DE GUSTIBUS ET DE COLORIBUS NON DISPUTANDUM

Ok, Blog, I’m back more or less.
I should start like little girls do when they write in their diaries “Dear Blog, I am sorry for being away for so long and subsequently neglecting you."
But that brings up Anne Frank’s diary and whenever I remember her, my heart cringes the same way it did when I was 12 and read the diary for the first time.

Well, there were so many things happening lately worth letting out but my arm could not be subdued to do the work for such a long time without protesting violently. I think that we both improved a bit right now, me & my right shoulder plus my right arm and subsequently my wrist as connected appendages and intermediaries.

In the first place of importance to me was that case with the Sudanese boy which gave me nausea and headaches and even a nightmare or two.

It went like this - one day at work we heard sirens and commotion and we assumed that some accident happened down there in the street not far from our building.
I work at the 10th floor and I already had lunch by then, but other people in the office did not yet, so they went out and then came back with the news.
A kid was stabbed just across the street, right in the middle of the day, right in the middle of the city and apparently right in the middle of his heart.

Must be one of those “damned black boys” one of the many blond girls scorned. When she said “black” she said it like this people do here in this country, with hatred. “I saw a whole bunch of black schoolgirls crying in the street, he must be black - she went on”.
“They are a good for nothing lot” somebody else said. She was Italian. “Oh, they must be Sudanese” an English woman commented, “they are wild and nasty and they have no idea how to sort out their problems otherwise, the only way they know how-to is with a knife or a bludgeon. They shouldn‘t be here at all, the bastards” she went on. “They are very bad, lazy people. They don‘t want to work“. She was an expert always on Black Issues - she knew it all. Besides, why not - she’s the Work Relations Representative of our office…Isn’t that nice? It says it all.
A Polish woman went on the Internet to search for news. The incident happened just 30-45 minutes before, but it was already on the Internet - another Sudanese stabbed a Sudanese boy.
“Do not walk in the street today" - the blond warned us expertly. It’s dangerous. I’m calling my brothers to pick me up from work - she said. "I’m not gonna leave the building on my own“ she added.
They all went on and on and on about how these bloody emigrants ruin the country and the good manners and everything else. How they were building up gangs. How dangerous the gangs were. How they do not work. How they do not have skills. How they dress - where are the money coming from for those clothes!? Very trendy too…Etc etc etc.

Some Australian beauty suggested that they should all be returned instantly to their country of origin.
"What about that Tasmanian guy that killed 35 people at Port Arthur just for fun? " - I asked naively; "where should he be deported?"
She did not really enlighten me because the guy was not Sudanese and probably in her mind he had mitigating circumstances since he was blond and blue eyed like herself; therefore a superior being with reason and who did not sort out his problems with a knife or a bludgeon. As a superior blond being he used a machine gun, expensive and sophisticated and instead of reckoning some tribal conflict, he killed because he was bored with life and under-achievement - therefore he gained a place in one of the Guinness Book of Records I presume.
An important achievement after all, why should anyone want to deport such a star anywhere?

My shoulder was hurting, my arm too and their rambling made me mad and mad again. I kept quiet though and took no part in it because I know myself too well.
If I break into it I’ll trash this people. I’ll tell them off so well that they’ll hate me forever. I could have told them things nobody else ever told them in a way that they should have remembered for a log time. But now I just wanted all of it to die out. I was tired and I knew from before when racial slur crept in our office that I was the only one standing up to them.
How sad is that?!!
If I did so, they labeled me an idiot; after all I was the only one. That was good enough proof that the majority was right and I was wrong, no question about it. They never stopped for a minute trying to reflect on whatever it was that I said. They could not care less that I ridiculed their fears and ignorance or I tried a mild, almost friendly kind of reasoning with them.
There’s no reasoning with idiots and ignorants. I know that, but still I cannot give up yet. It’ll always be next time.

