The plan was to go and get a late meal after a work meeting from a newly recommended cheap and tasty Chinese restaurant. In the car park (shared with two multinational fast food joints) we met a woman and her elderly father not particularly well dressed or groomed with a shopping trolley full plastic bags of something, both obviously in some distress. At times they were both a little incoherent and hard to follow and the woman claimed that managers both fast food places had taken $50 and $30 respectively in exchange for a phone call to call to a taxi that was still yet to arrive. I was trying to work out whether they had a mental illness, drug or alcohol problem or both. Either way it wasn't going to help if I did know. We managed to work out that they were trying to get to a local hotel where they assured us they had a booking and wanted a taxi to take them there.
My initial thought was the most likely scenario is that there is no hotel booking and even if there is that these people would not have the money for the hotel and then we'd be looking for emergency accommodation.
So what to do?
Well, we called the hotel, they did have a booking. We drove them to the hotel and they did have money, in fact they argued over who was going to pay for it. The plastic bags in the shopping trolley contained shopping bags full of groceries. Which we fetched from the car to the hotel.
The whole episode was a gentle reminder of why "Do not judge" is so important. I totally judged these people straight off and it was clear many had done before me. All they wanted was someone to call them a taxi. Fortunately my friends and I gave them the simple courtesy of merely believing what they were saying and everything was solved. It doesn't hurt to believe what people tell you, no matter how outrageous what they say seems. The worst that can happen is that they tell you something that's not true and they walk away feeling like they can tell you anything and you'll still listen.
My initial thought was the most likely scenario is that there is no hotel booking and even if there is that these people would not have the money for the hotel and then we'd be looking for emergency accommodation.
So what to do?
Well, we called the hotel, they did have a booking. We drove them to the hotel and they did have money, in fact they argued over who was going to pay for it. The plastic bags in the shopping trolley contained shopping bags full of groceries. Which we fetched from the car to the hotel.
The whole episode was a gentle reminder of why "Do not judge" is so important. I totally judged these people straight off and it was clear many had done before me. All they wanted was someone to call them a taxi. Fortunately my friends and I gave them the simple courtesy of merely believing what they were saying and everything was solved. It doesn't hurt to believe what people tell you, no matter how outrageous what they say seems. The worst that can happen is that they tell you something that's not true and they walk away feeling like they can tell you anything and you'll still listen.
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