My theater has a lot of old customers. More than most because generally the people willing to sit through three hours of French film are either film students or the elder population. I love most of our little old people. They're some of the most interesting and accepting people I meet. And today was senior day at the theater which meant we had a rush on the over 62 crowd wanting to see said French film because tickets are less than $5. At one point in the afternoon a woman came in. She had missed the last show of her film and the next one didn't start for an hour. She was fairly grumpy about it because the later show didn't have what she called the special price ( I always find complaints like this funny because people seem to think I can create shows and theaters out of thin air) and said she was going to dinner and might come back. The other manager who was sitting with me remarked on how negative this woman's attitude was but I didn't really give it much thought.
Then two hours later she returned. I asked her how her dinner was. She complained that it was both overpriced and not very good. I gave a small half smile and rang up her ticket while she yelled at the people standing behind her for being too close. I rang her up for the senior price. It turns out that this woman was not a senior and the special price she had mentioned was the matinee price. She was livid. I admitted my mistake, fixed the transaction on her card and stayed as quiet as I could while she railed at me for being so rude. Then she went to the other manager and started shouting insults at me across the lobby. Here's where I want to start the discussion. The insults that she chose were about my weight and physical attractiveness. This had probably close to nothing to do with how I actually appear to her. If I had to guess I would say that her real goal was to make me as visibly upset as she felt (a losing battle as it was based on the false assumption that I give two shits what any customer thinks of me or the way that I look) and since my insult to her had been based on appearance, that's where she decided to hit. Because what girl living in our society who isn't a size two doesn't worry about their weight a little? What girl anywhere in this country doesn't worry that they aren't pretty enough?
I worry that I live in a world where my first instinct on hearing these was to justify my appearance. To tell her that I may be a little overweight but I am by no means "grossly obese" as she annunciated quite clearly several times. I worry that my next instinct was to comment that I thought she was a senior because of her aged face and tatty wig. I worry that even though I could tell this woman was unstable and clearly I had hit a nerve that I never intended on, my first thoughts jumped to defense and offense and not to understanding.
So here I am, post work, sitting next to a hot bath that I ran while I typed out my thoughts. I have the next two days off to recover from this and all the other little strains that the last week of work has pushed on me. I have promised to spend time thanking my mother tomorrow for instilling me with enough self restraint not to lash out at someone without thinking it through first. I have promised to spend a little time thinking about ways to push myself to reacting with compassion before I react with anger. And I have promised to cut myself a little slack when I fail at that. I am only human after all.
"I don't know any perfect people. Just very flawed people who are still worth loving" john green
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