Earlier today, YoungestGirl and I were shopping at Aldi Waitrose when I heard a lady in a wheelchair ask a member of staff if they had any fresh lobster. The member of staff could not have cared less, suggested they might be in tomorrow and told her they definitely didn’t have them.
Two minutes later, I spot a whole shelf of dressed lobster, lobster tails, lobster parfait – an entire smorgasbord of lobster. Seeing the lady again later in a different aisle, I said to her, “Excuse me? Were you looking for lobster? I saw lots of it over there; here let me show you.” I took her to where the lobster was, and helped her get four whole lobsters (four!) from the shelf.
She was very grateful. “Oh, you have done your Christmas good deed for this year. Thank you so much. That man who works here told me the wrong information. What do you expect from foreigners though? There’s too many of them, that’s what I think.” (NB, we live in Buckinghamshire where there is nary an accent that isn’t Home Counties to be heard.)
So I cannot decide if I have done a good deed (helped a disabled lady get the food she wanted) or a bad deed (reinforced her racist stereotype of lazy, feckless foreigners). It’s like that time I gave a seat on the tube to a pregnant lady who was standing, holding onto the rail and she used her newly-free hands to read the Daily Mail.
What do you think? Does this count as a good deed, or is its net value a negative? Do I have to do another good deed this Christmas? I feel I might be too shellfish. Sorry.
What did you say to her in reply? Probably nothing was best-she sounds like an ignorant pig who would have complained to the Store Manager that YOU were abusing HER. Guess where that story would have ended up? Yep…’Daily Mail’ 🙂
I sort of pretended I hadn’t heard it… I did consider calling her out on it, but didn’t fancy a row in the lobster aisle.
L x
Ignoring the shellfish remark-shudder-
the good deed stands alone-it was a good deed,what happened afterwards is a separate issue.
I have usually found Aldi staff to be really helpful – at one time they paid well above the average for retail wages as the staff had to memorise the prices of all goods they stocked as they did not have bar scanners-this required skill was a filter I think.
I agree, Aldi staff are normally fine. I suspect he may have been temporary Christmas staff, or possibly didn’t know what she was asking for and was too busy to take the time to find out.f
L x
You did the right thing. Helping someone who has different views to you isn’t wrong. So no need to do anything else for a while 🙂
But… hypothetically, helping someone who has different views to you could be wrong… e.g. distributing fascist leaflets or clicking through on the Daily Mail website, increasing their profits.
I worry I reinforced her prejudices by proving the “foreign” worker wrong…
Still, I will take your free pass for further good deeds, because frankly I can’t be arsed.
L x
You did NOT do the right thing. You are evil. You will be punished.
Who would have thought Jesus would use Hotmail?
L x