There was an old lady over the phone last week.... i was troubleshooting a software issue with her.
she sounded desperate to get hold of certain files that got lost somehow from her system. it seemed to me that she was on the verge of breaking up. i assured her that we would both try and find out the location of the file so that we could open it on her software.
she calmed down and thanked me for helping her out with the issue.
but... before we proceeded with the troubleshooting i told her that the issue that she had come up with was a billable issue according to the company's policies. she agreed to it....( personally speaking..i donot like billing the customers...but cant help it at times...lest they throw me out...)
so we started searching her files and folders and finally after an hour of search, we finally brought the file she was looking for, from a hidden location on the computer. (Ah!!! what a relief for me and the customer..)
However..thats when it happened...she suddenly broke down and thanked me immensely for helping her out in retriving the file..the file was very important to her because it contained some very important information about her financial status..
she told me she was a new user of this program and her husband used to manage everything in the program till the previous week when a sudden death took him away from her..
she went ahead and told me about how she was out of the room for five minutes and when she came back, he was nomore..he died peacefully.
she told me that now that he wasn't around anymore, she missed him badly and felt so helpless and lost without him...(they must have been so much in love with each other). it brought tears to my eyes and my voice choked.
later on she was complimenting me about the job and was also telling me that we indians are so helping and kind...and so on..
i couldnt hear everthing she said coz my ears and my voice got all blocked up and the only thing that i could think of was how painful it must have been for her to lose someone she loved...infact how painful it would be for anyone to lose the one they care about and love..
i closed my eyes, took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on my job but the lady left a mark on my mind and i couldn't help thinking about the pain she must be going through...
But this is life and life goes on even when the road is steep and the turnings are sharp...
