For Wilshire Baptist Church
“Are you having a good day?”
That’s what I asked the woman sitting across from me behind thick layers of protective glass at the Social Security Administration office on Central Expressway. I was there Wednesday afternoon to deliver a document required to complete my profile for future benefits.
I asked the question after she had asked me a long string of questions to verify my identity: full name, birthday, place of birth, address, spouse’s birthday. She had stopped asking and was making keystrokes on her computer, so I asked my totally unrelated question to fill the awkward silence: “Are you having a good day?”
“Yes, but it’s been a long day,” she answered. She leaned into that word “long,” but I’m pretty sure I saw her shoulders relax as she looked at me with a weary smile.
That question – “Are you having a good day?” – is one I learned from LeAnn and her mother, Thelma. They readily ask that question when standing in a line or at a counter, and it has a way of dismantling whatever invisible barrier there may be between clerk and customer or doctor and patient. It breaks the ice and transforms an otherwise lifeless transaction into a human encounter. Mother and daughter will go to the grocery store or a doctor’s appointment, and later when I ask how it went, I’m not told about the cost of eggs or the result of the physical exam or whatever. Instead, I learn the checker just moved into a new apartment and is getting settled in, or I hear the latest details about the doctor’s children and their school and career pursuits.
Two summers ago while getting daily treatments at UT Southwestern, I made small talk about weather and traffic with the radiation techs while LeAnn was creating a real relationship with Angela, who checked us in at the counter in the waiting room. Our visits are less frequent now, but last time we were there, Angela saw us, squealed with delight and ran around the counter to hug us both.
“It’s so good to be in the waiting room to see old friends,” Angela said before LeAnn asked about her family and we learned she was going on a summer cruise with the grandkids. None of this added to the efficacy of the treatments or improved the prognosis for success, but it reduced the apprehension and fear by humanizing the journey.
When I arrived at the SSA office on Wednesday, I was prepared to feel the full effect of another perfunctory governmental process. Inside, I was directed to a touch-screen kiosk where I answered questions and was issued a number. “That’s right, I’m just a number here,” I thought as I sat down and waited, but then I had another thought about the clerks behind the thick glass. While I would see just one of them, that clerk would have already seen dozens of people like me who probably were not at their best; people lost in the process, concerned and confused about benefits, tired of the waiting and wondering. And yet that clerk had a full life with her own worries and concerns.
So, I asked the question, and while I didn’t get much detail in the answer, at least for a moment we both relaxed a little.