An Act of Kindness

Seeing all the girls in white frilly blouses and tight skirts walking around in town, rushing to their offices for the first day of internship this morning brought back memories of my first work experience. I can almost smell the combination of apprehension and excitement:

“Will they like me? Perhaps they will fall head over heels in love with me because I’m punctual and efficient, and I will secure a job and never have to do the street course. Or maybe my boss will be a hard man, hard to please but with a softer side that I see at the end of my time there. Suppose my supervisor hates me.”

The thoughts were crisscrossing each other in the air, from the nervous looking guys in ill-fitting suits on the sidewalk, to the girl in the too tight skirt and heels on the boda boda waiting at the red light.

Like I said earlier, it reminded me of my first day at work, at the first job I ever had. Until December 2010, I had been a typical spoilt Ugandan sort-of-middle-class child. All through my primary school, I would enter the car in the morning, be driven to school, study, and be driven back in the evening. When I joined secondary, I was tucked away in a super strict girls school far away near the hills of the Kawolo tea plantations where the only source of excitement was spotting a bus that didn’t resemble our own and carried members of the male species. At the end of the school term, my father would ship us back to our fenced home where there was no curfew simply because we never went out. I spent my senior four long holiday sleeping, eating, and mastering the art of okusaanika (wrapping matooke in banana leaves to steam it the local way). I didn’t know anything about work that was not house chores, managing more money than my 20,000/= pocket money that was replenished on the visiting day (VD), or about drama beyond the backbiting of teenage girls.

So getting my first job, I was like the proverbial fish out of water. It was nothing glamorous and instead of slacks and heels and cute jackets, I had a uniform eerily similar to my s4 uniform: a white shirt, maroon skirt, and a tie plus some head thing that I never really figured out. I reached the place at 7:10, panting because the boss had said 7 sharp. The job description was “cashier” but they conveniently forgot to mention that I would be required to do just about everything. I had to clean the tables, sweep the restaurant, and learn how to operate the coffee machine and the cash machine, which was just impossible. You have seen the cashiers at Chicken Tonight punching in things like it is the simplest thing in the world? Ask about the first day. It is like rocket science. I consider myself a bright girl but just about every button I pressed that day was a mistake. And like time, there was no backspace - every mistake I made would be reflected on my “X and Z report” at the end of the day. The person who was supposed to teach me was more interested in looking at her baby’s pictures and texting her boyfriend. Despite my undying love for babies, I hated her for it. Moreover, the other workmates were under the impression that I was a spy sent by the new bosses (the establishment was changing hands) and their looks and glances were nothing short of dagger-like. I wanted to go home and just watch TV or even scrub the bathroom because this was torture. Every client was rude, impatient, and in some cases, abusive. At about 3pm, a white gentleman came in and said hi. No one had uttered a single word of greeting to me since 7am. I looked at him, shocked beyond words. He smiled and said hi again, and that is when I responded. He politely asked for 2 scoops of ice cream and I started to operate the dreaded machine to get him a receipt. It took a while and the panic was resurfacing, but I got through it and proudly tore his receipt off to hand it to him. He smiled, a bright genuine smile that reached his eyes, and said:

“First day, huh?”

I smiled back though my throat was closing with emotion and responded in a horse voice that I barely recognised as my own:

“Yea”

He winked and said:

“You’ll figure it out.”

He walked away, leaving me teary eyed from his kindness, his politeness, his patience, his quiet strength. I loved him so much; I could have married him that second.