Shelter
Originally uploaded by elliejay08
I volunteer at a rotating homeless shelter. My particular shift lasts from 2:30 AM until 7 AM. It is a jarring experience each time I wake up in my own house and drive over to the shelter where the smell is palatable as soon as I'm inside. It is the quietest part of the night when I arrive. Around 4 AM the men start to get up. By 5 AM almost all of them are awake. We make them breakfast and hand them packed lunches for the day.
Most mornings go smoothly; today was a bad morning though. Nothing dramatic happened except that I did something to offend one of the men and he went off on me. We are given a set of rules we're supposed to follow as volunteers. One of them is that we aren't supposed to give out toiletries and socks in the morning. All of it was supposed to be passed out the night before. This ensures no one doubles up or takes more than they need, or tries to sell their surplus. It also ensures the shelter doesn't run out of supplies.
This morning at about 3:45 AM one of the guys asked if he could get toiletries. I asked him why he didn't get any last night and he told me he went to sleep before they passed them out. I reluctantly gave him a pack of supplies. Then he asked for socks. In my only defense, it was 3:45 AM and I wasn't as sharp as I normally am. I told him that they passed out socks last night and asked why he didn't get any. He got really upset and exclaimed he already told me he went to sleep. He began berating me. I knew I had a choice at that moment but I made the wrong one. I reasoned to myself that I was coming here to volunteer my time, not to be scolded by an ungrateful and judgmental man who, after all, had asked for my help. So I fired back and things escalated. “Do you want the socks or not?” I asked. After firing some expletives my way he answered “Yes.” I looked at him and said “Then just answer my question next time.” He began arguing with me but I just handed him some socks and walked away. I almost left the shelter.
I am normally a diplomatic human and faster on my feet than that moment would indicate. However, I realized that I was so bothered at being dressed down by someone who couldn’t even feed himself much less house himself that diplomacy wasn’t in it for me. Of course my thoughts weren’t that conscious but in the end it is no less true.
The fact is, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have asked twice. I didn’t even realize that I really had because I didn’t care that much about how it would make this man feel to be questioned. I would take anyone else at their word for the most part; but not this man. I was assuming he was taking advantage of the shelter. One cannot, in many ways, help such assumptions when one is given static rules to follow, but if I’d cared about the man’s pride I would have found a more discreet way to deal with the issue. As it was, I simply disrespected his word. And because his response was so inappropriate I wrote it off.
I felt angry when I left the shelter. It took me the entire day to get to a point where I was willing to admit my culpability in that scenario. It shows me how much I still stratify the people worth my best energies and empathetic impulses. Once I made the mistake of asking again why he didn’t get the supplies everybody else got last night and once he began laying into me I should have simply stopped him and said, “Listen Arthur, please excuse me. I shouldn’t have asked again. We have rules they want us to follow and in the process of adhering to them I have forgotten my manners. I’ll get you those socks right away.”
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