The racial slur went on for about 3 hours, every now and then. Then it turned into a cascade with no stopping and no dissimulation. The more they talked, the louder and more aggressive they became in their comments.
They just wanted them out, all those good-for-nothing blacks. At least, if the Indians were here in large numbers for example and very rude to everyone, most of them at least had jobs.
It was too much for me, far too much. For half a day I could not concentrate on my work - I was so mad and bottling it up until I almost exploded.
Now, being there alone at last after 5 pm I worked, but my mind was only dissecting their words and attitudes one by one.
What was scary was how they were united in their hatred. They were of different origins but all born here, except for the English woman; and she was the worst of them all.

I was the only one apparently feeling sorry that a 14-year child was killed by another 14 year old. I could feel the parent’s pain; pain has no color. Motherhood has no race. Children are just children - there's a reason why they cannot tell right from wrong. That is why we won't allow them to work, drive and vote too early.
I was a mother myself after all.
What if something like that had happened to may own son when he was that age? The fact that it did not happen did not make me impenetrable to the understanding of pain a mother feels when she loses a child.
I knew that according to clan and tribe tradition when the tradition is a duty of honor, there might be reprisals in the future.
I thought of how hard must be for the Sudanese in a society like this one, populated with my co-workers, where the norm was hatred against them. In a society of ignoramuses where no one was concerned or knowledgeable about their history or culture or conflicts; where nobody cared or knew where the Sudanese were coming from or what happened to them there.
Nobody really cared what happened to them here.
Everybody was just happy that political correctness was in place and pretended to put the national policies at the same level with the rest of the world when in fact we were living in one of the most racist and covertly discriminating society. It wasn’t any better than their parents’ society of the Fifties and Sixties.
They were nothing else but a bunch of rednecks with computers. Technology was the only difference between their world and that of their ignorant parents.
Nothing in their behavior and manner reminded me of the fact that we were in the 21 Century.


That night the news broadcasters took care of the incident with comments, interviews and traffic videotapes, making a big fuss.
An enormous fuss.
I knew how out of proportion it was because I remember instances when kids killed other kids in incidents that were hardly at the beginning of the news bulletins on every channel.
Those kids were not African though…

So, there it was: a kid of 14 who died. There was not much compassion in the Media. The word that appeared most frequently was "Sudanese". Not child or crime or murder or stabbing or incident or something like that. But rather "Sudanese Community, Sudanese Mother, Sudanese Gangs, Sudanese Minority, Sudanese...."
His photo showed us a child with a bit of acne, like any other that age eventually. He was a good student they said and an excellent soccer player.
He won prizes.
He was wearing his school uniform when he died because he was just coming from school, from where his mother actually picked him up. She was with him when the others started the chase. She ran after them managing to catch up in time to see her baby stabbed to death by 3 boys. She was a tall, strong built woman. She was wearing a long, narrow dress and that probably slowed her down in catching up with the young.
The Police arrived instantly because they probably noticed the chase on the traffic cameras. They used mace on the attackers but two managed to escape. One was in hospital, badly hurt - I never understood by whom.

The second incident that day - a police car being forgotten parked on a hill without a parking brake on by a patrol team and subsequently entering a house through the wall of the kitchen, almost killing a single mum, passed unnoticed by everyone.
Maybe that was actually the reason for the fuss around this stabbing.
But by the tone of the voices of the passers-by interviewed, maybe not.

The next day at work, the news was all the rage. People were passing the newspapers form each other - they knew “everything”.
The rambling and trashing started early.
The blond went on asking me, of all people, if my daughter arrived safe home the previous night, because “two killers were still at large”. The age of the "two killers" added together was hardly 25.
“The blacks from Africa are not wanted in our city“ said the Australian beauty of the previous day.
The English woman was explaining to everyone who had time to listen how bad, how dirty and how dangerous “blacks” were in general. How they know nothing, praise nothing and just live on welfare everywhere in the world.

The Italian woman received a phone call later that day.
One of her daughters was the same age the dead boy was. She was crying and her sister could not comfort her, so she called their mother at work to ask for advice.
An Asian kid at school knew the dead kid from the time they were learning English at a special school for the newly arrived.
The Italian Mother started scolding her daughter on the phone: “Don’t be silly! You have no reason to cry for him. OK, OK, he was a good kid - so what? That’s what you think. Good kids do not hung around with the wrong crowd. He did. He’s dead. If he really was a good kid he would be alive, not dead.”
I don’t know what the girl said and the Mother went again ”You start to annoy me. What is it to you? So what if he was a friend with him? He’s Chinese, it’s his parent’s business not ours. He’s not even Italian. What do I care what the Chinese do? I cannot understand what are you crying for, stupid girl? He was not your relative…” The girl was not buying it, so in the end the mother cut the conversation short by hanging up on her.

