STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Disrespect can follow Black men like smoke from a bonfire. No matter where they find themselves, they morph into apparitions, invisible men easily seen through.
I say this after another restaurant nightmare, which didn’t occur on American soil. I was on holiday here, as my Canadian friends put it, and went for dinner one evening.
It was a Tuesday, and Jensen’s Bofhus, a block from my downtown hotel, wasn’t busy. I arrived at 7 p.m. and waited for a table. I got seated at 7:05. Ten minutes later, a waiter brought a menu.
During my wait, a waitress led a white couple to a table near mine. Laughing and joking, they seemed not pressed for time; I wasn’t either.
Around 7:20, she returned and took their drink order. I continued to wait. Before their drinks arrived, they ordered appetizers of some sort. I waited.
Their drinks came first, and within five or six minutes, the waitress brought their appetizer. I waited.
The clock had hit 7:40 when I corralled a different waitress. I said kindly: “I don’t want to be the ‘ugly American,’ but I’ve been here awhile. Can I please have someone take my order?”
The waitress smiled, apologetically. She went to find a server to take my order. Three to four minutes later, a waiter came. I asked about the beers and ordered one. Telling him I didn’t want an appetizer, I ordered salmon with a plain baked potato.
Not bothered yet about such cavalier treatment — I was, after all, on holiday — I got a cold, Swedish craft beer around 8. I sipped it as I waited.
At 8:15, a waitress brought my dinner. To my displeasure, I noticed fries on the plate, not a baked potato. As she turned to wait on others, I stopped her.
“I didn’t order French fries,” I told her, still no hint of anger in my tenor.
“We’re out of baked potatoes,” she said.
“You could I have told me; I’d have ordered something else. I don’t eat fries.”
She shrugged.
“Can you get the manager for me?”
A few minutes later, the waiter who seated me arrived. I asked if he was the manager. He told me “no.” He also said he’d sort this problem out.
I voiced my displeasure — over the food, not the slow service. He listened, but he and I were going in different directions. I silenced him.
“Just bring me the check for the beer,” I said. “I’ll pay for the beer. I’m going somewhere else.”
From his reaction, the waiter understood. He left and hurried back.
He placed the check on the table. I looked it over and handed him $100 SEK ($11.40) for the beer. A couple of minutes later, he returned with my change. He then told me it was OK to eat the salmon, which remained on a plate in front of me.
Tempering the angry Black man in me, I told the waiter in my nicest Justice B. Hill voice: “No thank you!”
I was more than 75 minutes into a dinner, and all I had to show for my time was a beer — one as frosty as I was about the indifferent treatment I often face when in a place others seem to think a Black man like me doesn’t belong.
