No judgment
What would you do?
It was a few weeks ago. I am in the bank, waiting on line and minding my own business. I notice a little bit of a commotion by one of the bank tellers. There is a nicely dressed older gentleman standing at the window, holding up his hand. It looks like it is bleeding.
I look down at the floor where he is standing and notice that there are drops of blood all over the place. Nobody seems to be alarmed or to be doing anything. I hear the man ask for bacitracin and the bank teller saying, “Sir, we don’t have that here.”
I walk over to another bank employee and ask about cleaning the blood up from the floor so no one slips on it, and she replies, “Don’t worry. It is being taken care of.”
The man is still asking for bacitracin. A woman walks over to him, says she is the bank manager, and asks if he can follow her to a place where he can sit down. She asks if she should call 911, and he says no. He asks for bacitracin again, and again the manager says, “Sir, we cannot help you with that.”
It’s my turn at the window. I ask the teller if there i s a first aid kit. She shows it to me, and we look through it and find some antibacterial cream in those little packets.
I go over to the man, who is still bleeding and just has a tissue around his finger, and I tell him that this is similar to bacitracin. The bank manager won’t put it on him, and he can’t do it himself because he is holding the tissue over his cut finger, which he said he cut on the door walking into the bank.
I tell him that he might need stitches, but he still wants me to put the bacitracin-like ointment on his finger. I do this for him. Then I ask the bank manager if she has any gauze. She hands me a big roll of it.
I wrap his finger in the gauze, still amazed that no one else in the entire bank is offering any assistance…at all. Nothing. He asks if I have any tape, but I don’t. The bank manager asks him if he could drive and he responds, “I have a Mercedes in the parking lot and I can drive just as well as I could when I was 16.”
I just want to hug this guy, but there really is nothing else I could do for him, and the bank manager just wants to ask him questions for insurance purposes.
I get into my car and drive up to a red light, and there is a police car on the opposite side of me. I roll down my window and ask the police officer, “Hi there! Are you busy? A man cut his finger in the bank and he doesn’t want them to call 911, but I am not sure he is totally okay. Any chance you could just pop by and make sure he is okay?”
“Of course,” he replies.
I felt a little better about the situation, but I was still so sad. But I was even more sad because no one else seemed to care about this man. Was it because he said that he drove a Mercedes and they were jealous? Was it because there is so much bad stuff going on in the world that people are just immune to it? Was it because they were afraid of the big lady in black who was acting like she was a medical professional?
I don’t know, but those were all really great questions, don’t you think?
But, as I asked in the beginning, what would you have done?
This has been the time of year when we think about what we should do, as opposed to what we actually do; be nicer to people, smile at strangers, not be on Instagram every 15 minutes, and just be grateful for all the good we have in our lives.
Maybe all the people in the bank had legitimate excuses for why they didn’t offer their assistance, and because I am such a good person, that is what I will think happened.
How’s that for turning over a new leaf this year?
Banji Ganchrow of Teaneck is writing this before her trip to see Danish and her family. She hopes she is having a safe and wonderful time.
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