By the time I could not hold it any more and had an outburst, half of them went home already and only two were left.
I trashed those two pretty good. One was the Italian, the other one Australian and the third, of German descent. I told them about Sudan, what was going on there, how these refugees are traumatized. I spoke about factions, religious war, warlords, drought, poverty, clans, tribes etc.
I said that if one of them could point Sudan on the map for me and tell me the name of the capital of that country, I will almost forgive them.
I added that if they can name to me the currency of that country and two main religious denominations, I will almost forget how racist they were.
Of course they knew nothing of any of these but they did not care anyway.
So, in order to cut the crap and shut them up, I told them that we were public officers working in a government department and this type of vilifying was against the law. That it was likely someone could lodge a complaint and then they’ll all going to be in trouble.
I had to blackmail them with that just to shut them up.
They looked at me with hatred and contempt. Like I gave a s%#*!

Finally they went home and I stayed late and worked, despite my shoulder pain.
I had to catch up for 2 days of disruption.

About SmallTalk in 3000 Words

http://www.flickr.com/photos/roamin/19381750/

I don’t think I react well to disappointments. When it comes to people, that is.
I give everyone a chance from the start, usually. Any person can be nice until it turns out not to be. Sometimes it happens.

I work with this older lady that everybody seem to like at the office. That is rather unusual because they are not a loving bunch entirely, the same way they are not all lovable. Some don’t want to be, some cannot and others do not know how. Amongst these last ones, some do not know because they haven’t been taught/shown that while others have learned how, but they cannot be bothered to make the effort.

Anyway, this lady (let’s call her Rhonda for the sake of discretion) seems to be generally accepted and loved. I liked her too.
Still, the other day I felt something that other people might not feel like I do. I questioned her niceness, but kept that to myself. I never shared that impression with anyone at work and never will.

The lady in question is the type that smiles to everyone and nods and approves of you when passing by. She seems to be equally friendly to all. She also apologizes a lot for the most insignificant things,like she wants to show you that if she did something wrong she’s aware of it. That, I think, might be the secret of her popularity.
She also seems to listen intently to everyone when they talk to her. Unless, of course, she interrupts. Then she starts talking very fast for about a minute, pointing out that she understood it all. Then, she sort of wakes up from that little "trance" of fast-fast-talking and apologizes 4-5 times in a row for interrupting you. It’s hard to describe it, but this is how she is.

My ‘disappointment’ was when I discovered something that other people did not seem to notice about her.
Once that happened, instead of feeling disappointed by her, I felt disappointed in myself, because I was such a bad person. I behaved badly towards a nice co-worker, right? How could I be disappointed in someone when everybody likes that person? How could I go against the general consent/opinion/approval/trend?And this is what makes me say that I do not react well to disappointment. The guilt. My bloody conscience. I must be bad somewhere at the core. And so on.

Rhonda spends much time on the phone. It’s the nature of her job. Whenever you have to ask her a question or interact with her – work-related – she is busy, very-very busy. She is on the phone with a customer and she really goes apparently out of her way to help them. This is the general consensus in the office. Up till here, it is fine by me.

Being a customer myself everywhere in this world, whenever I have a problem to sort out, or a public service to go to, or simply organize a trip or buy a fridge or god-knows-what-else, I believe that I have a good understanding of what a customer wants. I know their needs and how they should be dealt with.
I think I’m a professional customer by birth.
When I call somewhere and they put me on hold and keep me on for a very long time I, the customer, become angry with “them”. But if, let’s say somebody – a human and not a machine – tells me to hang on a minute, because they have someone else on the other line, or somebody showed up at the counter, I understand.
Why should I not? I'm not the only one in this world and I’m quite sure that other people have things to sort out just like me. Chances are that someone called 1 minute before me. Understandable. Not 100% pleasant, but understandable.

