It seemed like a normal Tuesday at the head office of the
athletic apparel company, DGS. Unbeknownst to most of the
employees, however, the company had just been bought out by one
of its competitors and was now being forced to accommodate a new
internal structure, requiring several major cutbacks. Along with
many others, Jess McDonald, employee of 4 years, would get let
go this day. Ever since Jess was a young teenager, she
had wanted to work for DGS. It was her favorite childhood
company. She calculated her entire high school, college,
and early career decisions according to this goal. And now
after four years at the company, she had finally started to establish
a little seniority and was beginning to move upwards.
Not enough to be one of the employees who was kept, but enough
for it to sting extra bad when she was fired.
On her last day, Jess left the office devastated by the
idea of needing to start over, with essentially no hope left for
working at her dream company. She walked several city blocks to
the bus she took home, which felt like the longest and most
shameful walk of her life. A few blocks from the bus stop, Jess
found herself caught behind a small group of people walking at
an infuriatingly slow speed. Jess, who thought she was already
walking slow enough, suddenly had to reduce her speed a
noticeable amount. “Are you kidding? How does an entire group of
people walk this slow?” Jess thought to herself. Within a few
steps, Jess became almost sure that the group was willfully
ignoring her presence behind them, with no regard for anyone
other than themselves. They were, as far as Jess was concerned,
entirely in her way, planted there to make her already horrible
day even worse. Finally, Jess impatiently squeezed her way
through the group, bumping shoulders with two of the individuals
in the row. As she did, she said, “Excuse me,” which
sounded much more like, “Get out of my way,” than excuse me. Then
she walked on past them.
Little did Jess know, one of the two people she bumped
shoulders with was a young man named David, who 6 months prior,
had been diagnosed with early onset amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis, also known as ALS, a terminal disease that destroys
the body’s muscles by affecting cells throughout the brain and
spinal cord. David’s family and friends were out for lunch and a
walk with him. He was still early enough in the progression of
the disease to appear healthy, but of course, David was walking
slowly because of this. His ability to walk was the first to
start to go and David was now forced to either take a wheelchair
or walk slowly and methodically. When Jess plowed through him
and the small row of his friends and family, David immediately
became sad and ashamed, reminded of the fact that he was dying
and becoming a nuisance to others around him. Then he thought
about how inconsiderate and selfish the woman was who bumped
into him and how the world appeared to be playing a cruel joke
on him, which quickly turned his sadness to anger.
Then, when David’s mom, Cathy, asked David if he was ok and
suggested that they go home, David snapped at her. He felt like
his mom babied and embarrassed him with no ability to understand
what he was going through. “I only have a few years left, mom.
Please stop ruining them.” David said to her in an impulse of
anger and weakness. Of course, this crushed David’s mom, but
because of David’s own suffering and his mom’s attempt to be
strong and not make the situation about her, David was not
properly aware of the magnitude of his mom’s suffering and how
horrible this affected her. Later that day, first chance she got, David’s
mom stopped by the liquor store. She had been there a
lot recently. While in line at the register, one of the four people
in front of her was an older man with a cart filled with what
looked to be at least 35 bottles of various wines and liquors, requiring
a huge, obnoxious amount of time for his transaction.
David’s mom, looked at the old man with complete and utter
disdain, thinking to herself, “Who buys this much alcohol
at once? I bet you’re an alcoholic stocking up for the month.” She
felt like the man was
placed specifically in her way to make her loath in the bright
lights of the liquor store, sober and miserable. Then when the
man asked if he got the proper discount on one of the 2 for one
bottles, causing the cashier to need to go back through the
transaction, David’s mom was sure he had no regard for her or
anyone else in line and she said in a deathly tone, “Oh my god,
are you serious?” Soft enough for her to think it might go
unheard, but loud enough for the man to hear it. The man looked
up and over to her, disgusted by her impatience. The man was in fact stocking up, but for the
wake of one his longtime best friends, who had passed
just a couple days prior. The man thought to himself how horribly
inconsiderate and nasty David’s mom must be to be so impatient
over a couple extra minutes. Then he remembered the woman who
cut him off on the way there, and then flipped him off when he beeped
at her. Then he thought about how he was the only one doing
any of the work to setup the funeral and prepare for the wake
of his friend. He wondered why everything was out to get him.
When the man finally left the line and began driving home,
on the way, he passed through a toll booth. One that for some
reason still had a human inside it. The toll was 1 dollar and 50
cents. The man pulled up to the window and in a state of
exhausted anger and inconsiderateness, nearly threw the money at
the collector without looking at him.
The collector had nothing particular going wrong in his
life at this moment. He was, however, just generally miserable.
He was dealt a bad hand at birth and now he spent his life in
dead-end jobs, working in horrible monotony, which by this
point, had turned him rather bitter and apathetic. Unpleasant
experiences like this one were standard and didn’t faze him at
all. In fact, he basically forgot about it as soon as the next
driver in line pulled up. The toll collector looked at the next driver
with dead-eyes and said, “One dollar, fifty.” The male
driver in the next car took a dollar from his wallet and scrambled
his car for 50 cents, having not originally realized that
the toll was more than a dollar. The toll collector visibly
rolled his eyes and audibly exhaled while the driver frantically
looked in the car compartments that would normally have change.
Then the collector said, “Yeah, maybe next time have it ready,
huh, shithead?” The driver looked up at the collector and thought,
“What’s wrong with you. I should beat the hell out of you
for talking to me like that.” The driver had just gotten in
a fight with his girlfriend and was fully ready to take it
out on someone. He imagined getting out of his car and punching
the collector in the face. Then he thought to himself, “Maybe
he’s having a bad day. Maybe something’s wrong or something
horrible has happened to him recently. Maybe he’s not normally
like this.” Then the
driver found 2 quarters in the bottom section of his car’s front
console and handed the money to the collector. “Have a good rest
of the day, man.” The driver said sincerely, nodding his head
with a slight smile before driving off. Of course, the driver was wrong. It was a
normal day for the collector, and nothing was going any worse
than any other day. Even though the driver was wrong, the
interaction costed him exactly one dollar and fifty cents. No
more, no less.