Walmart Kindness

I don't really like Walmart. Sometimes I am a terrible person though and shop there.

Anyway...

On Tuesday night I go to my friends' house and spend the night so that I can get up early and go to Carmel to nanny 2  children for twelve hours. This is not a normal nanny job. The mother is there. I am there because she has epilepsy. This means in addition to watching the children, I am also driving them wherever they need to go and helping with house work. After that I go back to my friends' house, sleep another night, then get up early and do it all again for another twelve hours.

Yesterday after I finished my second 12 hour day for the week which consisted of screaming children, potty training, cleaning up soiled children and their clothes, vacuuming, mopping, taking down a Christmas tree, etc, I had to pick up dog food on my way home. The closest store on my way home that was still open and had it was Walmart.

As soon as I walked in I saw a former refugee client that gave me quite a bit of trouble (one example- calling me on a day off leaving a message that it was an emergency for me to find out they simply wanted to find out how to get cable tv and knew I would only answer on my day off if they said it was an emergency...this is the same family that had their neighbor call and yell at me that they were starving and had no money for food and I was doing nothing to help them...). So I went in the complete opposite direction I needed to and luckily avoided her seeing me.

Then when I walked to the checkout 3 lines were open, insanely long lines. This led me to think..."hmmm...a bottle of wine would be a very nice thing considering all of this to take home for me and my roomies." Went back all the way to the back of the store to the alcohol section only to see a sign stating "Looking for wine? For your convenience we have moved our wine to our new liquor store at the front of the store." Convenience? Ha. Went to the front, didn't see a liquor store, gave up, got in super long line.

I know what you're thinking. "Jill, this is a lot of complaining. I thought this blog was supposed to be inspirational." Well, you are right. I feel this long, drawn out description of the woefulness of my day is necessary for you to see why this "little thing" that happened meant so much. So here it is...

Shortly after getting in line a worker came out and told 3 of us in line that had only a couple things that she would take us at the jewelry counter. The other 2 had been in line in front of me, but let me go first because I had less items than them. And the worker told us she was about to get off, but came out of the bathroom and saw the long line so decided to do this real quick before going home. These little sacrifices these people made that really didn't take much effort on their part, but are things many people wouldn't do, meant a lot to me that day. It helped me to get home a little earlier, boosted my faith in humanity a bit, made me stop being annoyed, and made me get over feeling sorry for myself.

So next time you can go out of your way a little bit for someone else, do it. You never know the day they had and how it might help them and make them feel.