I've never even had a job where I had metaphorical blood on my hands. Today it was literal.
Earlier this summer, I lost my old job of 4 years and subsequently took the first one I was offered a few weeks later. The job is with a hospitality giant, in their timeshare division. My job is to post up in various touristy locations around the city that are owned by said hospitality giant and literally flag people down and convince them to come to a timeshare presentation. Of course we offer incentives, which are legitimately pretty good. I knew the industry had a bad reputation going in. But I needed a job. And everyone I met was super nice and professional. And yeah, the wave the prospect of a lot of money in front of you. So I decided to give it a go.
I was assigned to a restaurant property. Us timeshare agents have a booth next to the restaurant's host station. Guests come up and down an escalator directly in front of the booth and station. There are rules we have to follow so we don't interfere with the flow of the restaurant. There's 2-4 of us agents at any given time and then there's the rest of the restaurant staff (several dozen people). So generally we try to pitch customers as they're leaving, before they get on that escalator. I quickly became uncomfortable with the aggressiveness with which some agents went after customers. I saw people talked into attending timeshare presentations before they even knew what was happening. It didn't sit right with me. Again, I had reservations going in, but I needed a job.
Then we come to tonight's incident. It's me and two other agents and the booth. I was doing whatever behind the booth's desk when I heard one of my coworkers call out to some people, asking them to come over (totally standard). I looked up because I saw one person, a young woman, approaching, and figured I'd greet her. Then I saw the woman behind her, who was already on the escalator. When the young woman called to her, she instinctively turned around and tried to walk back up the down escalator. She tripped. And fell. And completely wrecked her shins and feet. Wearing sandals, too. She makes it back up to the floor. It all happened so fast. I actually yelled “No!” when I first saw her turn and trip. My recall is fuzzy for a few seconds. There is definitely talk of bleeding. I guide the women behind our booth, where we luckily had a chair. My two co-agents kind of check in to see what happened but don't do anything meaningful that I can recall.
I yelled for a first aid kit. On of the restaurant workers said only a manager can get one. So I said, “then bring me a manager!” There was blood. Not a ton, but enough. Some of it got on the floor and a bit got on my hands (yup, there's the “blood on my hands” part). The woman's feet and shins are scrapped to hell from the escalator fall. And she was in a lot of pain and mortified at what happened. I scramble for paper towels. We get the worst of the bleeding, which was on one of her big toes, under control.
A manager comes over and she and I end up spatting a little because she says there is no self-contained first aid kit, just some disparate band aids and gloves and such. In this moment I am aghast and angry that there's no actual first aid kit. But she brings bandaids, gloves and alcohol pads from somewhere. Again, this is all happening fast so I'm probably missing some details. For example, I don't know what my co-agents were doing at this point because my focus was solely on the women, who turned out to be mother and daughter.The daughter says she knows first aid so I sit back and just talk to them while she patches her mom up. The restaurant managed stayed for a bit too and was very helpful and calming. She had the mom fill out an incident report. Who knows what will become of that. I stayed there as well, sitting on the floor next to the daughter helping as best I could and talking the mom through it. Telling her it wasn't her fault (she kept apologizing, poor lady). Both she and her daughter were super nice and stayed pretty calm. I should've taken pictures of the injuries and gotten their names and info. Dammit. Wasn't thinking straight. Turned out they were from out of town and were here on a girls' trip for the daughter's 21st birthday. And today was her birthday.
By now it's past 9pm and the nearest urgent care clinics are closed. The injuries aren't bad enough for an ER so they decide to just Uber back to their hotel and go to urgent care in the morning. I walked them down to the lobby and that was that. I was incandescent with rage at this point. I go back upstairs, find a quiet spot and yes, I called my parents. They calmed me down enough so I didn't quit there on the spot, but they agreed I do need to quit.
I was still pretty upset when I go back to the booth. My co-agents were there, acting normal and back to pitching customers. I have no way to know what, if anything, they discussed about the incident between themselves. Moments before, I'd been wiping blood off the floor behind where they were standing.
I go up to the agent who set all this off by calling out to the women in the first place. I guess I was pretty confrontational because I went up to him and said, “so are we gonna talk about what just happened?” and he just stammered then didn't say anything else. I go back behind the desk and say to the other agent who is there, “I literally had that woman's blood on my hands.” He didn't respond. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn't hear me due to the loud music. I stood there in kind of a stupor for a few minutes until my two coworkers decided we were calling it a night. I grabbed my stuff and left. I have no clue if this has been reported to OUR managers. I know I didn't report it. I just wanted to get home. Should I be the one to report it and then just quit? Any other advice?
So in summary: a woman got badly injured on her daughter's birthday, in an unfamiliar city, all because of a timeshare pitch. Greed is evil.