Using a throwaway for anonymity.

I am a manager at a retail job. Recently, two employees were having a disagreement on the sales floor about some work miscommunication. Both of the involved employees were women of color (important for later). It was small stuff, neither of them were in trouble for the work related incident. However, they had the argument at one of our counters and during the argument, a customer walked up for help. They both completely ignored the customer to continue arguing to the point that one of my shift leads had to step in and help the customer.

The shift lead then documented the incident in our shift report log and I had to address it and bring them both in separately to remind them to take these things off the floor.

The first employee i spoke with completely understood, expressed that she was just exasperated with the other employee who didn't listen when she had given her information that would have avoided the incident, but understood that there's a time and a place for that kind of thing.

The other (a black woman) immediately took offense. The first thing she did was ask the race of the customer (which honestly I don't know - that wasn't documented bc why would it be?) When I said that didn't matter, she said it did, "because a black customer would have understood that it was just two women of color getting a little heated, it was a 'nothingburger' of an incident, it didn't matter." I explained that regardless of the race of anyone involved, it was unprofessional behavior. She then said she "didn't even understand why this incident was documented" and insinuated that my (white) shift lead was being racist/somehow at fault for finding the situation uncomfortable.

I reiterated that it wasn't a race issue, but a customer service issue and proceeded with giving her her warning. I also emphasized that even if they weren't arguing at all, just chatting, and ignored the customer, we would still be in the office talking about it.

I've sat with this for a couple of days and I feel bad. I know of the "angry black woman" stereotype and as a white person myself obviously can't understand what that feels like, but I still feel like the behavior was unprofessional. If they had stopped the argument and tended to the customer, I wouldn't have addressed anything except maybe a slight reminder that they shouldn't argue on the floor.

As it stands, I did reach out to HR to make sure I didn't say anything wrong and they backed me up, but am still feeling guilty.

So, AITAH?