{"id":123657,"date":"2022-10-12T17:37:08","date_gmt":"2022-10-12T22:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=123657"},"modified":"2022-10-12T17:37:10","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T22:37:10","slug":"the-view-from-the-balcony-guilty-or-not-guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-view-from-the-balcony-guilty-or-not-guilty\/","title":{"rendered":"The View From The Balcony: “Guilty or Not Guilty?”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My car was on the fritz a few weeks ago and I couldn\u2019t find a rental, so I resorted to using cabs and such. I had some wonderful drivers who were friendly and fun to talk to. But there was this one\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got in the car and immediately noticed the stench of cigarette smoke. For the sake of full disclosure, I smoke a pipe and Tatiana vanilla mini cigars on The Balcony. Not in my car. Not in my home. And I\u2019m around a lot of cigarette smokers on The Balcony, and that\u2019s fine because we\u2019re outside. In this case I was trapped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The driver was on their phone trying to work out a problem with their electricity bill. They complained profusely to the customer service person on the other end of the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI need to talk to somebody about my light bill and how I can pay it over time.\u201d
\u201cYou\u2019ll need to call (662) XXX-XXXX.\u201d
\u201cThat\u2019s the number I just called.\u201d
\u201cDid you press \u20183\u2019 when prompted?\u201d
\u201cNo. I just called the number I was told to call. Y\u2019all don\u2019t want to help me, but if I was Black you would.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They ended the call and the driver proceeded to complain to me about their financial situation, getting the run-around from the power company, how it was racist, and, again, if they\u2019d been Black this would have been fixed a long time ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was conflicted. As a counselor I listen to people\u2019s problems every day. While I felt sorry for this person and the situation they were in, I was paying for a service and didn\u2019t want to hear a rant about their problems. Then when they threw in the race card my body literally started shaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I got to my destination, City Grocery of course, I said, \u201cMay I offer you some constructive advice? You might want to stop using all that racist language when you\u2019ve got a customer in the car.\u201d
\u201cOh! I didn\u2019t mean anything by it!\u201d (Yeah. Sure.)
\u201cWell, in any case it was totally offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My hands still trembling, I walked up the steps to The Balcony, got my Greyhound, and sat in the southwest corner. I pulled out my phone to pay for my ride and paused. \u201cShould I tip or should I not tip? Should I rate this driver truthfully, or should I be more kind than that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I decided to tip anyway, but before I did I gave the driver a below average rating, two stars out of five. When I tried to go back to pay a tip the app wouldn\u2019t let me. Karma? I don\u2019t know. That\u2019s when the guilt kicked in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had just had a horrendous ride with a person who\u2019s struggling to pay their power bill. Yeah, they were mad and said some disgusting things. I would probably be mad and worried, too, but those racist comments were inexcusable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this person couldn\u2019t pay their electricity bill, maybe they couldn\u2019t pay their rent either. Maybe they were having trouble putting food on the table. Maybe there were children involved. Would my low rating and no tip place them in further jeopardy? A lot of people would say this driver got what they deserved. I can see their point, but where\u2019s the compassion in that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I decided I did the wrong thing. While I\u2019m certain speaking out against racism was right, I judged this person and took it out on them financially, perhaps the place where it hurt the most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I haven\u2019t found a way to go back and change either my rating or the lack of a tip. I can only hope that the damage was minimal, that the driver now thinks twice before saying racist things, and that in the future I\u2019ll see the bigger picture more quickly and judge more slowly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The moving finger writes;
and, having writ, moves on:
nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back
to cancel half a line,
nor all thy tears wash out a word of it<\/em>.
\u2014Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t of Omar Khayy\u00e1m<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

. . . and that\u2019s the view from The Balcony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy Weeks is a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Certified Shamanic Life Coach, an ordained minister, a singer-songwriter, and an actor. He is well-acquainted with both guilt and forgiveness. Randy may be reached at randallsweeks@gmail.com.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My car was on the fritz a few weeks ago and I couldn\u2019t find a rental, so I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":39753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11902],"tags":[10286,13250,10878],"class_list":["post-123657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-randy-weeks","tag-randy-weeks","tag-the-view","tag-the-view-from-the-balcony"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2017-5-11-View-from-the-Balcony.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}