One of the people attending the church dinners on Wednesdays that I’ve been going to (not every week) is a man with hair down below his shoulders. Name of Vladimir. (Yes, happy to name and shame him.)
The dinners are mainly for the homeless and those on low income, but all are welcome -- no one is asked questions about their financial situation, since it's a church and a charity. After the meal, the homeless people sleep there for the night and have breakfast there the next day.
The first time I met the vlady selfish man was in the queue outside, complaining that it was past 6pm and they hadn’t opened the doors yet. I said maybe they were short staffed, adding that I was just grateful for the free food that was all cooked and served by volunteers who gave their time and effort unstintingly. He didn't take the hint and carried on moaning, saying he was in a hurry. What a selfish man. It was all about himself. I was tempted to say, "Well, then go and cook your own dinner. See how much time you'll save."
It wasn’t as if the weather was wet and horrible. Even if it had been, I would’ve put up with it. After all, we were getting a free meal without having to do anything but turn up.
A couple of weeks ago, the ladies-only table was full, so I had to go to the one next to it, and sat down beside someone with long hair whose face I couldn’t see until it was too late. I’d actually thought it was a woman.
I should’ve got up and left the table when he looked up from his phone and I saw that it was him.
He started expressing loudly his indignation about the other tables getting their food already but not ours. No one at the table supported him.
(All the work has to be done by the volunteers in charge of each table, right down to fetching salt and pepper. That’s the rule there.)
I said, “I’m just grateful that I’m getting free food, with all the work done for me,” hoping he’d take the hint and stop moaning.
Not only didn't he take the hint, he actually started to turn his guns on the volunteers themselves, “What are they doing? They’re not doing any work!!” -- “not doing any work” like as if he was paying for it. What a churlish chap.
He said he had no time to wait. I was tempted to ask him to go and make his meal himself: spend money and time buying the ingredients, prepping it, cooking it (and paying for the electricity). See how he’d like to be having to do all the work himself, and pay for it too.
Being a coward who was brought up not to have a row in public (behaving like a fishwife) and therefore lacking rowing skills, I didn’t challenge him. (I don’t even have rows in private.)
Next, he accosted a female volunteer walking past, asking about his dinner.
I was so disgusted by him I decided to skip the meal.
I saw a woman (called Yesu, from Eritrea, who’d sat at the ladies-only table before) hovering outside, having just arrived but not admitted because they were full. So I told the volunteers at the door that she could have my seat, and left.
Yesu speaks very little English, so she wouldn't have understood most of the vlady whinger's griping, although it doesn't require any linguistic ability at all to feel the aggressive vibes from the vlady selfish man.
(London, 2026)
PS: Some of you might've noticed the wordplay employed in this blog. A deliberate decision, to defuse the stress a bit -- a bit of my Distraction Therapy. Apart from naming and shaming him, of course, which gives me great pleasure (letting the world know about him).
No comments:
Post a Comment