Human Compassion
When I am not writing I am a district manager of a chain of
convenience stores. Through some bad luck I find one of my stores without any
management. This means I must step in and be the manager while also taking care
of my other stores. This can cause for some rough and stressful times.
On a particularly crazy Monday morning this week, as I was
working on several different things, a woman came to me crying. She appeared to
be mid to late 30’s and of a Hispanic heritage. She was a beautiful young lady
but obviously very upset. Too make matters worse, she could not speak English.
Now I have always had a fascination with the Spanish language.
I grew up in a small southeastern Arizona
town where there were many Spanish speaking people. By the time I was in Jr.
High School I could speak all the cuss words in Spanish (mostly because I had
been called them all, and partly because of my fascination, at the time, with
anything that I was not supposed to do). My fascination with the Spanish
language led me to enroll in one year of Spanish in high school. During this
time I learned the basics of the language.
Life went on and I used this very little and eventually
forgot most of what Spanish I did know. Many years later I enrolled in an adult
Spanish class and took three years of Spanish followed up by a two week trip to
Mexico City Mexico
Fast forward twelve years later, and a lack of using what I
had learned, and here I am with this young, beautiful, Spanish speaking lady
standing in front of me crying and trying to communicate with me. With what
little Spanish I could remember, I could understand some of what she was saying
but was pretty useless in trying to speak back to her.
Through the little bit that I could pick up, she was heading
from her home in Iowa to see family in Texas . She stopped in my
store to use the restroom along the way. As she was in the restroom she
accidentally dropped her car key in the toilet. When she moved to grab the key
from the toilet the automatic flusher thingy did its job and flushed the key
down the toilet.
This is when I needed help in communicating. I pulled up the
“Babel Fish” website on my phone, which is an online translator, and would type
what I wanted to say and then translate it to Spanish and let her read it. This
was mildly effective and quite amusing to those watching. I found a Spanish speaking
customer and was hoping she could help translate but alas, she could not speak English
either! It was nice though to have her there for a moment as she did put the
woman at ease a bit. Finally I phoned a friend. Someone that speaks fluent Spanish
and English.
While my friend was talking to this lady, I was on the phone
with a plumber to get him out to take apart the toilet and see if the key was
caught in the “P” trap? “S” trap? Whatever they call that trap! We shut down
that toilet and began to wait. Hours went by and the plumber did not show up. I
called back and he was stuck on another job but assured me he would be here as
soon as he finished up. In the meantime I had gotten a comfy chair for this
poor woman and bought her a fountain drink and tried to make her as comfortable
as possible. I had a lot of work to do this day and so I went back to it while
we were waiting on the plumber.
It was a long day and every time I would look over at the
lady she was crying and sobbing. I would occasionally go over and offer her
drinks and food and just a reassuring “everything will be ok”. I called a
locksmith so that we could have a backup plan in case the plumber could not get
the key. Unfortunately, her car is a Volkswagen and they do not sell the rights
to their keys. After a few phone calls I found that the local VW dealer here
would have to order the key, program it and match it to the car. This meant a
$100.00 tow charge to get it to the dealership, a $250.00 charge to make the
key AND a three day wait for all this to happen!
When I communicated this news to her she really began to
cry. I gave her a reassuring hug and told her I’m going to see this through and
she will be ok. I figured, at the very least, I could pay for her hotel while
she waited for the key.
Seven hours later, the plumber arrived. He spent 45 minutes,
with me being his assistant, pulling the toilet from the floor and searching
for the key. Unfortunately it was not there!
At this point the Highway Patrol had arrived. I briefed them
on the situation and they said they would take it from there. I explained to
the lady that my shift was up and that I would leave her in the very capable
hands of this officer. She looked very scared at that point and gave me a long,
strong hug and began crying again. The officer assured me that he would take
care of her and I left for home.
The next morning I came to work and, after a couple hours, I
look up and there is the lady at a register buying a cup of coffee! She looks
at me and gets a big smile on her face. Through our terrible knowledge of each
others language we talked and I found out that she had stayed the night in her
car. The highway patrolman had unlocked her car somehow and she contacted her
family in Iowa
and they were going to FedEx a key to her on Wednesday. Today was Tuesday!
Meanwhile, the Highway Patrolman had contacted the
maintenance supervisor for the travel plaza and found out that anything that
goes in the toilet travels down a long pipe and about a hundred yards later
there is a filter of some sort. The maintenance man spent the day Tuesday down
in this manhole sifting through to locate the key.
Low and behold, about 3:00 Tuesday afternoon the man came up
from the hole with…A KEY! HER KEY! I was very excited and we rushed the key
over to her and showed her that it was found! She was so excited! We made sure
it worked to start her car and I took her inside and got her a pair of gloves
and cleaning supplies to clean up the key. I left for the day at this point
feeling pretty good for her.
It was quite an ordeal for this woman. For the two days that
I was helping her I kept putting myself in her shoes. What if I were stranded
in Mexico
and lost my key and could not communicate? Eek! Scary stuff for sure! Did I
just say “Eek!”? Oh well, whatever. I am so glad that she was able to get on
her way and I was happy that I could help to comfort her during this
frightening time.
The next day I came to work and one of my coworkers told me
that the lady was looking for me after I left. She had called her daughter that
speaks English and wanted her to talk to me. My co-worker told her I had left
for the day. The lady handed her the phone and the daughter said, “My mom wants
to know if that nice, bald man is still there”. {Bald?!} Ok, I’ll let that one
go… Anyway, she left a message for me. She wanted to thank me for being friendly
to her and helping her through this situation. Her daughter said that her mom
told her that without me being there she would have panicked and does not know
how she would have made it.
I have no doubt that she would have made it through this
with or without me but I am happy that I was able to provide some comfort in
this bad situation. I learned from this situation that doing something for
someone, without any anticipation of anything in return will return something
great. My only regret, other than her having to experience this, is that I never got her name. Name or no name, I made a friend over the course of those two days and it feels good.
Do something selfless for someone today. It will do wonders
for you.
Bald?! Ok, maybe a little...
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