Maybe this is why after a while, having a couple of experiences with Rhonda, I started doubting her just a tad.
Sometimes I must talk with her, not necessarily to socialize, but to resolve work related problems. After few months working here,I begun to grow tired of standing for 5 minutes around Rhonda's desk, waiting for her to notice me discreetly. It goes like this: she looks at me and she continues to talk on the phone like I wasn’t there. At the beginning I thought that in between two calls, she’d have a second for me too. But, the sooner she finishes with a customer, she is taking another call or she shuffles some papers on her desk or takes some notes or checks the fax-machine. Until eventually the phone rings again.
If I try to get her attention during that shuffling and notes taking, she just lifts her arm, showing me the palm of her hand, a well-known sign of “be quiet”.
She never says to a caller 'Excuse me one single moment please, I have a co-worker here with a work related problem, won’t take more than a second.' She could, and I'm quite sure, most people would understand the same way I understand when I am a customer myself.

After a while, I started to believe that this was a bit of a habit: look at me, I am the most customer-service oriented person; I am dedicated; I am zealous; I am brave; I am perfect; I am busy; I am here for them; I work hard; I dunno-what-this-office-would-do-without-me. kind of thing.

I have work to do too. I work hard as well. I have things to finish too, and although I do not have to spend time on the phone as much as she does, I still feel compelled to finish my share daily. Waiting and waiting for somebody else to get off the phone just for 5 seconds, so I can go on with my job, would be greatly appreciated.

Having to deal with Rhonda, became for me after a while, a very unpleasant task – like having to call my telephone company or my Internet provider and then having to wait for thirty minutes, listening to music that I would not listen to, otherwise.

I tried all sorts of methods. I tried phoning her first – but that did not work because her extension was always busy. When it wasn’t, she told me she had another call coming right then.
I wrote her e-mails – but that was not practical, because the amount of time wasted on explaining what I needed from her, took almost as long as waiting behind her chair for my presence to be noticed.
In the end I decided to leave on her computer monitor post-it while she was on the phone or shuffling things. The same way I do with other people when they are not at their desks and I want to contact them on their return.
The only downside of it is that the answer or document or information or whatever I needed from her, comes back to me half day too late, at least.

I did not say anything to anyone because people would have hated me for that. Or they would probably have misunderstood the whole thing.
I put up with it the same way you put up with public transport going bad – you hate what it's happening, but is nothing you can do.

Everybody likes her. Fine by me.
I suspect they all love Rhonda because she hardly has to interact with anyone directly. She works only part-time. Her workplace is isolated from ours and out-of-the-way so to speak.
To compensate for that, she feeds us: she bakes an incredibly sweet loaf of a kind or another every now and then.
Then every now and then, she brings some stuff like crackers or other sorts of nibbles and leaves them in a bowl in the kitchen with a note: ‘Help yourself, I bought too many and have no place where to keep them at home’ or something like that.
I fell for that several times when I was new in this job. After a while I discovered that the stuff she brings in it’s always very stale. It was either expired when she bought it on some sale, or she kept it in the pantry for a year. Whatever the reason, it’s never fresh or less hard than granite.

Anyway, everybody seems to appreciate ‘the gesture’ enormously. Fine by me. I’m happy to appreciate it too, just by looking at the nibbles, and when my turn comes to tidy a bit the kitchen based on the roster, I’m rather happy to throw those things in the bin. The cleaning lady does not know what to do with them. She must be as surprised as I was if she tasted them. But I don’t think she ever gathered enough courage or initiative to discard them. She might be a Nesblandian too ( aren't all the cleaning ladies Nesblandian everywhere?) and might think we are some strange officers with exotic/strange tastes.

