The day before Thanksgiving, there was this (older) (well-dressed) (slightly churchy) (black) man who came in by himself and sat in the window of the (Thai) restaurant, and he seemed to be on the phone a lot, and then at one point a(n older) (black) guy in sunglasses and a light grey winter coat saw him as he was walking by and popped in and came up to him, and only when the customer pulled out his wallet to give him a dollar, did I realize that the passerby was just some random (homeless) person, and not someone who knew him from earlier somewhere and had saw him somewhere randomly.
And, as the passerby went to go out, he stopped by the front register and was lingering there, so I kind of walked halfway up the restaurant from the back, to keep my eye on what he was doing.
And, he saw me and shouted something about how he was "a United States veteran" and he served in the "U.S. Marine Corps with Senator John Kerry," and I said something deferential to defuse the situation, and he shouted a few more things, and then he stormed out.
Later, it turned out that the customer up front had lost his wife this past year and it was his first Thankgiving without her, and he was going to his mother's with the kids this year.
He also asked what music we were playing since "it's not what you'd typically hear at a Thai restaurant," and it turned out to be contemporary R&B, since Spotify or Pandora or whatever had played this nice song by a (young) (black) artist that my one (Thai) (newlywed) coworker had liked and she'd hit the "play more of stuff like that" button, and it had.
"You never know where people are coming from when you talk to them," the man said thankfully, as he left.
No comments:
Post a Comment