NTKOG #214: The kind of peaceful, non-judgmental guru who figures, eh, things are only things – why not let a dude rub their sweat all over them?!
I am: adverse to touch. What can I say? Other people gross me out.
I am not: a germaphobe in the conventional sense. I forget to Dracula sneeze, only wash my hands the normal amount and, dude, if you drop a crème brulee on a carpeted floor? I’ll suck that beezy up with a straw before you can say “ewww”.
The Scene: My office. Oh god, my office. I try not to talk about work on here, for fear of shackling my company’s reputation to my personal (yet very public) failings as a human being, but here’s the necessary context: I’m a receptionist in a for-profit company that operates within a non-profit organization within the sector of public welfare.
As a receptionist I have a lot of face-to-face dealings with our – “clients” isn’t the right word, but it’s the one I’m using. Because of this, I spend a sizable majority of my time interacting with people who deal with extreme poverty and/or mental illness.
One benefit of this job is that it’s helped de-stigmatize these conditions for me. But, as I quickly learned, in some cases, the ugly stereotypes are … well, true. And they’re even less pretty when you view them from eye-level.
There is a gentleman who visits me once a month or so, for example, whose arms and hands are covered with weeping sores. Lately, the sores have gotten so bad that he’s taken to wearing latex gloves so he doesn’t drip onto the carpeting. Once a month, he comes in and asks to borrow a pen, then – gloves squelching with blood – fills out a form, before handing me back the pen and the paper.
I smile and thank him, then wait until the door closes behind him before squeezing Purell in my palm and rubbing it on both arms up to the elbow.
I’m a good little bleeding-heart in theory, but I’ll admit – and I’m not proud of this – that in order to deal with the sensory overload of my job, I’ve created my own little world behind my desk. The most prominent example of this: my pens.
Every day, I chose one special pen to make mine and mine alone. Nobody else – not even my totally hygienic co-worker – could use it. When people came in to fill out forms, they’d reach for my special pen and I’d snatch it away. “That one’s out of ink!” I’d explain sheepishly, selecting another ballpoint for them.
Then one day it hit me. On paper, I’m as liberal as they come, but “my pen and “their pens” … gosh, doesn’t that sound just a little like “us” versus “them”? That can’t be right.
So, for the past week or so, I have dethroned the pen emperor.
Now, when a client comes in – broadcasting stale tobacco through my nose so hard it perfumes my friggin’ bone marrow – and asks for a pen, I meekly offer up whatever utensil falls first to hand. Usually the one that’s in my hand.
Afterwards, the client will hand it back to me, sometimes literally dripping sweat, sometimes chewed, sometimes just as I gave it to them, and thank me. “No problem!” I chirp, trying to smile at them not just with my mouth but with all the best of me.
The Verdict: This probably sounds like no big deal, but I find it hard to give up possessiveness of my objects. On an awful day at work, they are the only things that anchor me to my comfort zone. But I suspect the long march to equality gains less purchase with great strides than with tiny kindnesses.
It makes me feel like an awful person that something as small as this could even be a struggle for me. As though bad luck or a shitty life situation were somehow contagious! Even if it were, it would hardly be contracted by a few droplets of sweat! All I can offer in my defense is that I can’t control how I feel. I can only control how I act. And I’m trying to improve the latter just a little bit every day.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
*touched* Well done. These small acts of generosity take more courage and self-discipline than a lot of great big ones.
“…Gloves squelching with blood”, almost made me vomit, which is a compliment to your writing!
There is a guy who comes in here with a hole in his throat( I don’t know the medical term) and instead of using one of those throat harmonicas, closes his hole with his thumb before gasping out a few words. Initially, I would spray his change or dollar bill witgh cleaner and let it air dry before touching it. Now I’ve “progressed” to the point where I stick it under all the other bills and sanitize my hands a few times.
Speaking to your point of what’s catching- Weirdly, I notice when he comes in I find myself whispering or mouthing words to him-DUDE, there’s nothing wrong with his hearing!
“wearing latex gloves so he doesn’t drip onto the carpeting”
Just checked the calendar. Yep, it’s Thursday.
“I can’t control how I feel. I can only control how I act.”
Dude, you’re freakin’ wise like a wise person. On that note, we can’t all be gifted with words.
On a more serious note, I feel the same way about some of my behavior. I’m not averse to looking away and sometimes locking my doors when at a red light and I see someone going car to car asking for money. It’s a behavior I wish I could change, but wishing alone never accomplished anything.
