You know what, sometimes I screw up. I forget to empty trash cans. It's kinda funny then how co-workers and customers react. "I am not gonna do that guy's job for him" (translation, he gets no help from me even when he needs it). My job, you see, is apparently beneath them. They cannot be taken upon to empty a trash can even though it is hardly rocket surgery or power-lifting. They just throw trash on the floor and complain that the trash can was not emptied like the servant was supposed to do. (Note, I was supposed to empty the trash the night before, so I am not there when said customers are dumping the trash on the floor. I even had a caterer (who I had helped with HIS work all the time), when I was working downstairs and the party got done early, when the trash cans got full, he called my supervisor at home instead of emptying a few himself (and replacement bags are right underneath the full bag at the bottom of the can. Woe be to the peon who doesn't do his job. No mercy for the bad if they want it.)

Management, however, has said that they will back me up. I do not have to take verbal abuse. I can have somebody kicked out if they are verbally abusive to me. Presumably that is true even if the paying customer is the son of the city manager. However, pragmatically, it would be kinda stupid to assert myself against somebody as powerful as the son of the city manager. You gotta know when to hold them and know when to fold them.

Imagine if the situation was reversed racially. Suppose the high and mighty professor was white and the cop was black. Here Mr. Prof is calling the cop every name in the book, racial epithets no less, and threatening to take his job. The black cop walks out of the house and Mr. High and Mighty still follows, hurling his accusations and insults out to the whole block. He is asked to calm down, but doesn't because he is gonna show that uppity n*** who is boss. He then is arrested for disorderly conduct while he shouts 'you don't know who you are messing with'.

Are you still gonna be all righteous about 'the cop didn't do his job'? Are you still gonna refuse to even consider that there might be some fault with Mr. Harvard Bigshot Incorporated?