– George Bernard Shaw
Story 1: The angry customer
I was at a supermarket recently. It is one of my stops along my daily three kilometre (km) walk to the gym. My pre-workout consists of kanda and thereafter a custom breakfast at this supermarket with a sugarless black coffee that could make Freud’s abyss look pale in comparison.
One day last week they were understaffed; a number of their employees had not turned up to work, unannounced.
As a result, the usual menu and display lacked their conventional fare.
They explained this to me and it really wasn’t that big a deal, therefore I opted for something else.
While I was finishing off my meal the chef walked up to the table and asked how I was and conversed with me. He thanked me for being understanding about their staff issue and the limitations of the menu.
I told him it was not a big deal, and that it was fine.
The man clearly was very upset and confessed that not everyone is as understanding and told me of an episode that had transpired earlier that day.
An affluent gent who is known to them as a regular patron had stopped by and placed an order of something that was evidently not on display.
The serving girls had told him that they were understaffed and that they were unable – on just this day – to comply with his request and that they could get him something else.
He had blown a fuse and demanded to talk to the chef.
The gent (I use the word facetiously) had blasted the chef, along with the serving girls and the management on the grounds that as a paying regular patron, their staff issues are not his concern, and that they need to have their operation on point and he would not leave until they heeded to his demands and served him what he’d ordered.
When they had apologised again and said if they had any way of customising and sorting the order they would, the well-to-do gent had gone postal and made a huge scene in front of other customers, families, kids, and staff and left angrily and driven off in his fancy car.
The chef told me he’d been in the industry for over two-and-a-half decades and never had anyone talk to him or his staff that way, and that he was unable to comprehend how an educated, reputed businessman could go off on a tangent like that.
I pointed out that status, education, maintaining appearances, and affluence are all useless if a person is not wired with empathy, understanding, and basic human decency.
Story 2: Status or class?
One of the ladies in our company then told us how she rescued a kitten that was tied up in a garbage bag and tossed out of a speeding BMW onto the side of a road. She’d adopted the fellow and nursed him back to health.
Others had horror stories also, and sure, these are tough economic times for most.
Yet we couldn’t fathom for the life of us how an owner of a luxury vehicle, obviously concerned with class and status, insinuating at least through symbolic affiliation and connotation of being a well-informed and diligent citizen of the upper echelons of societal strata, could just tie up an animal in a sack and throw it out of a moving vehicle.
Imagine that this is someone – a man or woman – who is a respected manager or holding a position of leadership in a reputed conglomerate, feigning to conduct ethical business practises while projecting concern for his/her work force?
We surmised that class and status are two entirely different things and aren’t mutually exclusive.
Story 3: The ATM doctor
After the first wave of the pandemic and once the curfew was lifted, people scrambled to ATMs to withdraw or deposit money (even both) and the queues were longer than usual. I found myself in a queue of a leading local bank that snaked its way to the front terrace steps.
Tensions were high and people were afraid with no one wanting to spend more time than required but everyone practising some patience.
It was obvious they belonged to two different social groups.
The lady whose vehicle was blocked lost her marbles and kept bellowing at her while she hurried, already embarrassed in the face of this drama. What we heard from the car park was horrendous.
We heard the affluent one blast the other one saying – and this is verbatim: “Do you know who I am? Do you know what I do for a living? I am a DOCTOR. A DOCTOR! What do you do? What?”. And then scoffing and sniggering followed by: “I don’t have time to waste with people like you!”
She raced off. The other lady came back to the queue horrified.
One person in the line mused in Sinhala: “It’s better to die than go get treated by a doctor like that.”
The death of common decency
A gentleman:
- a chivalrous, courteous, or honourable man
- a polite or formal way of referring to a man
A lady:
- a polite or formal way of referring to a woman.
- a woman of good social position.
(Google, 2022).
What in seven hells happened to human decency?
The species that prides itself in being the most sophisticated, civilised, and cultured creatures in this pale blue dot we call earth…
Whatever happened to virtue, value systems, and our overall sense of humanity?
Sure as a newborn baby’s skin, the whole of humanity for a brief blip in eternity’s wheel at least, tried to maintain a modicum of universal harmony and selflessness once the Covid-19 pandemic felled the legs of the world and brought it crashing to its knees.
But that changed pretty quickly, no?
Power hungry leaders basking in corruption in their ivory towers, billionaires shooting to out of space on privately-funded flights, multi-billion corporations exploiting the plight of those suffering during the pandemic and minting profit, nations growing more divided with their bilateral relations tattered, some back to frothing at the muzzle in warmongering finesse.
All of this while countries are crippled with Covid-19, economic recession galore, industries bent to the point of snapping, and cost of living having risen to unfathomable levels.
If you weren’t of this world, you’d quip the whole place has gone postal.
But then hasn’t the world through the ages always had moments of tranquillity and unlikely catharsis surpassed by man-made carnage time again in the name of God, government, gold, or gentrification?
Religion, politics, civilisation, exploratory conquests have always polarised us – culture, chivalry, class and reputation be damned.
But through it all, despite the unbridled chaos, there have always been a segregated few who have never compromised on their humanity, dignity, integrity and values, seeking to make sense of all that is senseless, clawing for method in all the madness, and finding order in all the disorder.
The last bastions of hope of every epoch, era, and age. The revolutions that push against the shove. The antithesis of alchemical cause and effect. The caustic duality of the human condition: to create and to destroy; to construct and to deconstruct.
What I am trying to say is that there has always been a semblance or modicum of human decency, civic correctness, and virtuous propensity that has steered our lot through thick, thin, trials, tribulations, travesty, and turbulence.
We need to remember that just because someone comes from a higher place of privilege, power, heritage, enterprise, qualification, legacy, status, distinction, or pedigree does not mean that they are any more in touch with their humanity than others.
Common courtesy – the ability to respect someone else or someone else’s views and ideologies even if it’s conflicting with your own; to have a tendency to lean towards kindness, compassion, and generosity; to be able to value things outside the material world; to be honourable and noble in the face of adversity and hardship; to be professional without needing to demoralise and demean someone else; to have stature of spirit, body, and mind; and to be humble are things we sometimes see in those we least expect it.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gave a parable that is reflective of this:
He said: Whitewashed tombs are beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of rot and bones and things unclean.
Next time, don’t be so quick to judge someone who is cut from a different cloth and comes from less privileged circumstances.
And don’t be so quick to put those with flashy jewellery, fancy cars, fat bank accounts, and chic demeanours up on pedestals. People can own luxurious and beautiful things – they can even look regal – but be uglier than most within.
Not all is what it seems.
And with regard to human decency – you’ll be surprised to find it where you least expect it.
(The writer is the frontman and lyricist of Stigmata, a creative consultant and brand strategist by profession, a self-published author and poet, thespian, animal rescuer, podcaster, and fitness enthusiast)
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The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.