[Papa John’s Valentines Day Promo]
Jess and I went out Wednesday night to celebrate Valentines Day early. We had dinner at a nice restaurant, and I’m pretty sure that someone tried to punch the lock the trunk of our car in that parking garage too. Anyway, I enjoy celebrating holidays on days other than they were intended because you don’t have to deal with the masses.
So this morning I made us a green smoothie for breakfast, and then I had training for a new position that I’m taking over. I came home right before lunch time but didn’t eat anything before I went back into the office. I was super hungry. So after my reception shift, I asked a co-worked if he wanted to go get something to eat. We headed to burger king.
We ordered our food from a guy behind the counter who was a little hard to understand. It’s Hawaii, everyone is of some Asian decent pretty much. So English is a lot of peoples second language.
As we were waiting for our food I noticed an older customer kind of berating the young 20 something behind the counter. The customer was slamming his fist on the counter, and getting in the kids face, asking him if he understood now!? You could tell the kid behind the counter was trying to fight back tears.
My friend Ben asked me a question, and couldn’t answer him, I said I was sorry and that I was wondering if I should go say something to this jack-hole. (I didn’t say jack-hole, you get the point, not my best moment)
I didn’t go over and say anything. I found it funny that both of these guys were Asian, I wanted to go up to the older guy and be like… hey remember when your parents immigrated here? And language was hard for them too? I didn’t. I also wanted to ask the older guy where it hurt. Maybe Valentines day is especially hard for him.
We sat down and ate our meals. I looked at the older gentleman’s seat… I thought he had left his tray with trash sitting on the table. He didn’t, he returned with some more food. Maybe he went up to apologize. I didn’t see that if he did. I hope he did.
As we finished up our meals, I felt like I needed to go say something to the kid behind the counter. I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to. It would have been so much easier just to walk out.
I stood up as Ben threw the trash away, and I said in my head, God if you want me to say something, make a way. I didn’t know how to get the kids attention… he was taking orders and then putting the food on trays so he was all over. So as I walked past the counter, and I caught his eye.
I walked to the counter, another girl thought I was coming to order, so she was trying to help me, but I stuck out my hand to the young man. I looked him in the eye and said “hey man, thanks for your hard work, I know you’re working hard, and I appreciate you, I saw what happened, that guy is just a grumpy old man, so don’t worry about him man, thank you for your hard work.” He smiled a sheepish but genuine smile, and said thank you. And we were on our way.
***
Last night our outreach teams returned, and shared stories of the awkwardness of trying to minister cross culturally, at times without a translator. Language barriers are hard!
We get so frustrated when people can’t speak our language. And we Americans think it’s our right to have everyone communicate in English. I know it’s frustrating. I really do, I can think of what a hard time I had trying to get my eye-glasses from a person that didn’t speak English well. But we HAVE to remember, that just because people don’t speak English, doesn’t mean that they aren’t human beings, and have value.
Even the aggressors have value. Every person has value because they were created in God’s image. I probably should have gone and sat with the old hurting man too, and asked him how he was doing. Next time…
