I'm at the train station, getting ready to get on the train to go to work, when I find an empty tap card. I decide to load it up using my work commuter subsidy card with a couple rides to leave as a lucky find for some lucky person.
I finish doing that, and I spy this trio of lost looking guys, and as I apporach them to give it to them, one of them asks if I can help them find the transit card store. They're trying to get Blind passes. They're blind. Well, two of them are blind, one can see okayish. Two don't speak english, they're immigrant refugees from Iraq. And the one who sees is not the one who can speak english. So I obviously have to help them. I decide that because I know exactly where the place is (it is the temporary one, the normal one is shut down for matinence), it's clearly my duty to help them find this place.
I figured that I can postpone the meeting that I had that morning a half hour to give myself enough time to walk them to this building and get them to the service counter. It's not busy. But when we get there, the person behind the counter tells them that Mondays are apparently supposed to be by appointment only. And these guys all traveled all the way from across the state by commuter rail in order to get these passes. I was nigh on ready to shame/fight this clerk, but I knew that if she wasn't going to budge for 3 extremely obviously disabled people, then no amount of shaming would move her. (Sidenote, how the fuck do you live with yourself turning people away like that?)
But, a solution was that they could apply online for these passes by scanning in their documentation and adding a photo. And I was so fucking pissed off that somebody would dare to turn away three people who are obviously in need of services that I decided that the four of us were going to sit down and fill out the fucking applications ourselves, in an act of administrative grievance. So we did. I took photos of all their IDs and documentation and headshots, and filled out an application for each of the three of them on my phone, and then guided them back to the station.
They were incredibly grateful, and I felt great, until I got to work, where my work mentor pulled me into our meeting and told me that I need to be more mindful about making it to meetings on time, as it's an ongoing issue for me. And she is right, and I do honestly believe she's trying to help me improve professionally, and I don't blame her, and fucking Teams has no option to notify you in advance of a meeting.
But the whole saga just underscored for me the fact that the interests of your job, and doing the right thing are not often compatible, and that being a decent person is not the same as being a good employee. I don't know, I guess don't expect a reward from this system for being moral, but do it anyway.