Sometimes I meet Rhonda in the bus, going to or coming from work.
Sometimes if there’s room, we sit next to each other and do the small talk. Some other times, there’s no room at all.
There were few occasions when I was under the impression that she pretended not to notice me, although there was a seat next to her or next to me, we did not sit together. Which by the way, for me was not too bad – I always carry something to read in the bus and I prefer to do that at any rate; the ‘small talk' never does much for me. I'm not coming from a ‘small talk’ culture. Where I come from, we discuss politics, religion and other ‘taboos’ quite passionately, and nobody really knows what small talk means. I think we gave up on conversational taboos about 1000 years ago. Nesblandians, as everybody knows, are quite uncivilized, right?

When we did the small talk, Rhonda and I, we went with the usual:
‘How was your weekend?’ ‘Fine, how was yours?’ ‘Good. I did-this-and-that-or-the-other. It was great’.
Another popular topic was ‘ How is your family?’ ‘Good, thank you for asking. How is yours?’ ‘Excellent.’

Now don’t take me wrong.
I know the rules. When she asked me for example how my mother was, I told her she was great. Even if I spent the weekend at the emergency room in some hospital because let’s say, my mom broke a thumb. I still said she was great. I think if my mother would have died suddenly, I might have still told Rhonda that I had a ‘great week-end’ because she was a Local Inhabitant by Birthright ( I could call them Libs, for short ) and the importance of her personal disposition was more relevant to the fate of the World than my eventual ‘lack of positive thinking’ would ever be.

I know the rules so well that I hardly go into trivial details telling when something really happens, how it happened. Most of the Natives ( or Libs ) here do not want to know such things. That’s why they invented small talk. Light informal conversation for social occasions, the dictionary says, light meaning in fact meaningless/boring/with no substance/irrelevant/insincere/time wasting/hypocritical exchange of words and not ideas.

The purpose of small talk is not to coerce people (God forbid!) to show concern or compassion for a problem, or a person, or a country, or even a continent they don’t want really to know about, because it's your problem and not theirs.
The
Non-Nesblandians ( or Libs) are very proud of the fact that civilization and history brought them to a level high enough to master the intricacy of small-talk to the most refined level – the driest of all times.
Since the problem is yours and they are not getting any material advantage from it, that might ruin their day, shadow their mood, or simply force them to pretend to have compassion. That would be an effort involving perhaps some acting, and nobody wants to go into showbiz for free.
People that live outside Nesblandia hate such things.
To fill in the hole that the small talk embeds in their beings, no wonder so many need yoga classes or the Zodiac to put them in touch again with some spirituality, light, balance and compassion. For the sake of The Planet and the Universe-Outthere.

In Nesblandia for example telling a story would be fine – even a very personal one. They would really want to know and even advise you on what to do. There would be follow-ups over a coffee or even a meal. And that would not involve just the situations where some girl-friends-have-some-man-troubles, no.
But we do not live in Nesblandia here, so we should play by the rules of the place.

Time came for me to go in holiday one day. I had so many things to do, I was so stressed with preparation and travel agents and fluff like that. I must have looked very tired, even to the strangers that did not know me from Adam and Eve.
Finding myself in the bus after work, my Rhonda having an empty seat next to her, and finding herself in a mood good enough to notice me, I was invited to sit next to her. We did our small dosage of chitchat as usual.
Me, knowing the rules, I hardly break them. When I do, it's due only to lack of enough selfcontrol, (like right now, right here on this very blog ) and for her part, Rhonda belonging to the culture that invented the rules, never breaks them.
That day I broke some because I was so stressed out, my mind was all over the place, so I told her about my holiday preparations. Amongst other things, I told her that I had to double my expenses and errands because I had to take my mother with us to Europe, and I had to sort out things for her as well. That, was adding to the cost and the amount of travel arrangements to be made.
Rhonda seemed sympathetic and very understanding. I was almost happy that I broke the rules this time. It felt sort of good and nice to share my concerns with another human being.

Anyways, two days later, in the bus again, we were siting together on our way to work. This time she sat next to me because there were no other free seats around.
A thing lead to another in our regular chitchat, and she asked if all the arrangements were made for our trip. Then suddenly she offered to visit my mother in my absence.
Because – she said – she understood how worried I must be thinking of leaving her by herself for a whole month, while holidaying. She could go to my mother’s home and check on her twice a week if I agreed to.

