A Note About Kindness

by Kevin Wood

Holiday shopping season has begun. Black Friday is fast approaching. Many this year will do their holiday shopping on line, but as long as stores are open, you may feel tempted to head out to do some good old fashioned in-person commerce.  This is your right, but I would love to share a story with you to remind you about how different this year really is.

My wife and I were out grocery shopping in Rockford this past weekend and stopped at a Starbucks for breakfast. The line in the drive thru was a mile long, so we decided to step inside hoping maybe it would be faster. While we waited for our order, we learned that there is a strict six-indoor-customers-at-a-time policy in place for social distancing purposes.  People would try to come in and a worker, I assume she was the manager on duty, would come from behind the counter to explain.

“I’m sorry,” she would say, “We can’t let you in until someone else leaves. We can only allow six customers inside at a time.” Most people were happy to conform, and this thankfully did not lead to any major confrontations.

But, what troubled me about this situation was that this woman, who pre-pandemic was a Starbucks employee/manager, was forced into a role more akin to security. When you fill out an application to work at Starbucks, or any restaurant really, you’re not expecting you may need to turn hungry or thirsty people away,  or ask them to wait outside.  This puts the employee in a very difficult spot.

There have been news reports of violence or threats of violence regarding COVID-19 restrictions and mask mandates. While this particular Starbucks employee was very professional and not at all rude about it, she was in very real danger of someone taking her request the wrong way. So, I felt for her. I have worked in food-service and customer service myself, and I have seen first-hand how an annoyed customer can behave — even when there’s not a pandemic going on. I can’t imagine having to bounce people, too.

The point of this anecdote was to remind you as the holiday shopping season approaches that the workers you encounter are human beings, too. If they ask you to step outside until someone else leaves, then you should do so. If you’re asked to please put a mask on, please do so. Odds are, the store employees, baristas, servers, cashiers, et cetera, you encounter, do not take joy in enforcing these rules, and they are likely only doing what their bosses asked them to do.

We’re all experiencing COVID fatigue, and nobody loves having to follow extra guidelines that may make us physically uncomfortable, but it’s important to remember that we are all in this together…

…and a little kindness can go a long way.