Not so recently, I had three close-but-non-interactions, with others, all to their detriment. On the first occasion, I was making my usual weekly trek home from grocery shopping. On these routine runs, required for the weekend’s food production for the following week, I am heavily-laden with all sorts of meat and produce, etc., evenly weighted in my two heavy-duty recycling bags; one in each hand.
On this particular “farmers walk”, I approached someone walking towards me, someone plugged into his headphones, completely oblivious to all but what was on the horizon directly in front of him. I was heartened that, despite his looking like Mary’s Rubik’s cube-solving brother Warren sporting his ear muffs, at least he wasn’t captivated by a device screen, ensuring he wasn’t going to walk right into me.
Aside from the visual, which made him look, well, stupid, his unawareness that he had dropped his wallet, combined with his wearing them preventing him from being alerted to it by others, confirmed he was. I thought about running after him, but figured that the best way to truly help this person was to let him learn a valuable lesson naturally. This, either through identity theft, or simply through the unenviable challenge that he will be faced with in canceling and/or replacing his credit cards, driver’s license, health card, etc.
My decision to allow the consequences of his own actions to teach him a life lesson that he seemingly needed taught, was further validated when he stepped into the crosswalk without even bothering to check for traffic first, arrogantly assuming that those driving would be looking out for him and without any of their own senses compromised. Wow. Make that a life – or death – lesson!
Some weeks later, on a Costco run, I encountered another headphone-wearing individual, whose keys fell out of their coat pocket while retrieving their membership card en route to the customer service station. They landed with the distinctive sound of keys making contact with a polished concrete floor – but only heard by me. I found myself again trying to alert an oblivious individual of something to their benefit by calling to them – twice – with the second time louder than the first, to no avail. Sigh. It was actually pretty awesome, though, being privy to a natural “consequence of one’s own actions” lesson being well taught.
The last of the three related to an Uber Eats delivery driver, who had apparently ignored the Concierge on their way to the high-rise side of the condominium I live in, then followed me onto an elevator cab. He stood right in front of me rather than beside, inconsiderately giving me his back despite us being the only two occupants.This vantage point, though, allowed me to see that his delivery was for the floor that he was going to alright, but unbeknownst to him, the same-numbered floor his order was placed from, was on the other side of the complex, served by a completely different bank of elevators. Had he bothered to engage with the Concierge staff member, he would have been redirected accordingly, before joining me.
Being anti-social in how he stood, and since his headphones prevented him hearing me call attention to his error, I allowed his poor judgment to teach him an obligatory real (First) world lesson in remaining engaged with it and its inhabitants, even if this world was no larger than an elevator cab.
As if the minutes that were surely wasted in figuring out his delivery destination error weren’t enough of a price to pay, I learned the next day that it was compounded. Apparently, the e-bike he left outside was stolen as well. So, due to the extended time his initial gaffe caused him, or the fact that, in bypassing the Concierge, the staffer was not aware of the presence of it parked outside the window – which they could have been watching for him – or both, it is safe to say that his shift that night didn’t go well.
I cannot deny a certain level of schadenfreude I feel in witnessing each of the above examples of non-lethal “Darwin Awards”-type activity. Further though, I’m perplexed at the notion these people seem to have, that they are somehow above honing the common-sense and perspicacity one should really try to foster, especially if one is interested in “making more monie”, by remaining aware, and especially, alive.
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