Metamor4Sis

You just had to laugh.

Otherwise you’d cry.

Honestly.

How long had she been doing this without anyone giving her some help?

Or advice?

I stood there for a long while, watching from afar. I was afraid that I would distract her from her work if I got too near. She was an old friend. A dear old friend. A dear old friend who was obviously struggling.

Actually, I say that I watched her from afar. But in reality, I could barely see her. There was such a crowd around her. The glimpses I got of her showed her normally composed features creased into a frown which didn’t seem to ease throughout the entire time she sat there. If anything, they seemed to be even more set as the beads of sweat trickled down the sides, framing her normally beautiful unlined face. Meanwhile, the crowds thronged her, waving their hands and pressing for her attention. She frantically processed their payments, scrambling for change as she dug into a box of cash on the chair beside her.

It was almost an hour before there was any possibility of talking with her.  Another hour before she seemed to be able to make some sense of her takings. I walked closer to her table where she sat, money stacked in varying piles on the table, some falling over. Beside them were discarded receipts. After seeing how she worked earlier, I could not help but wonder how she could possibly make any reasonable reconciliation….

When she caught sight of me, there was initially a flicker of recognition; of trying to place who I was.

Then I saw it.

That beaming smile that always preceded her squeal.

And I was not disappointed.

She was the only one who could squeal and still pronounce my name so clearly.

Then, with one hand keeping the box open, she swept her whole night’s work into it with her other hand, snapped it shut and then jumped up to greet me with a huge hug.

After an hour of catching up, I managed to bring up her work and she poured out her woes. Those creases appeared again. It was stressful just listening to her!

Finally I managed to get a word in and start giving her some suggestions. Amongst which was simply to have her cash sorted in their respective denominations. Something like an mmf drawer would do just the trick. Another tip was to have better crowd control and not let the crowd control her. Of course the obvious was to have an assistant she could trust and could share the workload with. It was unnecessary for her to handle it all by herself.

I have to say that I went home feeling rather pleased that I was able to help her. Much  more, of course, is that I have found an old friend!

We’ve made a date to meet up next week and this time we won’t be talking work!