Is JW kindness real, or just part of keeping up appearances..?
I was just thinking back to a time I volunteered to help at someone’s business. At work, we get a certain amount of time that we can volunteer during work hours, no questions asked, so I signed up after someone reached out for help.
About 10 minutes after I arrived, the business owner said she was going to grab a coffee and invited me and another volunteer along.
We went to a coffee shop and she got in line ahead of us. I was chatting to the other volunteer, so I wasn’t really paying attention at first. But after a minute or two, I realised she was arguing with the guy taking her order. She kept it kind of quiet, but you know when someone is speaking through clenched teeth and their body language changes.. there was all of that going on.
I kind of stood back and watched to try and figure out what the issues was. The barista stayed calm and polite the entire time. Eventually, I heard him explain that oat milk normally costs extra, but he’d give her a discount this time (Clearly she was annoyed about having to pay extra in the first place) She shook her head at him, muttered something under her breath, and acted irritated.
Then she opened her purse to pay… and I spotted a blood card!
Honestly, I was shocked. Not even because of the blood card itself, but because she was making such a fuss over a tiny oat milk charge (I’m talking cents) while this guy was trying to help her out and even gave her a discount. No thank you, no kindness, nothing.
And while obviously she didn’t have to buy us volunteers coffee, it did cross my mind that we were giving up our time to help her business, and the whole interaction just felt incredibly stingy and unpleasant.
What really struck me was .. if she’d been surrounded by other witnesses, would she have spoken to the server that way? Or was this just the ‘real’ personality coming through when there was no other witnesses around?