A Little Bit of Kindness, Please.

Recently, I was in the checkout line at my local grocery when a somewhat unusual incident occurred.  The line was getting quite long and was not moving. It seems there was an elderly lady having a bit of difficulty scanning her credit card.  The more the cashier tried to help her the more frustrated she became. Customers in line were beginning to get unruly. I overheard some saying such things as: “She ought to be in a home”, “poor old thing”, and “why don’t they do something about her?”  Soon a young man with a necktie joined the cashier.  Slim in stature and with a young-man-on-the-way-up attitude he took over the cashier’s job.   His nametag said he was a management trainee. The young man had an air of condescension toward both cashier and the elderly customer. He quickly took charge by grabbing the plastic card from the elderly woman’s hand and swiping  it.

“See,”  he says, “there’s nothing to it! Now move along!”

I felt a bit of empathy for the elderly lady. It occurred to me that one day we would all be old and much like her and probably have a problem with modern technology. Yes, one day every frustrated person in that line would be having problems too. Growing old is a gradual process and not necessarily one easily adapted to.

I remember when I was a child attending a rural school, one of the treats of the first day of school was a new ruler. It wasn’t very fancy or anything.  Just a wooden ruler with a metal straight edge. The local Coca-Cola bottler would give every student a new 12-inch ruler. On the back of that ruler was printed: “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You”.  I don’t guess they give them out to students anymore, or maybe that young management trainee just didn’t get one.