Who Are We?

After a hideous scene at a local coffee shop yesterday I've been thinking about who we are, how we act, why we act the way we do, and why people place so much importance on things rather than on people.

The coffee shop was packed on Sunday afternoon as I stopped by to work on an article I'm writing for Prince William Living magazine.  Everyone, and I mean, everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at this Glittery Lady making a scene with surprise in their eyes.  We all looked around at each other with shrugs, confused looks, throwing hands up in the air as if to say "is this lady really serious?" and even nervous laughter to try and lighten the mood.

Glittery Lady was freaking out about how she spilled coffee all over her "$1,500 Gucci purse--do you realize what kind of purse this is?"  She obviously wanted to make a scene and loudly yelled at the coffee shop employee, a teenage boy working to make some money on a Sunday afternoon, about how upset she was that they overfilled the coffee so much that it "made" her spill her coffee all over her purse and glittery boots as she was getting in her car.  "I come here every day and this is crazy, why would you fill the cup so much to make it spill like this.  Look at my pants, I have spots on my pants!"

They were black pants and I didn't see any spots on them...just sayin'.  Though I did notice my own shirt full of washable paint spots from a craft activity with my kids earlier in the day.

Someone yelled out "you know, there is this thing called a washing machine..."

She ignored the comment and responds to the teenage coffee shop boy with "This is terrible, this has ruined my day. YOU have ruined my day.  And my purse, what are you going to do about my purse?"  I'm still not sure what she expected a teenage boy to do about her $1,500 Gucci purse, but he offered her a free cup of coffee for her trouble.  She responded with "I don't need a free cup of coffee, I can buy coffee if I want.  I want your card, I want to file a complaint because this is absolutely terrible, just terrible! Really, you have RUINED my day!"  The manager comes over, a young twenty something girl and kindly gives her the card with some apologies.

As she was leaving, a middle aged woman told her to "have a nice day" to which she responded nastily with a "How am I supposed to have a good day after all this? LOOK at my purse!!!" and the nice lady said "well, you can try to have a better day, try to smile, because you know spilled coffee is not the end of the world".  I chimed in and said, "yeah, if spilled coffee on your very expensive $1,500 Gucci purse is the biggest problem you have today than you should consider yourself lucky."  Several others chimed in with "yeah" and "seriously lady, worse things could happen." and she walked out loudly grumbling "I can't believe this, this is terrible!"

Those of us left in the coffee shop bonded...we found out that the kind "have a nice day" customer lady had cancer the year before and really was trying to make the other lady realize that spilled coffee really isn't the end of the world...cancer, well, that might be the end of the world for that person...but spilled coffee? Not so much.

So how do we treat each other?  Do we treat our Gucci purse's better than we treat human beings?

With this, I wanted to share a quote from a recent blog I came across:

"A life rich with faith, family, friends & creativity, secure in the idea that a life well lived has nothing to do with what we have but who we are."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Thanks LivingWellSpendingLess for reminding us of this very important fact that it's who we are and how we interact with others that matters...not a Gucci purse.