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Be Informed. Be Inspired.
Be Informed. Be Inspired.
The "Wu Word" Blog
The "Wu Word" Blog
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The Girl at the Cashier
Posted on March 19, 2020 at 10:07 PM |
I have never been your typical “girly girl”
who loves to shop endlessly at shoe stores, clothing spots, or make-up shops. Rather, out of all the places that I
absolutely love to shop at, walk endlessly up and down aisles in, price
compare, and truly stay hours on end and end up leaving with a cart full of
goodies is the grocery store. Oh, yes,
there is nothing that makes me happier than to go food shopping. All the beautiful boxes so well packaged for
advertising, cans stacked up, colorful array of fruit and veggies to greet me, and
the smooth and gentle roll of the wheels of the cart as I slide and maneuver my
cart in and out. I suppose that my love for
grocery shopping shouldn’t be a surprise coming from a foodie such as I. However, lately, my utmost love and joy of
shopping at food stores has been replaced with a kind of trepidation and
uncertainty during these times. It does
not help that many of my family members, closest friends, and even neighbors
are reminding me that I am immunosuppressed and should NOT even be going out to
this dangerous outside world. But, who
is going to buy and deliver groceries for me? Oh, yes, perhaps Peapod, but I have
stubbornly refused this option because I feel like it would be caving in to a
growing fear of food shopping when it has always been my love? Who is going to feed me, myself, and I with
living solo? Only me, I must say. So, at the insistence of Papa Wu to make sure
that I have enough food to feed solo me, I went to the supermarket to get in
and out of basic items and necessities. I tell you that you NEVER really realize the
difference between NEED and WANT until you are thrusted in uncertain times. I can also tell you what you already know
with all the starkingly empty aisles, the need to ration now, the conundrum to
try to figure out what to buy and when and how much, the tension that just
permeates the food markets now, and the hand sanitizer that now greets me as
the first point item rather than a human being, but, instead, I will tell you
my latest food shopping story about the girl at the cashier. After taking pictures of the empty aisles in
shock and awe to dear friends and family and trying to figure how much to buy
for solo me, but then also having my parents and sister in the back of my mind
in case they run out of necessities and then maybe any other peeps that may
need something extra, I headed out to check out all my food items. As expected, there was a line. And, yes, not going to lie that the line was
longer than previous times I had shopped AND the line was continuing to grow
because the number of items for each customer had grown exponentially. Me? I
had nowhere to go, but I had to confess that I wanted more so to leave than to
stay for the first time ever in a grocery store. There was no choice but to wait. When it finally got to me, I looked at this
girl at the cashier who had to be in her 20’s.
She had chin-length light brown hair and, I believe, brown eyes, but
they were hard to see with her bright red-framed plastic glasses. Her eyes were closed and she was muttering to
herself. At first, I thought she was maybe
praying. She opened her eyes slowly. “Are you ok?” I asked her. She gave me a lopsided, tired smile and said, “I’m
just tired. It’s been a long day.” I paused and replied, “Yes, it has been.” “I was just telling myself it’s a job. It’s just a job, right?” she asked me rhetorically,
giving me another one of her tired half-smiles.
I looked behind me at a line of irritated,
blank-faced, and sleepy customers.
We were all so tired. We were all so exhausted. Then, it struck
me how severely exhausted this cashier, all the grocery staffers, cleaning
people, garbage collectors, and so many other people were AND, perhaps, how
underappreciated they were. These were
all people who had stayed later hours with maybe not the best of pay. Had anyone ever said ‘thank you’ to them to
make them feel like it was more than ‘just a job’? Had they ever felt appreciated? This made me sad. When I had paid and was about to leave, I looked
at the girl at the cashier and said, “I hope your shift ends soon. Thank you very much for everything.” I’ve always been told that I say “THANK YOU”
too much, but, perhaps, I need to amp it up now. I’ve been trying to do that more "Thank Yous" now to the
unlikely and underappreciated. I said
it the other day to the cleaning lady in the locker room of my gym who was mopping the floor. I said it to the hunched over guy at another
place I was at who was wiping everything down with Clorox wipes. “Thank You” is the greatest and smallest way
to express gratitude to someone else that can mean the most and lift someone on
their hardest of days. So, “thank you”
for and to the girl at the cashier for reminding me this AND that no job is too little
or less than anyone else’s, for we all play a part and have an impact that can
be in the best of ways or the worst of ways from what we do or do not do in our daily lives of work.
If we can do it in the best of ways, then it does not get any better
than that. The most unlikely, unseen, and
underappreciated may just be the ones who are the hidden heroes that do the
most and maybe even deserve the most recognition. Have you ever felt underappreciated? Or, maybe, was in a thankless position that
you did not want to do, but that you had to do to survive? When have you paused to maybe show appreciation
and kindness for the least likely that are, maybe, likely to do the very most
in their own small and seemingly menial ways that are actually the most heroic? Keep smilin’ until we meet again, Mary ;-) |
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