People need encouragement more than criticism. One special day I saw someone suffering the way I once had and I stepped in with the words that would have comforted me.
I was in the office for the school bus company where I work when a woman came in crying. She had just had an accident on her very first day as a driver and was afraid she would be fired. The accident had resulted in a smudge of paint. No injury, no loss of life, no dent, no ding and no scrape. She had been yelled and screamed at. It seemed to me everyone was overreacting.
I had been in her shoes. Once the mirror on my bus clanked against another bus and I was so upset I nearly fainted. What good would fainting do, I now ask myself?
I told my teary-eyed collegue: “I can tell just by looking at you that you are very intelligent and conscientious person. You have made a tiny mistake and been yelled at. What’s going to happen now is you are going out for a driving lesson with Ken. He is excellent. He drove a tractor trailer for years. He really knows his stuff. Plus, that, he’s a very nice guy.”
“Then, you are going to put this in the rear-view mirror and you will do great here.”
Six months later, we both have our jobs and something to smile about across the parking lot. ( I presented this live April 5, 2025, at the Spoken and Stirred Coffee House and Open Mic at Dorothea Dix Unitarian Universalist Community, DDUUC.org.)
Copyright Christina Sturgis 2026. All Rights Reserved.