The Scarlet Letter
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
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The woman said, "I was in the express lane at the store quietly fuming. Completely ignoring the sign, the woman ahead of me had joined the check-out line pushing a cart piled high with groceries. Imagine my delight when the weary cashier beckoned the woman to come forward, looked at the cart and asked sweetly, 'So, which six items would you like to buy?'"
I can understand if someone thought that the frustrated lady had little to fume about; it isn't as if she'd been mugged. This is true, but on the other hand we can't know if the fuming woman was wrestling only with the lady in front of her; she might have been fuming because she had a visitor coming to her house in a very short time and needed to make a quick get-away from the shop; or some such thing.
In any case, I'm sure a surface reading of the incident would give the sympathy to the "fumer" and say that the lady in front of her was ignoring common courtesy.
But didn't the weary check-out woman do well! I liked the way she went about it. There was no strident denunciation of people who "obviously can't read." Instead there was (I judge) a well-phrased and incisive reminder that this simply wouldn't do. The cashier may have been one of those quick thinkers that I'm often jealous of but, then again, she had probably developed this response from long experience. Either way she was the right person in the right place to deal with this little matter.
I liked her fairness—she wasn't callous, but a decision had to be made because to please the "transgressor" would have been to cheat the others. In its tiny and peculiar way it was a court of justice—don't you think so? It was one of the millions of little situations that occur every day that people have to respond to without making them as angst-freighted as the decision to drop "the bomb". But however limited they are they're occasions when people are faced with a decision to "do what's right".
I'm a trifle gutless in some areas so I admire her bravery. I don't know enough about the situation to say this is what happened, but I've certainly been in situations where a person has brazenly tested me to see if I would do the right thing (I'll tell you about one soon, God enabling). This lady might have come to the check-out loaded up and thinking the check-out girl would fold and not want to protest in public. (So many of us fear the publicity so we fold in silence.) To risk someone's extreme displeasure can be a huge decision for some of us and when I see someone willing to take that risk I'm impressed and pleased.
People like that enable me as well as make we want to act as they do because I do think that if we develop the will and the ability to do right in tiny matters it will have an effect on us and help us with jugular issues. These are "rehearsals" for the main events. If we develop that way with us—of doing what is right in small matters, calmly and decisively—people will come to know it and will expect nothing else of us. And it will give us peace because we won't have to "make a decision" every time some little "issue" arises—without thinking we'll simply act as we've rehearsed.
I haven't systematised my thinking on this particular matter so as I write this I'm still wondering why it has pleased me so much. Maybe I've already explained why without my noticing it. I know this: the check-out lady made the fumer's day. I can easily imagine the fumer, now with a smile, punching the air and saying "Yesssssss!" when she hit the street.
The poor transgressor no doubt had to go another line—one she should have gone to in the first place.
Blessed little check-out girl!
