Artistikem

So, as it is of common knowledge to my followers on Twitter, I’m yet again unemployed (been on and off my job for the last four years, long story).

Last Friday I was sitting patiently on a not-so-comfortable seat at the unemployment office trying to keep my cool because I had already done the mandatory telephone call and was supposed to just pick a form there and not get interviewed like I did and blah, blah.

To the point. Turns were given electronically, printed on a piece of thermal paper in letters not too small for us young ones but a bit hard to read for the not-so-young. Also, they weren’t calling the numbers out loud, they just appeared on a TV screen propped on the roof and showing a movie all the while.

There was this man, elderly and with a cane. He couldn’t walk too fast -or almost not at all for this matter- and when his number was called, he didn’t know. The security guy was reading the numbers of those who didn’t answer right away just in case the person hadn’t noticed, thanks to that the man knew he was up. Thing was, he was standing at a corner across from where he was going to be attended and even when the security guy told the teller to wait up, she didn’t. They passed to the next turn and when the man made it to where she was, she told him he had to cross the whole place again, get another number and wait.

That was when everyone went “Oh no you didn’t!”

And when I went “Oh yes, there’s still faith in humanity.”

Some women rounded up and asked the teller to be nice and give him what he needed (it was just a letter), but she wouldn’t yield. They kept advocating for him until some a supervisor came from inside her cave and gave the man the letter he needed.

I was so thankful to be there and see what happened, even when later I was told I didn’t appear in their system and couldn’t be given the document I needed after waiting for more than two hours for it, I came out of there thinking that maybe, just maybe, not all is lost.