Unhappy people
Bonita Wilborn
On Tuesday, February 28, 2024, I was sitting in a drive-through line at a local restaurant, next in line to receive my order. The vehicle ahead of me, even after the employee had given her her meal, continued to sit there at the window, which basically aroused my curiosity, so I was paying attention to see what was going on.
When the employee realized the customer was still there and returned to the window to see what she needed, that’s when I got the first glimpse of the person in the vehicle. It was an older woman who said in a less-than-kind voice, “I need some napkins. Y’all don’t ever put any in there.” Her tone was quite loud, and I heard every word clearly.
Now let me take a moment to say I was very impressed with the employee who politely handed the customer some napkins but said, “There are napkins in the bag.”
When the other customer scowled and drove away, I pulled up to the window thinking, “I’m sure she doesn’t get paid enough to have to put up with that crap.” So, I decided that I would try to lighten the mood by joking with the young employee.
When she opened the window and greeted me with a smile and my total due, I returned her smile, winked, and asked, “How dare you fail to give her any napkins?” The broad smile told me that she obviously could tell that I was not serious. But what she said next really surprised me. She explained, “She yells at me every day.” I could tell that she was serious. This same customer is evidently unkind to the young employee on a regular basis and very likely unkind to everyone she comes in contact with.
I went on my way, and as I waited in yet another drive-through line, that time at the drugstore, and let me just say that wait was much, much longer; I actually had time to eat my entire meal before I reached the drive-through window, I pondered the event I had just witnessed, and I reasoned that a person must be unhappy to exhibit that type of behavior on a daily basis.
That thought brought to mind other unhappy individuals that I’ve encountered along the way. I worked in a school cafeteria for 25 years. A veteran teacher there, who has long since retired, was one of those unhappy people. No matter what was on the menu, this teacher was never satisfied. Oh, she was content to eat lunch with us every day, but she was never happy about it.
One day, rice was on the menu. Honesty compels me to say most school-age children don’t eat rice, no matter how it is prepared. But we didn’t have the option of what we served; off-site sources made the menu. Anyway, I recalled that that specific teacher always complained that the rice needed to be sweet. So, on that particular day, I decided to make her day. I got a disposable bowl, dipped a generous helping of rice into it, added a lot of sugar, and made her some sweet rice.
We normally dreaded seeing this teacher step into the dining room, but on that day, I anxiously awaited her arrival. She watched as her students got their lunch and settled at their assigned table, and then she came to the serving line to get her lunch. I stepped inside the kitchen, got the specially prepared bowl of sweet rice, and presented it to the teacher with a smile. “I remembered that you like your rice sweetened,” I said.
Her response was totally unexpected. Without a smile or a thank you, she said, “You didn’t put any butter in it.” I’ll just say that’s the last time I went out of my way to make sweet rice for her.
Another obviously unhappy person that came to mind was a woman (I say woman because she was not a nice lady, and to me, there is a difference) who was a customer of ours during the year that we lost our minds and owned a convenience store.
This woman was approximately the age of our daughter, so being talked to disrespectfully was not what we were accustomed to. However, we did realize that she was a customer and not our daughter, so we had to make allowances for her whether we liked it or not. That was…until the day she floated in (and by that, I mean she was high as a kite, drugged out of her mind). She always seemed a bit off, but that day was extremely bad.
Let me say that our generation was brought up to believe that saying “Yes Ma’am” and “No Ma’am” was being respectful. It wasn’t a derogatory term that you used for someone older than you. It was used all the time for females. Likewise, “Yes Sir” and “No Sir” were used when addressing males. Of course, that was back when males and females were the only two genders anyone had ever imagined existed.
But I digress…back to the woman who floated into our store…
I don’t know what items she had brought to the register for purchase, but Ricky said, “Is that all for you, Ma’am?” She quickly became LIVID. With a string of vulgar words and complaints about being too young to be called Ma’am, she left the items she had gathered lying on the counter and stomped out of the store, vowing never to shop there again.
Ricky left very specific instructions for me and our employees that if she ever walked back into the store and he was at the register, one of us better relieve him and wait on her because he was not at all sure he could maintain his composure. I don’t think she ever returned, but that was OK. We missed her, but it was a good miss.
So the moral of the story is this…while we all have bad days and we all have things that make us unhappy from time to time, taking your unhappiness out on everyone around you doesn’t make you happy, and it doesn’t make them unhappy…except when you’re around.
