Get the f*** out of my hood!

No not my neighborhood. The increasing activity of the Taliban-esque suicide bombings, out-of-control inflation and general political instability is pretty much making sure that people (of the white, civilian kind) would never want to come into my neighborhood. In fact, they want to stay out so badly that us Pakistani’s are begging them to grace our neighborhood with their presence. The irony is not lost on me. (note to privileged civilians of the yuppie kind: if you are taking over somebody else’s neighborhood you should def get the f*** out).

But literally, get out of my hood!

Lemme explain. I am currently working as a synthetic chemist, and we all have designated hood space where we can work with volatile, potent or just generally stuff that you don’t want to inhale. For an organic chemist, hood space is sacred. It’s where the haphazardness of a research lab knows not to enter. It’s where you set up reactions they particular way you like (kind of like athletes and their pre-game rituals) and keep all the little gadgets and accessories you have collected over years (or 2 months) of drug making. Moral of the story: you respect a fellow chemist’s hood and never even “borrow” anything from it let alone set your stuff up in it. But it’s not like a general respect of boundaries ever stopped a white man before!

Yes playgrounders, I walked in to my lab this morning to find that my hood had been colonized. Apparently the way the world my company works is, if you are short of hood space just move into the next one over, which might also happen to belong to the only woman and only person of color in the lab. Doesn’t matter if right next door there is an almost empty hood that hasn’t been actively used by the other white man for over a month. No, you have to take over something that is actively being used and mess that shit up.

So what did I do? Well nothing. I asked the dude if there was a reason he couldn’t use the UNUSED hood and he said it was inconvenient for him since it was soo messy. So instead, I spent all effin morning cleaning up this other white man’s hood and re-setting up my stuff in it! @!#%^