Johnson, 34, and Charles, 25, claim a middle-aged white Apple employee booted them out of the store because they’re black. According to their lawsuit, the employee confronted them when they entered the store, walking up to them in an “intimidating fashion” and saying, “You know the deal. You know the deal.”
The “deal” wasn’t a free iPod nano with their purchase: The employee said they weren’t welcome in the store. “And before you say I’m racially discriminating against you, let me stop you. I am discriminating against you,” he allegedly said. “I don’t want ‘your kind’ hanging out in the store.’” Then another employee came up and told them “Now you have to go… if you want to know why it’s because I said so. CONSIDER ME GOD.” This isn’t so much racist as batshit insane.
Are Apple Store employees perpetrating a high tech Jim Crow? And this comes just months after they got rid of the black MacBook! [Apple Insider, photo via Matt Buchanan/Flickr]
Republished from Gawker
Dom T
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 9:26 AMOne side of the story. Could be completely fabricated.
Peter
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 9:38 AMThe side with the blacks?
matt
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 10:44 AMhmm, an Apple employee thinking they are God? sounds believable to me…
Mike
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 11:47 AMThe truth is, one of the black guys had a Zune tattoo.
Jeff
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 5:13 PMCan Black people get tattoo’s ? :P coz i’ve never seen that.
andronicus
Friday, May 27, 2011 at 1:10 PMYou never watched the NBA, the NFL, Baseball or Cops?
olearymo
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 11:52 AM“Consider me God”?
Sounds like the guy has a serious Steve Jobs complex.
Alex Rogan
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 12:15 PMthey weren’t really men, just Google’s new range of synthetic androids.
anthome
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 1:40 PMi miss the black macbook!
ChemZ
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 6:16 PMApple employees eh? Sounds about right to me…
Phil
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 7:33 PMThat’s terrible! I can’t say that I’m surprised that an apple employee would do that, but I’m certainly angry about it.
olearymo
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 11:49 AMSaddest thing? They were saying it to all the white people too.
Only letting in the hipsters.
zen
Friday, December 2, 2011 at 12:45 PMI am a Black man and employees in the Apple store in Santa Monica told me I was a security risk when I told them I wanted to buy a phone because I lost the one I had. One said “Go to the AT&T store and maybe they will sell you a phone.”
Yes, these things happen!!!