Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Not the Jaguar!

Jacob 2:17-19
"Think of your brethren like unto yourselves, and be familiar with all and free with your substance, that they may be rich like unto you.
But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God.
And after ye have obrained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good - to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted."

Sorry to post so late tonight, but I have a good excuse! (Actually, it's what I'm going to blog about haha.) However, that's not where I'm starting tonight.

Today has been an overall wonderful day.  Started out kind of oddly, but even that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, anyways.  So I got a call (woke me up) from John David this morning at 9:30 (he's the asst. gen. manager at my work) asking me if I could come in early today.  I thought 'hmm, 2.5 hours of overtime pay? heck yes!'  So I jumped out of bed, got showered, and started getting dressed.  As I was doing so I glanced at my phone and noticed that I had received a text message.  Well it was John David thanking me for being willing to come in, but they no longer needed me to.  GRR.  Oh well, I was up now and ready for the day.  So I decided to start reading the book on leadership that Andrew (my general manager) had given me to read.  It's a really good book and a very fast read, I look forward to finishing it in the next couple of days. 

Anyways, right as I got to a stopping point in the book and started thinking about finishing getting ready for work, I got a call from Rachel.  Now, I already knew what this call was going to be about, but I was still overly anxious to answer the phone.  Sure enough, she was calling me to thank me for sending her the flowers that arrived at her door today.  Her excitement about them completely made my day.  I could have tripped in mud, lost my contacts, whatever.. and that still would have made today wonderful!

Work was crazy slow tonight, but I was able to counter part of that by saving a good amount of labor.  In doing so, I often time like to help my crew out by cleaning the dining room for them, and since Misty (one of our team leaders) was working tonight, I was able to do just that because she was able to take care of the financials for the day and relieve me of any back-office duties I may have otherwise needed to do, which makes doing dining room for my crew impossible.  I haven't had a closing partner (managerial wise) in a while so I haven't been able to do that for my employees in a long while, it felt nice to get out there and get my hands dirty for a while so that one or two of my employees didn't have to.  On top of that, we were able to get everything done early and save Mike some labor money.  (Go go bonus! lol)

Anyways, now for the interesting part.. Now, I don't tell this story to toot my own horn, but it definitely is a "blogging-worthy" event that happened, so here we go.  As I was driving home from work, I was almost home when I started going up an off-ramp connecting 183 and 121. Well, as I was making the curve the car infront of me started hydroplaning (it was wet and a bit rainy outside) and he smashed into the side of the bridge!  I was on the phone at the time and immediately ended the conversation so that I could pull over and see if he/she was alright!  As I approached the car a guy about my age got out of it.  He seemed a bit shocked (obviously) but other than that didn't seem to sustain any injuries, serious or otherwise.  As I got closer, I got a better look at the car.  IT WAS A VINTAGE JAGUAR!  My heart sunk a tiny bit, but I quickly shook that off as I started talking to the guy.  

Due to the coldness and the wetness, and the fact that we were on the side of the freeway, I offered to drive him to a quiet and warm place so that he could collect himself and call someone. He thanked me and off we went.  Well, as soon as we got into my car he asked me "hey, I was on my way to work, you think you could take me there? I'm gonna see if they can give me the night off, I really am not in a working mood any more."  I said sure, and asked him where he worked. So, in the midst of that conversation, calling the police and reporting the incident completely slipped our minds! (yeah, kind of funny.. and kind of really sad, and pretty bad.. all rolled up into one interesting situation haha)  So I found out that his name is Jose and that he works at the Game Stop distribution center right by my house.  So I drove him to his work, he went in and got the night off, and I offered to drive him home (since his mother was asleep and he really had no other means of getting home.)  Turns out he lives in Keller, so off we went the way we came.

Well, as we got to the opposite side of the freeway from the wreck we realized "uh oh, there's a fire truck and police swarming the accident... WE FORGOT TO REPORT IT!"  haha.  So, I quickly exit and turn around.  We jog up to the police and apologize for not reporting it sooner, and give a brief explanation as to why.  Luckily he had his insurance on him, and we had gotten there before they towed his vehicle (though, the tow truck was already there).  We got everything sorted out and he got his case number, and back towards Keller we went.  Phew!

So, as we were driving I got to know him a bit better.  Turns out his mother works where my mom once worked (American Airlines SRO), I doubt they really knew anything of eachother though, my mom speaks english, his speaks spanish.  I also found out that he is a very spiritual and religious person, but he has a problem with preachers who take the words of the Bible and spin them into their own interpretation, and he has thusly lost all faith in "organized religion." He didn't say those words exactly, but they were very much implied through the words he did choose to use (which I can't recall perfectly at this moment in time.)  I thought about inviting him to church, but then thought better of it.  He has a lot on his mind right now and the last thing he probably wants is an invitation from a total stranger, which in turn might make my act of kindness simply a catalyst to an effort to "convert him" or what not.  We did talk about my faith, but not in very much detail.

So instead, when we got to his house, I gave him my name and number so that he could call me incase his insurance needed a witness for the claim.  I also told him that I'd be willing to drive him to work tomorrow if he so needs.  His shift starts at 11:30pm and I can easily get from my work to his house, and then to his work by then.  He thanked me for the offer, however he is first going to see if he can borrow his father's car tomorrow.  Regardless, I hope that my act of kindness has touched him in at least a small way.  He seems pretty jaded as far as "humanity" goes.  Hopefully I planted a seed.  We'll see if anything comes of this, small or grand, if so, I will definitely be updating a future blog with the news!

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