Just for some background, I have been on HRT for 6 months, and I do present as female. I do look feminine in my looks, and have always had a more feminine face.
I'm a student who works at a fast food restaurant. Last Wednesday I was late into my shift. It was typical dinner rush, but things died down and a cis hetero couple came in. The girl was super cute and kind of reminded me of myself. She was very petite and had such a youthful, soft face. I noticed that we had the same eye color and I was utterly mesmerized. Her boyfriend on the other hand, kept giving me dirty looks because he probably saw that we did in fact look alike and that I was aware of this connection.
I guess I stared for a little bit too long, and then took out my phone and snapped a friend before going to the back of the kitchen. A coworker finished their order, but it wasn't until I came out while they were eating that I received more dirty looks from the gross cis boyfriend. He talked to his girlfriend and she started looking back at me occasionally. I was helping other customers until they left.
Then it's less than 5 minutes later and they walk back in with a mall security guard (from the mall that my workplace is in) and ask for my manager. My manager comes out and the boyfriend from earlier points to me, saying that I creepily stared at his girlfriend and that he wants me to delete the picture that I took of his girlfriend off of my phone. I am in shock and can feel tears forming in my eyes. My manager motions for me to talk them, but the boyfriend gets louder until I start crying. He continues to threaten me until he can see my phone to see the picture that I took. In my fit of desperation, I say that the reason I was looking at his girlfriend is because I thought that we had the same eye color and looked alike. He says that I'm a creep and calls me a man. He tells me that I need to delete the picture of her off of my phone. I tell him with tears down my face that he has no legal right to see my phone and that I'm a woman. He objects and she joins him too in saying that I'm most definitely a man. I am totally bawling by this point. I want to defend myself but I can't risk my job.
My manager, knowing that I'm trans, tries to de-escalate the situation by saying, go to the back and I'll handle this. So I do, and my manager (god bless her!) handles it in the span of like two minutes. I was allowed to sit in the back for the rest of my shift (~2 hours) and I called out sick and got someone to cover the next few days afterward. I'm going back tomorrow to work (the first time since it happened) and I'm terrified. I don't want to be cornered or attacked because I'm a trans woman. I certainly don't want to lose my job because of some transphobic idiot, but it's so hard to restrain myself from checking transphobes.
I really don't know how trans people work customer service jobs. It just feels like being trans puts a big target on your back to be abused in this industry.
