Lesson

An incident worth noting happened back in July 2007 while I was waiting in line at a service window at the University, which I thought I would share here on the blog. After waiting for who knows how long—maybe an hour—as I was near the front, a man standing ahead of me pulled out some papers, and one fell to the floor. It was a useless paper verifying a process done at the legalizations office. I was watching everything unfold since I was right behind the guy. At that moment, they were serving a young woman—for some reason, that day they were only serving at one window, when they usually open two, especially considering it was registration day. A female student, who was second in line to be served, saw the paper fall and let the man know he had dropped it. He replied with total indifference, "It doesn't matter, it's useless." The young woman paused to think for a couple of seconds and replied very gently, "Well, but we're still not going to leave it here." She picked it up and put it away (to throw it in a trash can later). The man didn't even acknowledge it, perhaps out of shame for how he felt in front of the student's gesture.