Yes! I struggle all the time with how to behave with people who are begging for money! So many of us are used to looking away in embarrassment or so they don’t talk to us that it becomes a habit. We start to look through them, and that’s both sad and wrong.
At the same time, now that I make a pretty big effort to talk to people who are begging for money on the street (or, at the very least, never, ever look away), I have a lot more negative interactions to haunt me. Many people I’ve talked to have been sweet, offered me blessings and happily accepted whatever little I had to give. Then again, just as many people have thrown the food I offered back at me, said lewd things, physically groped or assaulted me.
I know, intellectually, that often people begging for change are aggressive or unpleasant because they have been profoundly affected by their unfortunate situations (or the factors that may have contributed to said situations), but it’s still hard to deal with day after day. But the problem is that we don’t deal with people strictly intellectually. In real life, sometimes we’re too tired or too stressed to deal with trying to help someone and running the risk of being assaulted or verbally abused.
This kind of tangented in a big way, but talking to people on the street always makes me wonder: is it harder to talk to strangers, as a woman? Is that the reason we always imagine nuns locked away in convents and monks out in the village, helping and educating the general populace? And how to get over these knee-jerk negative associations?
I think you nailed it with “In real life, sometimes we’re too tired or too stressed to deal with trying to help someone and running the risk of being assaulted or verbally abused”. Many times in the stoplight scenario I mentioned I’m either in a good mood and therefore don’t want to risk things going downhill or I’m already in a bad mood and don’t feel like dealing with people. Especially one who I see as more likely than average to verbally abuse me, though there’s a good chance that assumption is flawed. Heck, I was called numbnuts last night for parking in an open parking spot with no cars on any immediate side of me. People, dude. Can’t let them get ya down.
On another note, en route to being called numbnuts I saw a curly-haired brunette wearing a fedora near Peet’s. Given your self-described height in the wig NTKOG, she was far too short to be you. Disappointed.
First off, excellent descriptions. Second, I’m so impressed. I don’t think I am a germaphobe, but I hate when other people use my pens. I suppose I can blame it on not having an immune system to speak of so I’m nervous about getting sick, but I keep a cup full of extras on my desk for general use. Because I just think how I don’t know where their hands were before they arrived at my desk. I can’t tell you how often I wipe down my working area with clorox wipes.
Ok, I guess I have issues.
Squelching with blood is one of the best—albeit disgusting—phrases I’ve read in awhile.
This would be hard for me. I am an extreme germaphobe. And when I was teaching, I was a complete whack about letting kids use my pens because middle school boys = disgusting.
I have the same pen thing, but mostly because I like cool pens. I don’t mind someone else using it, but they tend to walk off and I need that particular pen because it write smoothly, feels good in my hand and is just the right weight, DAMMIT. I had to resort to putting Lisa Frank stickers all over my favorites, just to keep other people’s mitts off them.
But NOW, due to your post, I’m thinking about the times I’ve handed off pens to people I don’t know…and who just returned to my office after asking me where the restroom was…sweaty, funky people…great. Now I need a shower.
On SSoLA whose painting was shown?
I cringe asking thinking it is an extremely famous painting.
No worries — it’s definitely not famous. The painter is Misti Pavlov, and I’ve never really heard about him — I just ran into a few of his paintings here. From what I can gather, he’s a contemporary Russian painter with a penchant for female nudes. Which is appropriate, since I’m a contemporary Russophile with a penchant for looking at female nudes.
Maybe I’m alone in this thinking, but when it’s you against the world I don’t think that is the same as us vs. them. If you were to let your coworkers use the daily pen but not “clients,” that wouldn’t be the best practice, but if it’s a you thing, I don’t think it’s a problem.
That said, I still think it’s awesome that you’re going for it!
I thought it was Pavlov. First dogs, now paintings.
“Yeah, that’s the ticket!”
You, sir, are a genius.
You’re too kind! BTW Thanks for the link, I’m trying to find lithographs
All the originals have sold- go figure- Like I could afford one!
Oh my God – Dracula Sneeze is the best descriptor I’ve heard in ages! Why didn’t I know that before???
At work, if someone got a hold of any pens that may have been mine, I always joked around and pretended to play the steal-the-pen-game to get it back. Hey, everyone’s got several pens, it’s alright. But I just NEED THAT ONE back.