Traveling Empaths
“Oh no, no,” the Cincinnatian says. “We don’t need a taxi – our client’s office is just four blocks away.”
Peering out of the hotel lobby windows revealed piles of snow, covered in black soot, in the pre-dawn grey. Still, the Cincinnatian’s Texas colleague thought – well, it couldn’t be *that bad* to walk a short distance.
“It’s too early anyway. It would take longer for the taxi to arrive than for us to walk,” the local continued to rationalize.
A logical argument for someone who wanted to be on-time for their client’s forthcoming website meeting, to be sure. But for an empath, it would’ve taken two seconds to realize that her Texan colleague had no winter coat: only an unlined suit jacket and corresponding pant. A summer weight suit.
And, that the suit would serve no match to 25 degrees and a 1 degree wind chill.
An empathetic soul, the Cinci lady was not. So with a bluster of wind through the hotel’s revolving door, they departed for a 6 A.M. snowy trudge.
The toes were the first to go, housed only in dress leather boots and thin socks. As the frigid signal from feet to brain muddied into numbness, the fingers then stiffened next from cold.
Wind to rival “The Hawk” of downtown Chicago at once blew hairs away from crisped ears and simultaneously twisted tendrils around the head.
By the time they got to the client’s offices, a river of snot ran from the colleague’s upper lip to the lower. A cloud of once coiffed but now knotted hair hung in clumps around her head given the intense, bone-biting gusts. And within minutes she had to make her first appearance in front of the client.
In a coughing fit, she excused herself to the restroom in utter frozen embarrassment. Doubting why she spent 45 minutes to prepare her face and hair in front of a toasty hotel room mirror, she found herself in front of a new mirror, transformed. The fright of red numbed nose and a thin layer of blown snow on the shoulders mocked her. She proceeded to comb through her hair with frozen fingers, trying to regain warmth and breath between bronchitis hacks.
Flash forward to a decidedly different time, of SoCal heat and a hazy scent of burning brush hanging in the air. The boss lingers at the client’s conference table. Chatting in endless sidebars about mobile apps, he remained confident in the pliability of LA traffic to allow passage to the airport in time.
Why so confident? Because even if the traffic caused delays, Bossman and his favored colleague had their tickets to first class and a security line bypass.
Was Bossman an empath to the one lowly infrequent traveler in their party? – nah. With little consideration to his coach dweller sans TSA jump-the-line privileges, the journey to the airport begins nary an hour and a half before flight time.
Arriving at the airport 30 mins prior to flight time, coach dweller gulps at the security line, which winds roughly a half mile through a corridor.
With barely a backward glance, the blessed colleagues scoot through a side security entrance. Coach lady then has no choice but to size up the first 5 parties in the long security line. Which one looks the most relaxed and amiable to hear her beg and plead to cut in the line?
After imploring to about 15 parties from the front of the line on back, finally she negotiated her way in front of the rest of the poor souls. By the time she made it through security, she went full sprint toward her plane. With 5 minutes until takeoff and 35 gates to go, her bladder now felt like a bouncing ball full of jello with every thudding footfall. Her right boob popped out of its cup: figure control devices stood no match for the momentum of a heavy bag swinging from the opposite shoulder.
Entering the plane then with sweat dripping off the brow and damp pits, she passed by the two colleagues snug and sound in their first class seats, nursing their second Bloody Marys and dipping fingers into ramekins of toasted nuts.
She on the other hand, the girl once frozen in snot and now drenched in perspiration, awaited her final insult: it’s far too late to have a place for her bag in the overhead, of course.
With feet crowded atop the bag stuffed under the seat in front of her, she could only think that time had run out to relieve a now bursting bladder before takeoff. Please hurry and turn that God-awful seat belt light off, she prayed.
Want to “win friends and influence people”?
The moral of this story is to consider – what additional thought can you give to your fellow human being or colleague today? What is their circumstance? What would you feel if you were in their shoes? Based on that, would you behave and plan differently?
Another moral of the story? Knowing the high likelihood of NOT finding an empath in your midst, what can YOU do to be more prepared? That may just be the most irritating lesson of all.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.
Please “like” if you did on social media (@DigitalDeliria), share, and post your comments.
Don’t want to miss a future story? Be sure to sign up for our mailing list.