I was flabbergasted. But then I recollected myself instantly and looked at the bright side of the picture: how nice of her to offer such a thing! No wonder everybody liked her at work, she was so nice.
She is quite a bit older than I am, so she must have forgotten – understandably - that I told her we were taking my mother with us. (Although somewhere in my sarcastic little mind I thought that she was too young still to forget like that, from a day to the next – but then I brushed aside that nasty thought).

She doesn’t know my mother, she must assume that she is a wreck, a totally senile creature that also does not speak English very well like all Nesblandians must be in their old age. She wanted to help.
I must have been a bitch – I thought – to ever suspect that her niceness was a façade, a phony thing, some well disguised ‘I-don’t-really-care but-I-know-how-to-pretend-that-I-do’ kinda thing.
I was very angry with myself for being such a terrible, terrible person. For thinking such terrible, terrible things about some people, instead of going with the flow and appreciate them to their right value. Like the rest of the crowd did.

So, I thanked her effusively and explained once again that we were taking my mother with us. for the very reason that she was old enough (although alert and perfectly sane) to worry us, if we left her behind for one month.

Another couple of days passed, and then one other morning in the bus we had another chat. I suspected that finally, Rhonda was trying to take some interest in me after all. The people at work must have been right all along – she was nice and selfless. I, on the other hand, must be a judgemental bitch who cannot tell a genuine person from a phony.

She is a widow, and she likes to mention that, very often. In every conversation. Even those about nothing. Like for example when she asks about my weekend she always adds that hers are not that good as they used to be when her husband was alive, although they are still fabulous weekends she adds. Because she has children and in laws. She doesn’t go into details much, andI did not try to invade her privacy with too many questions that she might find too nosy. The rules would not allow me to.

That morning I was in for a new surprise when she brushed by about her dearly departed husband again. While I showed my understanding somehow, mentioning knowledge about that sort of thing because my father is dead as well, she asked me how long ago my mother died.
I refreshed her memory with the mention that my mother was packing her suitcases for Europe right then. Dear Rhonda apologized profusely and continuously for about 3 full minutes, talking very fast and concerned, as she does.
After which we went to the more neutral season-and-weather-analysis and pretended both that nothing happened. We were very good at that too.

One of these days in the kitchen at work, during the lunch-break I was busy making a sandwich when Rhonda came in. She started the routine with the weather because there were another two persons as busy as I, fussing around the grill and the microwave and we had to talk about something in order to show that we are civil people.
God knows what I did in my hurry to quench my hunger, but opening a drawer to get a knife, I broke a nail. That is a "neutral" subject and gross as it is, it’s better to mention it within the chitchat frame even at lunch time in a kitchen (!) than other things. Like let’s say the fact that the Catholic Church was again in the news due to some paedophilia cases; or the fact that some illegal immigrants were arrested in a boat by the coast-guard; or the last flood in China, or whatever other more dangerous subjects there might be.

It slipped, as simple as that: 'Damn, I broke a nail!' I said, contributing to the degradation of silence in between two breaths, and the monotony of sunset-overcast-sunshine-clouds-cold-warm-rain litany.

Needless to say that our Rhonda interrupted her weather analysis with a warm, appreciative, deeply heart-felt:
‘That’s nice, dear!? Excellent.”

Why I like Humans but not People

I am probably a bad person.
Or maybe not bad, but perceived as such.
Or maybe just too boring to others and not so aware of it as I should?
Or my face looks mean to some.
Or perhaps because I tend to spot easily hypocrisy and other things as such, instead of keeping it entirely to myself I share some of my opinions at times. Well, it doesn’t seem that I make a good impression at first. The hell knows what I do! I must be doing something wrong.
I asked some closer friends about it in the past and they did not illuminate me. I could not clear it up, although I tried.
So, whenever I meet somebody new, I try to change the approach a bit. I’m thinking that in that way maybe this time I will make a good impression from the start. It doesn’t really happen much, no matter what new conduct or behavior I adopt every time.

