My life really isn't too terribly exciting. I've got a 9-5 job, going to school, the usual stuff, y'know?
But my job is a bit different than most. I work with developmentally disabled adults at a autism facility (basically a school for these guys during the day). It's not the easiest thing to do, but it pays well, and is a good placeholder until my college classes are over.
So most days I'm on a van run that takes the clients back to their homes they live at. It's easy enough. Ride in a van, make sure no one has a temper tantrum, and go home. But, one of my clients' moms is going back to junior college to get her degree. She's had a lot to handle in life, and is doing her best. Dad's a truck driver, other siblings of this client are in and out. Mom's doing her best she can. She takes the bus cross-town to get to the campus.
She called before classes started and tried to work out a system of meeting up with us in the afternoon at one of the bus stops to drop off her kid. We worked around it, and accommodated her. That alone was enough her to give us a lot of thanks and gratitude. It wasn't a big deal to us, we were just doing business.
But, last week she missed the bus.
Now, from the campus to where we pick up/drop off, it's probably a solid 25-30 minutes on the bus route, with stops included. So when she called us in a panic, trying to figure out what she was going to do, I just told her not to worry, we'd drive cross-town and drop her kid off there.
You think we just had given her a million dollars.
I haven't felt or seen the gratitude this woman showed us in a long time. I'll get to the reason I'm even writing about this in the first place in a minute. She was in tears by the time we were done on the phone. Said things like "Thank you so much, this means so much to me" and "this is a godsend". She was ELATED, and that was just on the phone.
We get to the school, and she's still wiping tears away. She hugged me, thanked me and the driver again, and went back to her afternoon/early evening classes with her autistic son in hand.
So, think about this: she's a mom who is working, has an autistic son, takes the bus to the junior college to get her degree to then try and get a better job, while her husband is truck driving to bring in money, with older kids out of the house already. If you want a role model in perseverance and dedication to getting through life, she's number one on the list to me.
This struck me as we left the school. I didn't think about it until about halfway back to work, but she's literally the real MVP. I'm not looking for a pat on the back for helping someone out. I don't care about what I did. I care about how that lady reacted. She was genuine, she was truthfully, and legitimately grateful just for something that we would have done for anyone that was in a tight spot and couldn't pick up their kid the usual way. That's just what we do.
But what struck me, was that she didn't expect it from us. She was trying to find a way to do it on her own. She was looking for any and every option before she even asked us for help. I don't see that mentality much, nowadays. I see a lot of people whining for a handout, or complaining when they don't get the exact thing they asked for from someone. It gets old, and unfortunately becomes the norm when you hear the complaints for so long.
This woman stood out to me because she was grateful for something as simple as us driving cross-town to drop her child off, rather than us standing up and saying "nah, we'll just wait at your house, you can come here".
The point is: it feels a lot better on both ends of the story when someone is truly grateful for something you did for them, and something you did for someone that truly needed help is grateful for you doing it. There's been times I've tried to help people in the past, and then they come back at me with "well this isn't what I wanted, why did you even do this for me in the first place if you aren't going to do it right?". I feel like crap after hearing that, because all I try to do is help someone else out to the best of my ability. Where is the grace, and thankfulness from people anymore? It's such a rare occurrence by people, that this feels bad to write about. It's sad that we live in a world where expectancy trumps gratefulness in terms of lending a hand to humanity.
This lady gave me a bit of restored faith that there are still people out there who are grateful for the help, and don't expect it. I just wish there were more of her in the world.
But my job is a bit different than most. I work with developmentally disabled adults at a autism facility (basically a school for these guys during the day). It's not the easiest thing to do, but it pays well, and is a good placeholder until my college classes are over.
So most days I'm on a van run that takes the clients back to their homes they live at. It's easy enough. Ride in a van, make sure no one has a temper tantrum, and go home. But, one of my clients' moms is going back to junior college to get her degree. She's had a lot to handle in life, and is doing her best. Dad's a truck driver, other siblings of this client are in and out. Mom's doing her best she can. She takes the bus cross-town to get to the campus.
She called before classes started and tried to work out a system of meeting up with us in the afternoon at one of the bus stops to drop off her kid. We worked around it, and accommodated her. That alone was enough her to give us a lot of thanks and gratitude. It wasn't a big deal to us, we were just doing business.
But, last week she missed the bus.
Now, from the campus to where we pick up/drop off, it's probably a solid 25-30 minutes on the bus route, with stops included. So when she called us in a panic, trying to figure out what she was going to do, I just told her not to worry, we'd drive cross-town and drop her kid off there.
You think we just had given her a million dollars.
I haven't felt or seen the gratitude this woman showed us in a long time. I'll get to the reason I'm even writing about this in the first place in a minute. She was in tears by the time we were done on the phone. Said things like "Thank you so much, this means so much to me" and "this is a godsend". She was ELATED, and that was just on the phone.
We get to the school, and she's still wiping tears away. She hugged me, thanked me and the driver again, and went back to her afternoon/early evening classes with her autistic son in hand.
So, think about this: she's a mom who is working, has an autistic son, takes the bus to the junior college to get her degree to then try and get a better job, while her husband is truck driving to bring in money, with older kids out of the house already. If you want a role model in perseverance and dedication to getting through life, she's number one on the list to me.
This struck me as we left the school. I didn't think about it until about halfway back to work, but she's literally the real MVP. I'm not looking for a pat on the back for helping someone out. I don't care about what I did. I care about how that lady reacted. She was genuine, she was truthfully, and legitimately grateful just for something that we would have done for anyone that was in a tight spot and couldn't pick up their kid the usual way. That's just what we do.
But what struck me, was that she didn't expect it from us. She was trying to find a way to do it on her own. She was looking for any and every option before she even asked us for help. I don't see that mentality much, nowadays. I see a lot of people whining for a handout, or complaining when they don't get the exact thing they asked for from someone. It gets old, and unfortunately becomes the norm when you hear the complaints for so long.
This woman stood out to me because she was grateful for something as simple as us driving cross-town to drop her child off, rather than us standing up and saying "nah, we'll just wait at your house, you can come here".
The point is: it feels a lot better on both ends of the story when someone is truly grateful for something you did for them, and something you did for someone that truly needed help is grateful for you doing it. There's been times I've tried to help people in the past, and then they come back at me with "well this isn't what I wanted, why did you even do this for me in the first place if you aren't going to do it right?". I feel like crap after hearing that, because all I try to do is help someone else out to the best of my ability. Where is the grace, and thankfulness from people anymore? It's such a rare occurrence by people, that this feels bad to write about. It's sad that we live in a world where expectancy trumps gratefulness in terms of lending a hand to humanity.
This lady gave me a bit of restored faith that there are still people out there who are grateful for the help, and don't expect it. I just wish there were more of her in the world.
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