Today, there was one particular caller that struck my heart strings today. I picked up a call and on the other end was an old foreign lady who couldn’t really speak English too well and from what I understood she was just asking for clarification about her benefits.
So I go through the usual questions and I get down to the investigating. I ask if I could place her on hold so I can do some further investigation, to which she replied yes.
So this whole time I’m looking at whats causing a drop in her benefits and I see the issue.
Anyway I switch over and begin to tell her whats going on, that her benefits have not decreased that an erroneous letter seems to have been printed letting her know he benefits decreased.
She begins to ask question after question, to which I politely answer and at the end, she begins to thank me profusely for being so patient and kind to her because whenever she calls us, she is made to feel like she doesn’t know anything just because she doesn’t speak English well and asks a lot of questions. And she is literally just thanking me back and forth, stating I am a good person and thank you for being patient with her. I of course accept the thanks graciously and wish her a good rest of her day.
What really got to me, or some parts of the conversation that got to me, was that she told me that when she calls, she is made to feel like shes dumb or difficult just because she doesn’t speak English real well. She had explained to me that she understands, just to please speak slower and everything will be fine. Throughout the conversation I am just treating her with respect and being patient because I understand what its like to have a million questions and have the other person get impatient with me (most of it stemming from my parents when I was a child, asking the same question because I didn’t understand the answer etc) and because I think, what if she could be my mom, or my aunt, or my girlfriends mom etc. Like, how would they feel if some stranger was ‘too busy’ to answer all their questions or gets ‘impatient’ just because they don’t understand English so well.
Another thing that got to me was, she kept saying I am a good and kind person. For a split second I said to myself ‘no I’m not’, and, maybe a part of that is true. I thought about, what is it about me that lead this stranger to say I am a good kind person. To me, I know that I was just doing my job and just being myself, who, in all honesty, just treats people the way I would want to be treated. But what amazes me is that something that should be the norm in society isn’t. Like, it should be the normal thing to be nice and to be patient and to understand; maybe to this woman she has been marginalized for a long time because she doesn’t speak English well.
I’m not going to lie, there are some days where I do judge books by their cover and I brace myself for a difficult call or a couple minutes of me repeating myself. But when I actually do get into the ‘meat’ of the call, I instantly realize that it was wrong of me to judge that book by its cover and the call turns out to be the nicest call I could have taken that day.
I’d like to think I am a good person, but I don’t know, for the split second when that stranger told me I am a good and kind person, because of how I was treating her, just got to me; for that split second I thought that no, I’m not a good person I am just doing my job. But after that split second of negativity, I felt this sense of overwhelming warmth and joy that a stranger could actually tell that I am a genuine person over the phone and to already make an educated guess as to what kind of person I am.
I hope that I am helping make these strangers lives a little brighter by showing a little more compassion, kindness and understanding when maybe they get the opposite on a daily basis. That maybe, for that one brief 20min phone call, they were made to feel like they mattered, because isn’t that what most of us want in life? To feel wanted? To feel like we matter to someone?
Wherever this lady is, I hope that she and everyone else that I have been able to touch receives blessings upon blessings; not everyone out there is mean and unkind.
BOY MEETS LIFE 