Last Sunday I went to Geylang Serai and had breakfast there with my parents. As usual, the food court at the market was crowded with most of the seats were taken. I looked out for any vacant seats and we were lucky enough to find one. My parents and I took the seats and I waited until my parents had ordered their food. As I wanted to walk towards a drink stall, I saw a particular old woman, who was the cleaner at the food court. She was not thin neither was she fat. She walked slowly holding on to the trolley she pushed. Looking at the way she walked, I could tell that she is not physically strong. Her face wears a sad expression that somehow sent me a message that she has to work because she has no choice.
I was ordering my drinks when she walked in front of me to a stall that sells chicken rice. Apparently, the cleaners there have to collect all the dirty dishes and return the dirty dishes to the rightful stall owners accordingly. So there she was carrying a few empty dirty dishes belonged to the chicken rice stall on a tray. Upon reaching the stall, the owner who was standing in front of his stall said to her in a stern voice to put the plates into a plastic basin. The old woman was already struggling with the tray of dirty dishes and he without any sense of empathy spoke to her in a stern voice and almost yelled at her not to put the tray inside the basin. Imagine this Diary, he was standing right in front of the old woman, the woman was bowing to try to carry the dirty dishes from the tray to put them into the basin. She was struggling because I told you she was not physically strong. I looked at him hoping to have eye contact. I did not get that.
It was an ugly sight. I cannot imagine how someone can behave like. I have had food stalls too and I know how annoying cleaners can be. That is just one of the things stallholders have to tolerate if they want to be in the business. Nothing will ever be perfect for them. Regardless what we do, there will always be drawbacks in the industries. We have to face rude, demanding and difficult customers let alone cleaners who do jobs that merely do not meet up to our expectations. I wonder how he would feel if someone had talked like that to his mother. Perhaps he has forgotten that our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds.
I have always taught myself to think like that before I lose my temper to anyone else in public. I would ask myself to imagine people doing that to my family and picture how I would feel about it all and it will stop me from losing my cool. I suppose we all have to learn not to let ourselves be easily affected by little things. Shit happens and if we are going to care for every shit that happens in the world, I bet our lives will be shortened tremendously because we will spend all our live being frustrated, angry and disappointed leaving very little room and space for happiness and laughter. How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.
You know Diary; I used to be a very impatient driver. I would curse and swear to drivers who road hog and to drivers who annoys me but I do not anymore. I just realise that it is not worth doing that simply because at the end of the day, it is I who are going to be at the losing end. Thinking back, how I have wasted so much of my energy and time being angry with those drivers when I could simply ignore them and had great and happy days. It was silly and stupid of me. My mother is going to get her license soon and I hope she will be a good driver and other drivers would have been kind to her just like how I have been to other drivers. What goes around comes around; all that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.
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