I've come here every blue moon for the past couple of years and have usually been very satisfied with this business. Unfortunately, that changed today, 8/31/26.
I initially had Eva, a Turkish woman, do my pedicure. She was warm, welcoming, sweet, and professional. She treated me like an appreciated customer, and I felt completely comfortable with her.
I was then handed off to a nail technician named Mariann Lee, I believe. She also seemed pleasant and kind--until near the end of my manicure, when the conversation took an extremely disturbing turn.
She began expressing her belief that white people are the superior race. She told me that Chinese people are only good at copying and perfecting other people's inventions, that the greatest innovators and thinkers throughout history have all been white, that white people are the most sophisticated race, and that countries improve when white people enter them.
I was honestly in disbelief that someone would feel comfortable saying these things to a customer while providing a service.
She brought up Socrates as evidence of white intellectual superiority, seemingly ignoring entire philosophical traditions outside of Europe--Confucianism, Taoism, and countless others. She praised Einstein while dismissing the enormous intellectual and scientific contributions made by civilizations across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Human knowledge did not develop within the borders of one race or civilization. Mathematics, medicine, philosophy, astronomy, engineering, agriculture, literature, and technology are the accumulated work of people across the world.
She also spoke negatively about Indians, saying they had "flooded" Seattle when she lived there and suggesting that they must be "sex crazed" because there are so many Indian people. She then claimed Chinese spies are in America trying to obtain information to take the country down and boasted that the U.S. military is supposedly 100 years ahead of China.
This wasn't an ordinary political disagreement. I was listening to someone make sweeping racial and ethnic generalizations while repeatedly arguing that one race is inherently superior to others.
What made the conversation especially ironic is that the rights and protections many of us enjoy in America today were expanded through generations of people fighting against precisely this type of racial hierarchy. Black Americans fought, suffered, organized, and died demanding that this country recognize their humanity and constitutional rights. The Civil Rights Movement also helped dismantle discriminatory structures that affected women, immigrants, and other racial and ethnic minorities. Chinese Americans and many other marginalized communities likewise endured discrimination while contributing enormously to the development of this country.
No race has a monopoly on intelligence, innovation, sophistication, morality, or progress. Civilization itself is a product of human beings learning from one another. Knowledge crosses borders. Cultures borrow, adapt, improve, and build upon what came before them. That is how humanity progresses.
I remained respectful throughout the conversation because I don't believe hatred should be answered with hatred. But I left genuinely appalled by what I heard.
I hope these views are Mariann's alone and are not representative of Polish or its management. A customer should be able to get a manicure without being subjected to unsolicited commentary about racial superiority or degrading stereotypes about Chinese and Indian people.
If management reads this, I sincerely hope they address it. There is no "superior race," and racial-supremacist rhetoric has absolutely no place in a professional environment--especially when customers from every background are paying to feel welcomed and respected read more