March 13, 2001

• A question...What would you do?

  
  

  Scenario:  Office building lobby, no public washrooms, in front of the elevators.  A woman arrives with a young child, the child coughs and without warning throws up.  What do you do?  

  
  

  A laugh and look away?

  
  

  B Ignore the whole situation and get on the next elevator to arrive, even though it is going down to the aprking levels?

  
  

  C Give mother a disgusted look and glare at child to register disdain?

  
  

  D Offer to help, even if it is to offer a Kleenex to help clean child's hands?

  
  

  When this happened yesterday, to Maryssa and I, nobody chose D but in the crowded lobby, all 3 of the other options were chosen.  Nobody offered my a Kleenex to help me to clean up her hands, which she had tried to catch it with.  And the looks we got when we tried to get onto an elevator to get up to our floor, where there was a bathroom, were evil.  I was expecting someone to suggest that we should wait for our "own" elevator.

  
  

  The good part is that when we got up to our floor, she cleaned up well and was feeling much better the rest of the day, and I know what I will do the next time I see that happen near me.  Also, there was a janitor in the lobby, who I was able to inform and he got right on cleaning up the mess.  (And I got the guilty pleasure of seeing one woman, who was pretending this wasn't happening near her, despite flinching when Maryssa threw up, get her shoe heel coated in the stuff.)  The joys of dealing with other people in day to day living.  I think I would rather live in the deep woods instead.

  • 12:55 pm
  • 5 Comments