AGAR: Tipping a cap to all the nice people out there

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People are nice.

That’s the conclusion I came to after encountering Canada’s most horrible woman at The Bay over the weekend.

It was closing time. I made it to the cash register just as they were closing some of the doors and directing people to leave through doors open to those of us who were there overtime.

The woman wanted to leave by one of the doors that was closed for the night. That door was closest to her car and I get why she was frustrated.

But apparently the nice ladies who were trying to close up could for whatever reason could not grant her request.

She began screaming at them. She wouldn’t stop. On and on and on.

Various people, including the lady who was supposed to be closing out my sale, became involved.

She screamed, I am not exaggerating — it was loud and rude — for 10 minutes. She could have been to her car by then.

The proper thing would have been to go home and if still angry Monday morning, file a complaint with store management.

When I was leaving, on a floor above where the incident took place, a young man was monitoring the door and letting customers out.

“Could you hear the screaming from up here,” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” he said.

I was inclined to write today about the loss of civility in our world, but then I thought about the ladies working at The Bay. I assume they are not getting executive salaries. They just wanted to finish up and go home.

But in the face of it they were polite. The clerk checking me out noticed the box holding one of my items was a bit bent and offered to go get another one, even though by that time it was well past closing. Not necessary, as I didn’t care about the box. I was going to throw it out immediately anyway. (This is not a column about over packaging.)

Recently I was on a trip in the U.S. when a lens fell out of my glasses. The tiny screw holding it in had fallen out. I went to a local optical store where an employee put in a new screw.

“How much?” I asked,

“No charge,” he replied.

I said, “I appreciate it, but I am from out of town. I won’t come back and be a customer.”

“No problem. Have a nice day,” he said.

A number of times when riding alone on my motorcycle far from home, I have had a problem and I can always solve it at a gas station by walking up to a guy in a truck and asking, “You got tools? I need some help.”

The answer is always “yes.”

Some people are criminals, scammers and even outright evil.

Some businesses take advantage of their customers just to make an extra buck.

Too many politicians are at best oblivious to the damage they cause to us all. I will continue to write about that as much as needed.

Some people will blow up everyone else’s day because a minor irritation for them is unacceptable and someone has to pay.

Those incidents stand out.

But they stand out because day to day, week to week, our interactions with other people are at least pleasant and often pleasurable.

Because overall, people are nice.