UNCOMMON COURTESY : One Tough Customer Discovers a Funny Thing Happened After the Riots

I can’t count the times I’ve gotten into an altercation at the checkout counter: clerks refusing to change a twenty during the height of midday sales, their registers bursting with singles, fives and tens; managers and store detectives swarming me when my security badge from work triggers the shoplifting scanner alarm; waiting countless minutes when there’s no other customer present; demanding my correct change to the point of threatening violence. Too often these clerks are recent emigres of color in hot pursuit of the American Dream. How dare they! White folk are bad enough.

Sensing his reluctance, I ignored one young waiter’s bad attitude and placed my order during a recent dinner out. I was too tired to go into my usual confrontation, spewing curses, bristling with wounded dignity, stomping out. Once I got my meal, I enjoyed it. But I waited more than half an hour for the check. So I left the restaurant without paying, just went to my car and drove off. I turned up the rhythm and blues to match the loudness of my thoughts: Is this a one-woman war? Me versus the restaurateurs and shopkeepers of L.A.?

I think I suffer these indignities because of my skin. One girlfriend, also black, doesn’t agree. But she’s tiny, under 130 pounds, wears dresses and high heels. Weighing well over 150, I favor pantsuits and boots. Could I unwittingly be tapping into hostilities usually reserved for black men? Occasionally I’ve heard, “May I help you, sir?” spoken to my back, then turned and stared down into a rapidly reddening face.

What’s missing here is the operative word big. I’m nearly as tall as Rodney King and darker in complexion. Unlike Oprah, I am not round, bouncy or cuddly. Certainly, the ugly adjectives used to describe King apply to me. And I imagine that if I rose suddenly out of a mist, I might easily be mistaken for a gorilla of either gender.

The nastiness I encounter when shopping within city limits has forced me to spend time and money in neighborhoods where the nature of bigotry is more familiar. Strangely, I’m often nostalgic for the days when all we blacks had to deal with were whites and Mexican-Americans. As the saying goes, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

Yet shopping in the suburbs also has unpleasant consequences. I frequently startle rosy-cheeked children when they come upon me unexpectedly. Some freeze, struck dumb by fear yet fascinated. Others turn tail and run screaming for Mommy and/or Daddy. The rescuing parent eyes me with hostility or embarrassment. In either case, the message is the same: “What are you doing here?”

Succumbing to such unsubtle pressures, I no longer idly window-shop or browse. I shop only when I must. Or when I can get a witness.

Lately, however, my fear of shopping has abated. Something different is in the air, something besides the residue from the 600-odd fires that ravaged L.A. On a recent stop to score hay-fever meds, I hesitated as I entered the drugstore, recalling an incident there with a clerk who’d refused to bust a twenty. I destroyed several product displays and stormed out. I was lucky I wasn’t shot.

This time, when I entered the store, no one noticed. No probing, suspicious eyes were at my back. I ignored the turnstile and took the easier-but-wrong entrance past a dormant checkout counter. No frowning manager appeared. I prowled the aisles. No falsely obsequious stock boy slurped, “May I help you?” When I stepped to the counter to pay, the cashier did not ignore me while talking on the phone. My change was not slammed onto the counter. Instead, she promptly rang up my purchase, made the correct change, placed it in my upturned palm, smiled and said thank you. I went into shock.

To what could I attribute this decent behavior? The recession? No, this was fear at work. The fear of something big, black and potentially violent; the fear that inspired the Rodney King beating.

Stuffing decongestants into my purse, I left the store high off adrenaline. But the rush won’t last. Business will return to its uncouth usual. In the meantime, I’m going to try that waiter in that restaurant again. Just to prove how much good service fear inspires.