Generosity (?)
Prologue
To give you some background before I go into the content here, I had just concluded a successful interview (the first of two) and was stopping by the library on my way home. The trip from there was bizarre – random acts of generosity sprung up, seriously making me wonder whether the world was conspiring to be generous, or whether it was some kind of karma day.
Act I: A mother with a stroller
I held the door open. Seems ordinary enough, right? It all started here.
A mother with three kids, one of which was in a stroller, was trying to get out the front door. Maybe that entrance wasn’t accessible, because the door wasn’t opening for them.
So before I entered, I held the door open for them, allowing her to get her stroller out.
I entered the library no wiser that this was the first act of many.
Act II: Library
I only had to check in two books, and the library has self-serve check-in machines, to which I wandered when I entered.
It’s really an easy process, but the lady overseeing check-in still had to help the patron in front of me, for whom it was probably a first-time experience.
“Yeah, that’s it. You just push here on the screen and put your books on the table.”
My usual experiences with librarians are far worse.
Act III: Viva
Viva bus at a bus terminal; credit IRT.BMT.IND (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0)
I ran across the street to catch the bus that was about to leave.
For those of you unfamiliar with this transit system, an individual with a ticket ‘validates’ the ticket on a machine before boarding the bus. That’s what I attempted to do.
The machine that takes in a ticket and validates it
I became frustrated because the machine wouldn’t take in the ticket – even after 4 or 5 tries, and even more frustrated because I was making the bus wait. I gave up, and boarded anyways through the door beside the driver. I genuinely intended to validate the ticket.
A minute or two into the ride, I asked the driver whether it was okay if I validated the ticket at my destination. His response surprised me.
“Sure… if you want.”
What the heck? Now, Viva is nicknamed “Free-va” because of the honour system on which fares work. Offenders keep their tickets without validating them – avoiding the fare – and are occasionally caught by enforcement officers.
Was this generosity, entrapment, or plain dereliction?
I fully intended to validate my ticket at the destination.
