This week, I learnt something about a colleague I have worked with for years that not only surprised me but also brought to the fore how cosmetic our interactions can be with people we generally spend most of our day with. It was on the Tuesday following the long Easter weekend, and since the last I’d seen him was Thursday the week before, I enquired how his Easter had been and what he did to mark the holiday.
He laughed and said, “I don’t celebrate Easter.” This profession is no respecter of holidays, unless you’re on leave or it is your off day, a holiday, any holiday, is a working day for us.
I therefore assumed he meant that he worked through Easter. Since I knew his off days were Friday and Saturday, I was puzzled and enquired why he worked throughout the weekend, to which he clarified that he doesn’t celebrate Easter because he’s Muslim. I thought he was pulling my leg because, among other things, his surname is common with people who come from the Rift Valley a place he calls home, a place that he grew up in. He had been a practicing Muslim for over 20 years, he told me.
That conversation got me reflecting on how we can exist in the same space with someone for years, and talk to each other daily, yet fail to really know one another because our interactions are superficial and rarely scratch the surface.
We are satisfied with the automatic, “How are you?”, “I’m fine,” kind of interaction that, when you think about it, means nothing. That conversation nudged me to examine how I generally interact with people, (outside of my family and close friends) that I spend time with daily. I found myself wanting.
The truth is that many of us tend to make assumptions about other people based on their appearance, and how they look. How they talk, how they dress, where they live, where and what they eat, where they work, where they went to school, yet all these are general characteristics that can be quite misleading. You see a well-dressed man or woman and you assume that they must be well-off, while you are likely to view the less well-dressed ones as struggling.
I was once seated in a café somewhere next to a group of young college-going girls when a woman who did not look affluent in any way walked towards this huge, gleaming, no doubt very expensive machine of a car, opened the door to the driver’s seat, got in and zoomed off, no doubt to her a house somewhere in a leafy suburb. The group exclaimed in surprise and one of the young women commented, “Aki hakai hiyo gari…” From her appearance, the woman did not look like the category of women who could afford such a car, and they wondered why anyone who could afford such a luxury car not dress to ‘match’ her car.
I have seen the same attitude in outlets that sell clothes, whether it is in one of the many boutiques around the country or high-end clothing stores. You walk in and the first thing the attendant does is look you up and down, after which he or she immediately forms an opinion about you.
In this case, whether or not you can afford what they are selling. The conclusion they form will determine how they treat you, whether they will be cold and standoffish, or whether they will be welcoming and ingratiating towards you.
Unfortunately, this is an attitude that ends up costing many business owners a significant amount of money every year, an attitude that can bring down businesses. This Sunday, should you be tempted to judge someone by appearance only, remember the saying, ‘Never judge a book by its cover’. More times than not, it rings true.
