I (24M) work a part-time job at a local liquor store in a small shopping centre in Europe. It's easy work to do alongside college and it's relatively fun too. We have the occasional bad eggs (boomers who complain loudly about having to pay for a gift bag, drunks who make it their life's mission to be as obnoxious as possible, etc) but I've had worse jobs. I had a short shift today, was mostly on my phone / studying to pass the time as mondays are usually pretty quiet. Aside from some usual customers, nothing of note really happened today.

Well, except for one thing: 30 minutes before the end of my shift man, wearing the hat from the title, entered the store. Dude was an overweight Russian (i guess from some of the words he huffed as he entered the store) who smelled like shit as he looked around the store. Upon seeing the hat, I already felt disgusted to put it mildly. I have friends who are part of the LGBTQ community, both in my country and outside it, and amongst many other things I am heavily concerned with the direction America is going for LGBTQ people. Personal disgust aside, the man was already in the store and went to grab himself a bottle which he then brought to my register.

When he wanted to pay, I glanced upward at his hat and snickered audibly. The man, let's call him Mullet due to the greasy bleached hair at the back of his neck, noticed it.

The following interaction took place:

Mullet: "What wrong?"

Me: "Your hat. It's a fucking joke."

Mullet: "What you mean? What joke?"

Me: "Is a rapists hat. Fuck Trump."

Mullet: 'some Russian words' (slurs I assume) "Fuck you!"

At that point, I grabed the bottle away and told him to get the fuck out. He said 'fuck you' a bunch more times, I mostly laughed at him, told him to 'get the fuck out', before butchering the pronounciation of 'Slava Ukraini' as he left the store. A customer came in shortly after who asked what had happened, upon which I just called the man a drunk. Fifteen minutes later the owner came in to take over and asked if anything interesting had happened. Told him what happened. He found it all quite funny and told me that I did a good job.

When I got home for dinner, I talked to my parents about this too. My dad, especially, found it dissapointing that I treated a customer so badly. Truth be told, my dad thinks I should always stay polite to customers even though I literally had customers call me homophobic slurs and threaten to beat me up (as I said, some bad eggs, most of the customers are very sweet though). He did make a good point that I shouldn't have told him to get the fuck out, and that I should have just let a paying customer pay for his product. He also mentioned the man likely wears it for this exact reason, to provoke people, and that I now just gave him what he wanted. Except his vodka, of course.

But yeah, AITA here? I could have been a bit more diplomatic but this Russian dude was kind of asking for it IMO.