Blowing one’s tuft
Hairdressers heaved a sigh of relief last month after authorities finally allowed them to resume work and start earning again. The people who badly
needed a trim after months without a haircut also welcomed the reopening of barber shops and hair salons.
However, another hair issue cropped up amid the pandemic. Not that a customer got COVID-19 in a salon instead of a haircut. A rider’s hair got pulled by a police officer that he angered for not stopping at a quarantine checkpoint in Wao, Lanao del Sur.
Based on the video of the incident taken on a smartphone camera and now circulating on social media, the rider also got berated and punched by the officer he bypassed.
The policeman’s superior has yet to issue a statement about the apparent physical abuse.
If someone with hair is vulnerable to pandemic rage, hairless individuals are not spare, as what happened to a food delivery customer last week.
Ace Hackett Mercado of Quezon
City got into a heated argument with a courier rider who got irked when he made him wait for 30 minutes to go down from his condo unit to collect the chocolate cake he ordered.
Mercado claimed he heard an expletive from the rider, so he cursed him back. He also accused the rider of following him and his daughter to the elevator and confronting him.
The rider, who claimed it was the customer who first hurled profanity, did not pull Mercado’s hair, but his insulting text messages after the verbal exchange felt like one.
In his video post of the altercation, Mercado showed a screenshot of the rider’s text messages calling him “PANOT” many times with a laughing emoticon at the end of the word.
Mercado has gotten back at the cyber bully without batting an eyelash. The company operating the food delivery app has suspended the rider.