Monday, November 26, 2012

Cruel to be Kind

I was having my lunch alone at KFC Komtar last Friday, ordered a snack plate and found an open air seat. Yeah, there's a new KFC opening in town, located at Pacific Komtar.
 
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a stranger appeared and stood beside my table. The stranger looked like a tomboy, or a pengkid to be exact. She was asking for food from me, specifically one chicken.

I was in a very good mood that time, kind of empathetic too, because I was doing a thesis on empathetic behaviour so there I was, trying to practice what I was basically preaching myself.  So as impulsive as I was during situations like these, I grabbed one of my two chickens, wrapped it in a tissue and handed it to her.

A few minutes later, out of the blue, the KFC Supervisor came out and asked her to leave, and told me that the stranger had been disturbing customers for a lot of times.

"That person is just 20 year old, still young," the supervisor told me, "and already disturbing people and doing this."

"We don't want to entertain her because it will show as if we are encouraging her," she added.

I was surprised, and a little guilty too.

The Supervisor came and handed me a new chicken which I didn't request for.

I guess sometimes, we must not let empathy gets the best of us. Sometimes, we gotta think in the long run. If we keep lending a hand to help this kind of person, when are they going to help themselves?

If they never stop getting help, they will never start to help themselves.

Notetoself: Gotta be selective when helping people in the future. If they are healthy and young, they should not this kind of sympathy from us. And don't feel guilty when you are being cruel for the sake of the person's own good.