I explained quickly, and the men told their story. They had both lost their jobs months ago. One had been laid off from a factory where he had worked for nearly twenty years.
The other had seen his small business fail. Rent was overdue. Bills stacked up.
It would have been easy to call the police. Easy to demand payment they didn’t have. Easy to turn away.
But our manager, who had been listening silently, did something different. He stepped forward, looked them in the eye, and said, “Pay what you can. I’ll take care of the rest.”
The two men pulled a few wrinkled bills from their pockets.
It wasn’t much, but it was what they had. Our manager accepted it with dignity, no shaming, no anger. In that moment, something shifted.
The air felt lighter. The men stood taller, as though a weight had lifted from them—not just the debt, but the crushing fear of being treated as less than human. Words That Stayed With Me
As they prepared to leave, one of the men paused at the door.
He turned back, his eyes glistening with tears he tried to hide. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you for treating us like humans.”Continue reading…
