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Story Time #2

 

Last week two interesting things happened to me and I’d like to share them along with some anecdotes of wisdom and discovery from these situations.

 

Story one:

I had a bad day. A really bad day. A holy shit let this day be done with and I’m going to wash it away with wine bad day. There is a gas station on the corner near my house.  It takes literally 5 minutes round trip walking, so I walked up there after my first bottle of wine to grab a second bottle (bad day, and bad hangover the following day.)  It’s dark out, rounding 11pm or so, and I am returning from my expedition. I hear a metallic TING…TING……..TING. WTF I wonder to myself as a plod along the street to my house.  I come around a corner and there is a woman clad in a winter coat, Christmas tights, and a back pack carrying the source of the metallic sound- A FLIPPIN MACHETE.  Not just a machete, but like a three foot long looks like a homemade katana type deal.  And the sound? She is smacking it on the concrete.  I have to walk past her to get to my front gate. As I come closer she brandishes the weapon and mutters incoherently. I just say “I like your tights” over and over until I get past her and into the safety of my home.

 

From there I call the police.  This is not ok and something needs to happen in this situation.  While on the phone with the department, the operator asks, “Do you think she is under the influence of drugs or alcohol?”  This is a turning point in this story, so pay close attention to the lesson here. I said “Well, to be honest I’m drunk right now.  I did not see her partake in either, so there is no purpose in my speculation as to whether this is substance induced.  Maybe she is having a mental break.  Maybe its drugs, I don’t know and it does no good to speculate.  The bottom line is that this is uncomfortable and the situation needs help.  Maybe she needs help, or maybe the neighborhood needs help.”  See how easy that was to be neutral in the situation?  We don’t need to always say “OH MY GAWD THEY MUST BE ON SOMETHIN” because that’s not fair and is speculative, and certainly not helpful to any situation. Maybe had I said “yeah, she’s probably on drugs” then the police would have gone in ready for combat with someone on PCP or something, when it could be a mental health crisis.  We all need to take a lesson from this and stop conjecturing where we have no reason to.  Trust me, I’ve been on some shit and you wouldn’t have known it, and just because it looks like your preconceived notion of drugs doesn’t mean you have any clue what is actually going on.  Keeping an objective mind about the situations allows for them to be handled properly.

 

Story two: 

 

In the Family Dollar near my house. I live just outside of downtown, so as with many areas in a similar situation its not the best or worst of areas.  A middle ground.  Brackish water where fresh meets salty.  So especially in a discount store situation it can get interesting. I always joke that you’ll never be the drunkest person at Family Dollar- and that’s not speculation, you can often smell it. Anyway, this is all to set the scene.  It’s usually a mess in there.  Shelves not stocked, carts of merchandise waiting to be placed, always an employee screaming across the store to another on a rant about working there.  It’s always a scene.  Recently, however, this has been greatly exacerbated.  You can barely get down any of the aisles for boxes of merchandise in the floor, extra loud employees, and even store closings for lack of help. I’m pretty patient, and I understand there are many compounding factors these days so I navigate as needed and take my place in line at the register.  A gentleman in front of me comments to the cashier “Did a tornado come through here?”  She replies something about being busy and “no one wants to work.”  This is where I feel I have to pop into a conversation that is not mine, however, I’m not about to miss an opportunity to make a good point.

“What’s the pay here?” I ask. $8 an hour is what they’re offering. So this is my chance “It’s not that no one wants to work. No one wants to work for $8/hr and have to work 60 hours a week to survive. Actually, the labor market is under supplied currently; there are more job openings than there are unemployed Americans.” Y’all- this NoBODy WANts tO WoRK shit has got to stop.  No one wants to be belittled, underpaid, overworked, and still not make enough to live. The working class has had enough of your shit and personally I LOVE IT. When I see that a store has to close because no one is there to keep it running I say GOOD FOR THEM.  Stand your ground, make your point heard, and choose wisely. Also, don’t fall for “if we raise wages we have to raise prices” because as most major businesses are reporting the highest profit years they aren’t raising wages as they are raising prices…so there’s that. So before you think that no one wants to work or complain about a store being messy, as with the first story, maybe take a moment to not speculate or spout potentially harmful propaganda yet get to the root of the issues first. Also, maybe consider taking your business elsewhere.  If you are supporting the places that don’t pay fair wages, you are essentially saying you are in support of unfair wages. 

 

So I hope these stories allow for some deeper thinking in our responses and reasoning, as they did for me in their occurrence, and even more so in their retelling.  If we can be more situationally objective and not project pre-conceived notions on the situations around us it can help us to build a better world for all. Be well.