What puzzled me besides that is how nobody ever forgets me.
I might make that bad impression and I might need to have to use lots of words to correct whatever I suspected goes wrong – even if I don’t have a clue, but after a while people rather like me. The more we interact, the more they feel comfortable with me. After a while even too comfortable. Especially the very young ones. And then a rather unpleasant familiarity and a very cocky attitude replace the previously rather unfriendly or resentful one.
Then, let’s say I move on and we don’t see each other for a while (that can be 3 months or 10 years) and when we meet again, they behave so enthusiastically that it seems we were the best of friends. Although we weren’t, at all.

That has always puzzled me a lot, especially when it comes from someone whose names I cannot even remember any more, because our acquaintance or interaction was brief.

I am basically rather a sad person that likes to laugh a lot.
I love to laugh, it’s one of my favorite things in life; but I’m sad very often despite of that.
People upset me a lot.
I see things every day and they have an impact on me every time.
I see bad things happening and they ruin my day so to speak.
I think that sadness might be very often all over my face and that turns off some people. I don’t know for sure, I look in the mirror at myself only when I make up my face in the morning a little bit. The rest of the day I even put lipstick on occasionally, without the help of the mirror – the privilege of years of practice.

Here is an example of what makes me sad and adds eventually one more line on my face in long term.
One day I was in a junk food outlet.
I hate those places in general – they are rather filthy, greasy and bad smelling. At times, some very crowded ones are noisier than a sports arena. I never understood why everyone feels compelled to speak so loudly in these places to the point that everybody actually yells in the end.
I detest all those trays left behind, full of cold, hard, greasy french fries, shriveled and dark looking, scattered around; and the half full glasses of miserable watery drink they call pompously coca-cola; the half bitten into burgers, laying around throughout the whole joint.
It irritates me when nobody is bothering to collect them or clean the tables.
I hate the spilled drinks on the floor that make the sole of my shoes sticky like glue; I hate the cloth with which they come sometimes to wipe the top of your table clean – unhygienic-bad-smelling-dark-grey-dirty-pieces-of-rag that leave a scent of sewage behind.
However, sometimes I have to go in there (alas!) and buy quickly something fast and cheap because I am broke and in a hurry and I have let’s say 10 minutes only to gobble something and go back to work or whatever the emergency is. It happens about 2-3 times a year, what can I do.

That day, I bought a Cesar salad and sat at a dirty table full of crumbs and circles left by the musty paper cups. At the opposite table was sitting this well-groomed yuppie, munching on a wrap and reading a newspaper.
A homeless man came inside and started searching with feverish eyes for some left overs. There were plenty, but in very small chunks. A half-eaten large burger and plenty of fries were abandoned on a dirty tray on the corner of the table where the yuppie was seated. He was blocking it from view with the paper he was so engulfed in. It wasn’t his; it was just there. The homeless man smiled at it and hastily walked straight to that table. The moment he was less than a step away, the yuppie’s face raised from his tabloid and said ‘Don’t you dare! Get out of here, don’t make me kick you in the balls, you hear me? Get!’ Then he went on reading.
The poor homeless man put his head down and turned around without a word. He went outside and sat down on the pavement. It shocked me, because I expected him to argue at least a bit. He didn’t.
I could see his back pressed against the glass wall by the exit door. He had a tin mug by his side, on the pavement. He was begging, I assumed and that was for coins.
When I finished the salad, I dag in my wallet for all the change I could find. It wasn’t much, but enough for a burger I assumed. Once outside, I stopped in front of him only to see that his tin mug was half full with coffee. His chin, covered by a wild red beard streaked with white hair was resting on his chest. He seemed crushed. The beard was wet with tears. He was sobbing like a baby.
My heart sunk the same way it does when I see children crying. Not brats that howl because mom is dragging them from the store without the toy they wanted – the other type of unhappy children. Those that cry when slapped across the face hard or those that tell me they lost a coin or those that cry because a stronger child just beat them up. Those that were really wronged.

I showed him the money without a word. He thanked me in a whisper and dragged the pocket of his battered jacket open so I could slip the coins in. He did not stop crying even after I left.
That made me sad for more than one day.
It still makes me sad now.
It actually makes me mad. It brings up in me violent feelings and all the regret that I did not say anything to that horrible yuppie with his styled spiky hair, white shirt and silk tie.
The bastard.