Saturday 17 November 2018

She is grossly overweight.

She can barely walk. She is lonely and unhappy.
I am saying those things without someone's permission. It won't matter because she has no idea how to use a computer and you won't know her.
I also want to say that, despite appearances, she is kind and she does her job extremely well. Her co-workers rely on her knowledge. It's all "Ask X..." and "If X was here she would know..."
I don't see her that often, perhaps once a week. She knows me. She will acknowledge me outside her workplace. We have  had the occasional short chat, often as she waits for a taxi to take her home - to where she lives alone. She finds it hard to read and doesn't do any craft. She doesn't belong to any groups. We have nothing at all in common. All things considered though the two of us also get along well together.
I don't avoid her the way so many people do. I ignore her apparent impatience on her bad days, days when the pain is almost too much to bear. 
    "I don't know why you bother," people have said to me. That bothers me. 
It bothers me when, as yesterday, someone completely ignored her as she was serving them. He was on his phone the entire time. He didn't look at her or even acknowledge her. It bothers me when the next person told her, "Well, if you'd cheer up and lose some weight people might want to talk to you."
That reduced her to tears. The next person ignored her too - perhaps embarrassed by her obvious distress. 
I was next in the queue and the other girl serving was about to serve me. We looked at each other and she asked quietly, "Can you wait a moment?"
I knew what she meant. She pretended to rush off to put something back, something that could have waited.
And there we were, just the two of us. I smiled as sympathetically as I could and asked,
     "Bad day?"
She nodded. I handed things over. I told her of a small funny thing that had happened earlier and there was a faint smile. I thanked her for my change and I left.
I was packing things into the tricycle basket when the store manager came out to see about a delivery. He waved to the driver but then stopped and said to me,
      "Thanks for that."
Then he went on. I knew what he meant but I don't deserve that because I hadn't done anything at all really. It was her co-worker who gave me the opportunity to be friendly. to be polite, to give a lonely and unhappy person some support. It is the same co-worker who will give her a lift home if they both end their shift at the same time.
I have hopes of her co-worker. She's a student who wants to work in a career where good human relations are vital. I just hope she can teach her students to care for people like X.

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