got my phone set up for map and for taking a picture of her out my window as I went past in the parking lot.

But funny thing: I saw the people ahead of her in the line.
I saw the people behind her.
I did not see her.

I came to the conclusion that in the time I was buckling in and setting up my phone, someone from the store came out and (forcibly?) removed her from the premises. I did see someone about the correct size going across the parking lot, but that didn't filter through until a little later.

I had to ask Belovedest if they had a live mic when I got home. I was bursting with WTF, and it would be unkind to unleash that kind of language on someone's unsuspecting co-workers.

Today I called the location and expressed my thanks to a person who turned out to be a manager for the employees handling stuff yesterday. I was hoping for someone to answer the phone who had actually been there for it, so I could ask for juicy details, but hey, that's what you get.

This morning (after all the other commotion involved in getting to work) I was going peacefully about my slightly fraught Tuesday morning inventory of all the kitchen items (food and food-related supplies) so I could get the weekly orders sent off before the 10am deadline.

Just after 9am, the curly-haired brunette manager-type asked me if I had encountered "the weird guy" and wanted to make sure that I was safe. She'd been on the elevator with another woman, and a visibly/audibly angry man. She'd already swiped her badge and punched our floor (some floors, ours included, are card-access-only, after "the Incident") but she was sufficiently uncomfortable being alone on the elevator with this guy (who had not selected a floor) that she got off at the earlier floor that the other woman had selected. This did mean that the elevator went all the way up to our floor with the guy on board, unless he'd selected a floor after everyone else got off.

It was the hope that he'd just gone back down to the lobby, and since I didn't see anyone completely unexpected (there were a few visitors from offsite, so I didn't recognize everyone) and nobody else complained, he probably did.

I've requested a copy of the incident report that building security made, since company facilities are also likely to want records of this.

I've had to explain a few times now that I have a hobby of picking up and swinging around large men, and that makes me harder to intimidate than some other people of my general body form-factor. (And The Wall was a revelation to me when I first heard of her. Someone who consorts with supers, whose powers are hyper-competent bureaucracy and standing there like a fucking wall? YES PLEASE.)

( Backstory. )

( Pain. )

Some guy came up at approximately this juncture, inquiring about something or other. I was not in a state to encode social responses below a certain level, and said nothing. (Close to my height, on the thin side of average, dressed in a style that screamed "young lout" when worn past the age of 25-30, which he was likely past, not physically intimidating to me, clean.) He then inquired whether there were still trains to the East Bay. Even though he would have been told this critical detail by the station attendant, this answer was simple enough and fell under the basic Laws of Transit Humanity. "No," I said, then returned to staring at my cellphone.

"I didn't catch your name," he continued, and started asking other questions (irrelevant to any possible business of his other than chatting me up). I tuned him out.

"FUCK YOU!" he burst out, along with other items in this vein, and stamped off down the platform, perhaps to join the woman who was complaining that green was the color of the absence of the knowledge of Christ and that these people didn't know what it means and therefore shouldn't be using it.

The train came. I noticed that he had come back for his things, which he'd left on the platform nearby. I got on the train and sat down in a convenient seat close to the exit; at that point I figured that a) I qualified as elderly/disabled, b) there were like 5 people in the car, and c) I wasn't going to mess with the carton of abandoned Chinese takeout on the seat across from it.

The fellow boarded the train after me. He snagged the aforementioned abandoned carton of takeout and sat down next to me, despite a) his apparent perfect ablebodiedness, and b) the plethora of other seats on the train, including c) the ones he'd snagged the container from.

I sat trying to minimize any unnecessary physical contact with him. He sat, chowing down on someone else's abandoned supper. (Yes, on BART.) I became aware that in addition to the pleasantly spicy smell from the unlawful snack, there was a certain miasma, as of a small and localized brewery. But I held my peace and found something very fascinating to look at in the other direction.

He spoke up just then, in confident but not entirely intelligible tones. The brewery scent only intensified. I managed to distinguish that he was able to discern some form of beauty or potential beauty about my person, and that he would, when I was 36 or 37 and he was 46 or 47, still respect me completely.

I decided that it was time to find a new seat.

Bereft of his unwilling seating partner, he and his things wandered up the train into the next car. I watched him go, and watched carefully against his return.

When disembarking the train, I stood on the platform in one spot until the train departed, lest I walk past his car and give him any inspiration to get off before his intended stop. (Had he, I would have paid a visit to the station attendant and requested an escort to my car, or at least some form of escort for him, and/or ensuring that he did not accompany me.

Happily, he did not follow, and the train left with him on it. I made my painful way to the car, rather relieved, and with the classic Vulcan joke echoing in my head:

"But will you still respect me seven years from now?"