I want to write some travel guides to Cheyenne. I've only lived here 2 years and haven't really explored...this acquaintance of mine, that I had blogged about twice before, has lived here 16 years and seems to know the streets pretty well.
So...I ended up respnding to her text, "I think I really messed up."
I texted back, "How so."
She texted back, "Let's meet for coffee at the library or at thePancake Breakfast at the Depot."
I texted, 9 am, Depot.
(Every year, during Frontier Days, there is a free pancake breakfast at the Cheyenne Depot. This was my first time going.)
So we meet, and she tells me, she messed up going to the Dazbog Coffee House interview. She thinks it was a setup .
First off, of course, she arrived at the Depot on a bike. A nice bike. A bike that she could easily have used to bike from her home to Dazbog Coffee and back each day if she'd gotten the job. It was about 5 miles each way, and if you need a job or are going to get kicked out of your apartment, I'd think biking 10 total miles a day to and from work are no brainers!
Now, here's where I made my mistake. I was so shocked when she said this that I said "Why? Because it's a Russian coffee house? You think someone will think you're a commie?"
She tried to explain, but after just one sentence I scoffingly interrupted, so she stopped explaining to me. And of course that was a mistake on my part because I really, really want to know why in the world she thinks going to this Coffee House to get an application was a "set-up." How and why could it be a "set-up" especially since, even though she filled out an application, someone else was hired before she was even interviewed.
(She had started to say that the woman at Job Service had told her about the opening, but didn't seem concerned about how she was supposed to get there. I said something about her bike...that's when she got annoyed and said, "If you're going to question me I'm not even going to tell you about it."
And at this point I was fed up and said, "Yeah, let's just drop it."
She just came across as paranoid to me, a conclusion which was cemented when she then said that she had figured out that someone was stalking her. "Who," I asked. "I don't want to say," she answered.
There again, I didn't scoff, but it was so out in left field that I didn't bother to ask her any more quesitons,
She's in her fifties, still looks reasonably attractive, I suppose, but who would be stalking her and why? Her ex-husband? I'd think he'd avoid her like the plague, assuming he still lived in town. She's got a son and a daughter, apparently (who don't live in the state and whom apparently she cant borrow money from), and brothers and sisters. Doesn't get along with her sister, and her brothers, neither, although I think one of these must have leant her rent money.
But...who would stalk her? She's unemployed and has been for a long time. Seems to spend most of her time at the library. Even if she was employed, she'd be a clerk or something non-consequential. No one would stalk her.
But maybe if I'd just kept my mouth shut and let her talk, instead of scoffing and trying to make her see sense, she'd have said more and then I could know a bit more about what is going on in her head.
It's also been three weeks since I helped her sign up to Textbroker. She had to fax in or email a scan of her driver's license. I asked her if she'd done this, she said no.
So that's three weeks where she could have been earning money that she hasn't been earning money.
So I gave up any thought of working with her right then and there. You just can't help some people.
However, in future...I MUST curb my tongue should someone say such strange things to me. I've got to shut up and let them talk and not offer an opinion until I've heard the whole story. I doubt if it'd be very logical, but at least I'd know who she thinks is setting her up and why...and how getting her to go to a job interview could possibly be a "set-up"!
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