Monday, May 5, 2008

God Put a Smile Upon Your Face

Today it happened. The not so anonymous lady who I wanted to make smile came in to my place of work. If you don't know the story, then read 7 or so blogs down. When I first saw her, my heart jumped. It was the feeling from back in high school when a girl I had a huge crush on just walked up and I was planning to ask her out. Not really a fearful nervousness like that describes, but more a fun nervousness like, oh boy, here it goes. However, my palms were sweaty, and nervousness was indeed erupting inside me. My mind raced, what am I going to say, or do? Does she possibly know? Neither myself nor her were at the counter just yet so I made my way to it. She had sat at a table for a sec, then stood up, looked my way, and then left. Well, that certainly wasn't what I had in mind; maybe next time I thought.

The next time was 5 minutes later. She must have stepped next door for a few minutes. This was good because now I was no longer caught off guard, but had some time to get my wits about me. Unfortunately other customers were about, so I couldn't give her my full attention at first, but she went ahead and ordered in her usual semi-demanding way. It was now just me and her. Her small order was quickly coming to a conclusion with nothing as much as a smirk even cracking yet. I had to think fast, but what can I possibly say or do that is remotely worth a smile? I settled for the only thing to come to mind. Uhh, "How's the weather out there today?" I asked. Is there any small talk more ordinary or mundane that that? Thats like the standard topic of discussion when you have absolutely nothing to talk about with someone but can't stand the silence. Its so easy because pretty much everyone knows something about the weather and can easily comment on how they like it, but its also so boring. Is that really the best this little brain of mine can do? how lame.

Nevertheless, it worked. This small little expression of saying something that wasn't required in the transaction, but was just said to acknowledge the other person as an actual person, actually was able to bring out a short but sweet smile directed right at me. Almost disappointingly easy. She looked up, smiled brief but big, and said something like, "it's great, we can sure use more days like this." Yippee I thought, my feeble effort actually worked. I made her smile, or maybe just the weather did, but if so, it at least was my bringing up of the weather that brought it out. It was short and maybe not as grand and exciting as hoped for, but it did indeed happen, and she really did look genuinely happy for my existence that split second. Maybe next time I will introduce myself just for the heck of it, or maybe not. I will at least try for a string of consecutive visits with a smile. We'll see how that goes. Thanks for reading.

5 comments:

Heidi said...

Yay! Isn't it amazing how the smallest things can finally bring a smile to someone's face?

I have to admit, I frequently resort to the "how's the weather?" line when I can think of nothing to say to a customer... and it actually always buys me at least a few seconds of happy-customer face-time.

Congrats, Shaun!

shaun said...

Thanks Heidi.

Anonymous said...

Nice job, I wish I would have been there to witness it, although I probably would have been smiling too big in anticipation and ruined it being between you and her... :)kp

kylee said...

(the above kp is my mom, not me)
but wooooooo! congrats. we all knew it would come around

shaun said...

Thanks for clarifying that Kylee, I definitely would have assumed that was you. And Karen, it probably would have been 100 times better of a story to tell if you were there for it and watched me fumble through the situation. Maybe we can make it happen again.