Kind Regards, by Anna Van Dyk

I’d like to break with tradition and write from the other side of this conversation: as the customer, not the server.

The other weekend I found myself at the Columbia Road Flower Market with my mother, brother and his girlfriend. We were having a lovely time. We grabbed bacon sandwiches and a hot dog from a street stall. I noticed my mother was struggling to remain standing whilst we ate – she is, sadly, not well – so I proposed we wander over to the cafe nearby and buy some coffees so she could sit down for a brief moment. 

I know it is unusual to bring in food from one establishment into another- I have worked long enough in a restaurant, and eaten out enough, to know basic etiquette. But, seeing as we were at a street market, and that this café was a friendly hole in the wall that dished out cups of tea from chipped mugs (which I love), and seeing as I pay this cafe a visit literally every time I find myself at this market, I thought it wouldn't be a massive problem. Not if I explained. 

But before I could say anything at all, the proprietor barked at me that he could not serve me whilst we had food from another place in our hands. 

Sir, I implored, my mother is not very well. She cannot stand for long. We are all going to buy drinks, and my brother and I can stand on the street if it will help. Could you do us the kindness of letting her at least sit for a while?

Despite my explanation, his anger was harrowing.

It exploded like bile over our sparkling Sunday afternoon. 

I attempted one last time to ask him to show him a tiny bit of kindness to a sick woman and her family. 

But his response was so venomous that, humiliated, I had to ask my mother to stand up and leave. Like we were some sort of scum not welcome in my favourite café. 

People think that working in a restaurant or café is about kindness, about taking care of people. I know, however, that it is about making money. It is a job, and there are rules and rhythms and codes we are asked to follow in order to get our pay at the end of every month. 

But perhaps there is no job better suited to breaking the rules than those in hospitality. 

The incident at the flower market has dogged me since that weekend. I think about how sad that man made me. What I should have said in response to his outrage. That perhaps we were totally in the wrong to expect him to serve us, but how he will never know how much his kindness would have meant to us. 

I think, too, about a woman I turned away from The Restaurant when she asked to use the toilet. We were told that it was only for patrons, and that this was a hard and fast rule not to be broken. 

I should have let her in. I should have broken that rule. I should have been kind. 

The only lesson I can walk away with, I suppose, is the gravity of the incident. It is a little reminder of the tired adage that being kind really is cool. 

And by that I mean real kindness- not the grander gestures of buying someone flowers, or offering to pay for their dinner. But letting someone use the loo. Or offering a lady a seat at your cafe, even if it goes against your rule book. And not because it will please the lady. But because it will give comfort to her daughter whose heart is breaking at the reality that her mother is too sick to remain standing for the duration of time it takes to eat her lunch. 

We can never know who our little allowances and small acts of kindness give hope to. Or how the absence of them can weigh on someone for days after.