Something struck me this weekend as I was out and about. I went into the Belk to get a Clinique antiperspirant (I have delicate-flower armpits; most antiperspirants make me come out in hives. But Clinique does not).
No one was at the counter. I waited a moment, and a woman from another counter (Lancome, I think?) came over and asked if she could help me. I asked for the powder I needed, and also the antiperspirant. She found the powder fine, but didn't find the antiperspirant right away. She said "I'll have to go get someone" I laughed somewhat apologetically and said, "Yes, please do. I really kind of need it." (I was almost out at home, and I SO did not want to have to go over to the Dillard's - the other place in Sherman I knew of that had a Clinique counter).
So she went and found someone else. They both looked. I described what it looked like to them, that it was a roll-on in a small "Clinique green" tube, and that it was usually in a drawer under the counter. Finally they found it.
I paid for my stuff, and as I was paying, the first woman who helped me (she was probably about 18 or 20) thanked me profusely for being "so patient." That surprised me. I didn't feel like I had been unusually patient - if anything, I could feel a bit of annoyance bubbling up in me ("OF COURSE they wouldn't have someone who knew the product well on duty right now. And what will I do if they can't find it? Ugh, I'll have to drive over to the mall...") but I didn't say anything because I got that the young woman was doing her best - she was a Lancome counter person, she didn't know the product, and anyway, the women's antiperspirant isn't a heavily-advertised item, it's kind of unknown, even to some regular Clinique counter people.
But the young woman meant it; she wasn't being sarcastic or chiding even though I had maybe tapped my foot quietly a little bit while I waited.
And that surprised me. I kind of laughed again and said that I knew not a lot of people knew about the antiperspirant, so I usually had to wait for people to find it. And she thanked me again, and said "I'm not really awake yet today, they just called me on short notice and I had to throw my clothes on and get down here."
It does surprise me, though, when someone thanks me for my patience or my politeness or whatever when I'm really just doing what I was taught as a kid. When I'm at my best, that early training comes out and I am polite and gentle and quick to forgive if someone messes up.
Maybe that young woman had had someone the other day get really snippy and mean with her when she couldn't find something as fast as the person wanted it. Maybe she was worried she wasn't on top of her game that morning, being called in on short notice, and was afraid of messing up. I don't know.
But it did strike me, and it reminded me of something: You never really know how you act or what you say can affect another person. I've mentioned before how at different times in my life, small (or maybe not so small*) things people did for me made an enormous difference in how I felt at that point in time and what I did next.
(*I am specifically thinking of the professor from another discipline in biology, who, upon hearing I had been asked to leave the first graduate program I was in (because of an alleged failure to make research progress) took me up to her office and let me talk and gave me advice and took well over an hour out of her busy day to help out someone she really had no obligation in any way to....and that made a huge difference to me; it helped me decide to try again somewhere else rather than just to quit and get whatever job I could find and maybe wind up working a job I hated and that paid me a bare living wage, but because I felt I wasn't capable of anything more)
And I admit it - it's so easy to fly off the handle. It's so easy to see your own problems as the center of the universe, and to see people as either obstacles to your happiness or perhaps even villains who are consciously doing things to thwart you (I have a little sign up in my office that says, "Never attribute to malice what stupidity can explain" and it's helped me on occasion hold my tongue when I might have wanted to say something really nasty)
This is related to that "This is water" speech that I linked to a while back - that if you stop and look at the other person, and as David Foster Wallace said,
"if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible."
I mean, maybe the guy who cut me off in traffic is just a jerk and a bad driver. Or maybe he's worried about his son who is in the hospital and isn't paying the same attention to driving he normally would.
And the other day, The Anchoress (a religion-and-culture blog I occasionally read) posted this quotation from Dean Koontz:
“Each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will. All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined – those dead, those living, those generations yet to come – that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands.”
And yeah, okay, that's pretty heavy, to consider that the hope of humanity may depend upon how kind or how petty I am to other people, and maybe that's overstating it a little (but what if it isn't? What if each one of our choices in how we act really does have that much import?)
I try. I don't always succeed. I have my bad days, and it seems lately I've maybe had more bad days than I did in the past, where instead of laughing off the guy who pushes in front of me at the store, I briefly see fire. Or where I maybe don't take the moment to say the thing that might make someone feel better. But I can always try again and try harder.
I don't want to live in a world where someone being polite to someone else is unusual, and maybe by my actions I can help it to be less unusual? And yes, dangit, even politeness matters....saying "please" and "thank you," and *meaning* it when you say it (and that's important too: realizing "I am thankful that this lady working at Panera Bread brought me my salad instead of the business expecting me to come up to the counter to pick it up"). (And also - saying those things, and striving to mean them, that affects YOU as much as it affects the other person. It makes you stop and see the other person, for one thing. And it makes you, or at least, it makes me realize that, yeah, I am grateful for this little thing).
I know it matters because it matters to me when I'm on the receiving end of it. A crummy day can be salvaged when a student comes in and asks for help, and when I'm done helping them, they say, "Oh, it makes sense to me now. Thank you for helping me." Because it's a more-concrete way of knowing I've done something useful, that I've helped somebody. And I know you shouldn't EXPECT to be thanked for the stuff you do, especially for stuff that's part of your job, but you know? It's NICE. It's pleasant and it makes life move along a bit more like a flowing stream of peacefulness.
I actually realize now what I need to work on more - it's not taking the good little things for granted; I am pretty good about thanking people (and meaning it) for their help, and at stopping and seeing that "things could be otherwise" (an author I once read said that was part of the root of gratitude: realizing that whatever it was you just experienced that was good didn't HAVE to happen). I am not as good at responding graciously when I am disappointed in things small or large. (I was pretty good this weekend, at the natural foods store, when they had no skim milk in the case....they sell a nice, somewhat-local dairy's milk, and it's a good price for organic milk. But they had no skim. I asked the lady if there was more in the back and she said, "No, I'm sorry, we get deliveries once a week and what's out in the case is what we have." And I was able to say "Well, bummer, but thanks anyway" even though I was disappointed ("Dangit, now I need to run to the Kroger after this..." I thought). But sometimes I am not gracious and that's something that could take work.
But anyway, as I said: I don't want to live in a world where people compliment me on my politeness because it is uncommon that someone is polite.
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