Dot and Mars: You can't stop us, cause we like doing it

One of the reasons i'm really enjoying my job at the moment are because of the people i am meeting each day.  It's not all roses and I do still meet an extraordinary number of absolute dicksucks, but i try not to waste too much time on them and give each person the benefit of the doubt that they're going to be awesome... and sometimes, they actually are!

Yesterday i had an old guy come and sit in front of me with barely discernable English... i tried really hard, listened really carefully... but i just had no idea what he was saying to me.  So i took him over to the map on the wall and got him to point where he wanted to go and worked out it was Barbados.  Sweet... So i set about trying to find a fare with reasonable connections straight through to freakin' Barbados, kinda skipping over the 'conversation' part of the sale process.

It was taking ages cause what d'ya know, it's neither cheap nor easy to get from Melbourne to Barbados but i found something i could offer the guy which posed the next problem; trying to get his name out of him.  I asked him if he'd booked at the store before and after a while finally understood that his wife had booked here before when he added 'but she died'.

Then he just kinda kept repeating it... 'my wife, she died... now i got no one'.  Meanwhile i've stopped looking at the computer, as every time he said this, he was getting more and more upset.  'My wife, she died... now i got no one'.  And he's starting to get visibly distressed, and well up... so im starting to well up too, then he starts crying, so i start crying as well.  He just kept saying it like he couldnt believe it - couldnt believe his wife had died and that he's been left here, with no one.  Suddenly, i understood him perfectly and it was so fucking upsetting i cant even begin to express it.

He said he had no family here and had to go back to Barbados.  I agreed, he should go to where his people are.  The store is full and people waiting to be served, he's crying, i'm crying and i cant find a routing with reasonable fucking connections.

So that was pretty fucking... real.  Not the funnest day at work ever, but definitely proof that i am actually a human.