The Other Thing I Lost
For more than 20 years, my life revolved around customer service.
Retail associate.
Manager.
Store leader.
Different titles, same reality.
Every day I walked into a building knowing that at some point I would probably get yelled at for something I couldn’t control.
An item wasn’t in stock.
A policy wasn’t what someone wanted it to be.
A return was outside the allowed timeframe.
A line was too long.
A coupon had expired.
A truck hadn’t arrived.
The reason didn’t really matter.
What always fascinated me was how quickly people forgot there was another human being standing in front of them.
I wasn’t the person who made the policy.
I wasn’t the person who designed the website.
I wasn’t the reason the item wasn’t available.
I was just the person standing there trying to help.
Some people understood that.
A lot of people didn’t.
After enough years, you start to notice how much easier life becomes when someone simply treats you like a person.
Then I lost my job.
Along with a paycheck, I lost something else I hadn’t expected.
People.
Associates.
Customers.
The daily conversations.
The familiar faces.
The feeling of being part of something bigger than myself.
Uber pays my bills these days, but it can be a lonely way to spend your time.
Hours in a car.
Hours by yourself.
Hours moving from one pickup to the next.
What surprised me was realizing that I started finding little pieces of that connection again.
A conversation at a gas station.
A familiar face behind a counter.
A manager at Panera.
The team at Shake Shack.
The woman at Popeyes.
The people I see every day while they’re doing their jobs and I’m doing mine.
The difference is that now I’m standing on the other side of the counter.
I still remember what it felt like to be where they are.
I still remember what it felt like when people spoke to me like I wasn’t a person.
I remember being the person getting yelled at over something I couldn’t fix.
I remember what it felt like when someone looked past the uniform, the nametag, the title, and saw an actual person.
A few weeks ago, I realized I hadn’t seen Billie at Panera in a while.
At first, I didn’t think much of it.
Then more time passed.
Eventually, I asked where she went.
Someone told me she had been transferred to another location.
Yesterday, I ordered dinner from that location.
When she looked up and saw me, she was genuinely surprised.
Happy.
The kind of surprised that happens when someone realizes they were missed.
The truth is, I wasn’t looking for anything.
I had simply noticed she was gone.
And somewhere between losing my job and driving Uber, I started paying attention to those things.
The people who make my food.
Daniel the guy who sees me at the gas station almost every day.
The women who run the shifts at Shake Shack.
The people whose names I know.
The people whose names I don’t.
The people who are carrying things I’ll never know anything about.
Because I know what it’s like to spend an entire day helping strangers while carrying things nobody can see.
For years, I wished more people understood that the person serving them had a life outside of that interaction.
Bills.
Stress.
Family problems.
Grief.
Dreams.
A story that existed long before they walked through the door.
These days, I try to remember that.
Maybe that’s why I noticed Billie was gone.
Maybe that’s why I asked where she went.
Maybe that’s why seeing her smile meant so much.
For the longest time, I thought losing my job was about losing a paycheck.
Turns out, I was grieving something entirely different.
The people.
I can relate to the loss of daily human contact—and feeling part of something—after losing a job. I also appreciate those who work in the service industry, especially after my short stint at Starbucks—a job I took “for fun” after quitting my high powered 60-70 hour a week marketing career in 2000. Starbucks was actually more stressful. And I was working part-time! I can still picture that long line of yet-to-be caffeinated customers, most of them staring me down, as if willing me to work faster and thinking I must be a loser for having such a low-paying job. Some of them were condescending jerks, worse than my worst marketing client. I ended up quitting after three months.
We often think kindness is found in grand gestures, but more often it’s simply remembering that the person in front of us has a life that continues after we walk away. I love that this piece isn’t really about customer service. It’s about noticing people. To tell someone, “You mattered.”