Thoughts? This Man Aggressively Screamed at an Elderly Couple in a Portland, Maine, Store
I don't like to say names or drop business titles unless it's in a positive nature. I still won't say which grocery store I was in, even though it's less about the store and more about the behavior of this man. As a radio personality whose job it is to share her life, sharing this story doesn't really feel like work, rather, I'm truly just interested in your opinion on this.
As we've all been braving Maine's latest ice storm last weekend (which we're still navigating), I just don't feel like this type of behavior was warranted.
Most places in downtown Portland were packed on Sunday evening for obvious reasons, thanks to the ice storm the night before. Most people were unfortunately without power and needed a place to be that wasn't in the negatives. Others had to go grocery shopping again because a lot of their food went bad when the power went down. There are many other reasons people were packing local businesses, but no matter the reason, I just can't help but think this would be the one day we'd be a little more gentle with each other, even as strangers.
That wasn't the case for one man standing in line for pizza behind me and an elderly couple in front of me. I'll give you the short story, and then I'd love your opinion.
At this particular supermarket, there's a fantastic pizza hot bar where you can walk up and grab a slice of pizza without buying the whole pie (the best kind of hot bars). Now, due to the ice storm, an employee had announced that the pie he was going to put out will be the last one of the night, as they were out of fresh dough.
After hearing this news, the elderly couple in front of me continued to put each individual slice in separate containers until there was no more pizza left for anybody else waiting. The man behind me saw this, and he decided he'd call them every name in the book, including selfish, rude, and some words I can't write here.
Here's the thing about perspective. You've got to have it in order to keep your peace in this world. As I was the next in line who also was also cheated out of some pizza, I had to look at it as though I didn't know what was going on in this couple's lives that drove them to this behavior. I was also raised to respect your elders, and honestly, from my point of view, if they felt the need to cheat out a line of people for an entire pizza slice by slice, then there has to be some sort of deserving reason.
Look, I was also raised to understand that we don't know what it's' like to walk in other people's shoes, and until we do, we cannot judge the situation. Honestly, I was more upset with the man who instinctively yelled at these poor people before trying to understand where they might be coming from.
Thoughts?
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Gallery Credit: Chris Sedenka