Baby Boomer Coworker Quits After One Shift at Food Service Job, Shocked at the Low Pay for "All That Work"

They say that the only way to truly understand someone is to walk a mile in their shoes. I subscribe wholly to that. It is our duty to each other to seek to understand our differences in experience and consciousness. That understanding, however, is an asymptote that we will be infinitely approaching. We will never truly be cognizant of another's experience, for even should slip on their shoes and take a walk we shall never be able to fully embody them.

That walk, even if taken with the best of approaches and intentions, still takes place with our feet in their shoes. It doesn't teach us what their foot feels inside of that same shoe. How could we possibly know how that feels? Adding to that, how could we possibly know how they interpret that feeling?

The apparent futility of the exercise, when shone in the light of the inability to fully embody another, does not mean that it is one that is not worth undertaking. When we take that journey we expand ourselves and achieve a new perspective of understanding. Bettering ourselves through our attempts to empathize with another. Growing ever closer to the unachievable.

There are those around you who haven't once considered undertaking this process of understanding. The thought hasn't occurred to them. Chances are that they are uncomfortable with being confronted with the reality that is their small part in the larger puzzle of coalescence. They prefer to keep within the limitations of discernment that their blinders offer, comforted by the obstruction of their conscious isolation.

When someone is forced to take a walk in someone else's shoes for the first time, as this coworker was. They are often astounded by what they find. Sometimes the perspective that is thrust upon you is so jarring and brutal that the dissonance is too much to handle. Oftentimes people will choose to ignore and suppress the experience or find some other way of discrediting it in order to save their psyche.

In the coworker's case, at least it seems as if she has gained a new understanding.

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Posted by Brad Dickson