Maravillo 1

Maravillo,Miriam
English 114A
Bezzera,James
8:00am-9:15am
The Best Country in the World
America is the best country in the world. It is the land of the free and the brave.
Everyone that lives in America is safe from racial discrimination, violence, and prejudice. All
social classes are treated equal, where all of our politicians treat minorities with respect. From all
the years that I have lived in California, I have realized that Latinos are treated with the most
utter importance, being labeled and known for being rapists, thugs, criminals, and so on. We live
in a world where its okay for a politician to demean a specific minority group based on a
stereotypical image that is portrayed by certain individuals. I even experienced freedom of
speech from others when I worked at a local burger joint called The Habit. It was an
experience that made me realize how truly GREAT this country is. I realized that this is the only
place you can literally say anything you want and there would be no consequences whatsoever;
that is how I realized how extraordinary this country is. It is the place where we can truly be
called the best country in the world.
The Best Job in the World
I first started working at the age of seventeen, which at that time I thought that was the
best job in the world. All I had to do was greet the customers when they walked in and say,
Welcome to The Habit, would you like to try our Original char?, and basically take their orders
as fast as I could with little or no mistakes. That sounds simple right? Well the longer I worked
there; I began to discover the benefits to being polite to customers; so I began to compliment
everyone for the simplest things. For example, if a woman walked in with a nice necklace, I
would act as if it were the most beautiful accessory I had ever laid eyes; comparing it to
diamonds when in reality it was more like plastic. By doing things like that I would always end
up with at least twenty dollars in my tip jar, which I found was the best method to get the extra
cash I needed. Paydays were always my favorite days. I loved receiving the piece of paper that
revealed at the very bottom what was the exact amount of money that equaled to the amount of
hours I worked. In my eyes it was one of the greatest jobs I could have asked for but the only
thing I could have lived without was the amount of people that would eat there. There were days
where you wouldnt be able to get to the front door because there was always an endless of
amount of people in line that eventually reached to the restaurant next to us. It was always busy
whether it was a weekday or weekend but I hardly complained because time passed by quickly
when I just needed to take orders.
The Best Person in the World
When I first got the job I couldnt help but see the type of people that dined there. Most
of the people that would eat there had transparent like skin, golden brown hair, colored eyes, and
were twice the height I was. Half of the time, I felt like my customers looked at me like an alien
from outer space that didnt belong in the planet Earth, the other half I was not even looked at
because the customers simply couldnt see me for I was just too short, (49 to be exact).I felt like
a fish out of water. It made me feel very uncomfortable being surrounded with people that looked
the complete opposite of myself, but sooner or later I knew that I had to grow accustom to it so I
always tried to make the best out of it. The funny thing was when I did see people that looked
like me, I would always get extra excited just to say Hola, como esta? Hay algo con que les

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pueda ayudar? and I would always be extra helpful with them because I was the only person
they could communicate with. Most of the time, it would most likely be my first and last time I
would ever see them there again. Anyways, as you can imagine taking orders gets very boring
just repeating the same words over and over and over again. One thing for sure is that as
employees, we were bound to make mistakes but some people never completely understood that
I was still a human. Maybe it was because since I looked so out of place, I was forbidden to
make a mistake. And so this leads to the one specific moment to which I was reminded, I don't
have a right to be human. I remember clearly how this grumpy man approached me, who didnt
even dare look at me in the eye the entire time he was ordering his food. At first I didnt think
much of it, until he came back with his food in his hands. Screaming, not even addressing me, he
said that I had put pickles in his hamburger when he supposedly requested no pickles, funny I
don't remember that. I responded with a smile and thats when he said, Do you even understand
me or do I have to get someone to translate because obviously you dont know any English? My
manager overheard, I mean who couldn't, and quickly addressed the situation. He told me to
ignore him and return to my routine, but I could not. I replayed the scene over and over in my
head.
The Best Time I Ever Had
After this incident, I began to notice that comments like these went by me daily but I
never realized it. I received remarks that I had never heard before. I was always portrayed as
either the dark skinned Mexican who only spoke Spanish, a high school dropout, and my
favorite; a teenage mom. Half of the time, I had people throw their orders at me when they didnt
receive what they expected, the other half I only had customers avoid me and request for another
person who looked exactly like them to take their order. Customers would always blame me for
putting tomatoes in their hamburgers even if it clearly stated in their receipt that I had put NO
TOMATOES. I guess I should have just translated to Spanish and maybe they would have
understood it better. Sometimes they even blamed me for the bad quality of the food but I wasnt
a cook, I was just a cashier. It came to a point where I felt that I was just blamed for everything
because in their eyes I didnt finish high school, I wasn't smart enough, I was irresponsible and
got impregnated at a young age. I think they thought that I started working there because I
needed that job but in reality it was because I wanted to make extra money especially during
my senior year in high school. I guess I just had to be a teen mom to work at a fast food
industry. It came to a point where I didnt even want to take orders anymore, I preferred being in
the back with the people that could actually relate to how I was feeling because they were also
ostracized for their skin color. I preferred talking to the cook that always made me feel better by
saying, Ignora todo lo que te digan tu sigue adelante.
Racism is not wrong its just facts!
Its been a year since I quit my job. It didnt take too long to get me to quit. It wasnt
much of necessity to be there but I just couldnt handle the comments. I felt like they were bound
to fire me anyways. I always wondered how my life would have been if I never actually started
working there, but at the same time it made me realize how racism is indeed seen every day.
People and politicians always express their feelings towards the subject but the funny thing is
that people never tend to say anything; the point is that racism is never frowned upon. Why? I
wouldnt be able to answer that question but what I do know is that racism has always existed in
our lives. Whether we are white, African American, Hispanic, Japanese, or even Indian, we are
always profiled by bad decisions that others make. In this case, Muslims are terrorist (6% of

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terrorist attacks are Muslim) (1). Mexicans are rapist (52% of rapists are white) (2). African
American are thugs (68.9% whites are criminals) (2). Its just the simple truth.
Facts vs. Truth
The fact is that people dont understand the difference between facts and the truth. If you
open the dictionary and look under the word FACT it would be defined as something that either
happened or something proven to exist. If you flip a few pages to the right you would see the
word TRUE, would defined as the way people interpret those fact or in other words what people
believe those facts mean.
Every time we turn on our television, we see news reports about racism, racial profiling,
stereotypes, and discrimination. Whether it deals with police officers or a politician stating that
Mexico doesnt send their best people, they only send rapists and drug dealers, all it does is
brainwash people to believe that its the truth. We are faced with multiple facts where a simple
no one like Ann Coulter can state that Americans should fear Mexicans more than ISIS,
because apparently a terrorist group who is killing hundreds of innocent people, is equally as
dangerous as a group of people who migrate to the U.S. to seek a better life for themselves and
their families.
So what exactly is the truth? The fact is that every time that someone expresses
their version of facts it impacts society and makes them believe that it is the truth. Eventually
these truths become a norm in our society and we fail to acknowledge they are not real facts.
They are simply our opinions. So what exactly makes this the greatest country? Racism is what
defines this country to be the GREATEST because the FACT is that racism never died in
America, it simply adapted in the society we live in today.

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Work Cited Page

(1)"Non-Muslims Carried Out More than 90% of All Terrorist Attacks in America." Global
Research. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.
(2)"The FBI Bureau of Investigation." FBI. FBI, 3 Nov. 2014. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.