Mall Madness

I have just arrived home from a day at the shopping mall. I am exhausted. It feels good to sit. The reason I was at the mall was to help man a kiosk. The purpose for the kiosk is to raise funds for a charity walk that I am involved in. I am on the planning committee.

The mall wasn't too busy today. That's probably due to today being the first nice day we've seen this spring. Oh yeah, the Sabres are also playing tonight. It's game five against the Islanders here in Buffalo. Buffalo is up 3-1 in the series so a win tonight would put them into the second round. Go Sabres.

We did all right collecting donations, I guess. We didn't really know what to expect because we had never done anything like this before. Our tactic was to engage shoppers as they walked by and ask them if they would be willing to donate $1 to the walk. I thought that asking politely for $1 would be the best way to go. You can't get much easier than that, right? There were many different modes of response. Some stopped and made a donation. Others slowed a bit and then said "No Thanks" and kept walking. Others dismissed you with a hand or discouraging face while others ignored you completely.

It was interesting watching people as they approached our kiosk. You could see the various behaviors exhibited in attempts to avoid eye contact or discourage an approach. It was comical to a point because I do some of the same things when I'm walking through the mall as a shopper. You see the person taking donations or engaging people as they walk buy and all you want to do is get by them without incident. You look in the opposite direction or you change your walking pattern or even speed sometimes. For the first time I felt what it was like to be on the other end of that scenario.

It doesn't feel good when they dismiss you completely. Especially when you are trying to be nice and not aggressive. I guess what bugged me the most about that kind of thing is knowing how easy it would be for them to just find that $1 and take the two seconds to donate it. Would they be worse off if they did? Would I be worse off if I did? Would I be saying "Man, I wish I had that $1 bill back". Probably not. I think this kind of thing happens to each and every one of us multiple times every single day. I'm not talking about donation opportunities to charities this time even though those do happen too sometimes. I'm talking about the person you walk by in the hall at your office and don't say hello to or give a smile. The person who leaks a little bit of their life's stresses in conversation but we don't stick around to hear them out or offer our help. The phone call that we let go to voice mail because it's not a good time for us.

We are given opportunities to make donations in people's lives all the time. I know this because I see it in my life all the time and we are all pretty much the same in this respect. What if the people that we let slip by feel like I felt at times at the mall today? Dismissed. Not a priority. Not worth the time. It's making me think that I need to try harder to view these "interuptions" as opportunities to bless someone other than myself.