I need to get this off my chest because I’m still furious a…

I need to get this off my chest because I’m still furious about what happened to my mom a few days ago. She’s a senior citizen, Latina, small, gentle, and honestly one of the kindest people I’ve ever known.

She’s been through so much in life and still somehow finds a way to laugh, smile, and give. But this week, she was humiliated for no reason other than being who she is.

She went to a hardware store with my brother to pick up a few things. At one point, she asked an employee for a price check on an item. Pretty simple, right? But instead of helping her, the employee snapped at her — saying something along the lines of “it’s on the base, are you stupid?” or “look at the base, you stupid.”

And then, as if that wasn’t enough, this person decided to circle back later and spit out some disgusting racist nonsense. They said, “That’s why ICE taking y’all up, need to deport you.”

When my brother called me to tell me what happened, I saw red. I live across the country, so all I could do was listen, but I felt completely powerless and enraged. This woman my mother is someone who wouldn’t hurt a soul.

Her English isn’t perfect, so she didn’t even have the words to defend herself properly. She just took it in silence, because that’s who she is. She’s the kind of person who turns the other cheek, always believing that kindness wins in the end.

And here’s what really kills me: she wasn’t even shopping for herself. She was buying cleaning supplies for the truck she volunteers on every week at her church — the one that gives out free food to locals who are struggling. That’s what she was doing when some racist asshole decided to humiliate her.

I ended up filing a complaint with corporate. They said they’d look into it and offered her a small gift card as an apology, but honestly, that feels meaningless.

A gift card doesn’t fix the humiliation or erase the way that moment made her feel. It doesn’t change how I feel knowing that someone thought it was okay to talk to her like that.

I know I might’ve gone a little overboard with how angry I got, but how can you not when it’s your own mom your sweet, soft-spoken, church-volunteering, always-smiling mom being treated like garbage for no reason?

TL;DR: A racist employee verbally attacked my senior citizen mother at a hardware store. She’s the kindest woman I know, and it breaks my heart and fills me with rage that someone could treat her that way.

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