What Happened When I Saw Two Women Arguing in Public and Pulled Up to Help
How many times during the past year have you seen a headline about a public tirade between strangers? These days, they increasingly come in the form of racist, prejudiced rants. At some point, “This is America!” gets captured on an iPhone’s B roll in front of an Applebee’s or Walmart, and then funnels into your Instagram feed. But do you ever think about what you’d do if you were there? Would you watch it unfold or would you get involved?
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I was faced with this exact situation on a Tuesday night in December, in the middle of a Target parking lot. I needed to pick up a prescription and the pharmacy happened to be in one of those massive, downtown City Targets. Because of its large layout, this particular City Target has a multi-floor underground parking garage that validates your parking ticket if you spend a set amount in store but stay for less than two hours.
It was almost 9pm when I turned the corner to enter the garage. As I drove down the ramp into the garage, I could tell something was off. There was a car behind one of the exit dividers and the driver’s-side door was wide open with the trunk fully raised. I saw two women standing at the back of the car, and one of them was waving her arms.
As I rolled down my window to get my parking ticket, I listened to the women arguing about a parking ticket. Judging by her over-sized jacket with yellow reflectors, one of the women in question was the garage attendant. I looked for a nearby parking spot and wondered what to do.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I’d do if I saw a physical or verbal altercation in public. Since the Trump-era’s dust settled, it feels like a different game and you have to be cautious. You never know what might make someone upset and you never know what they’ve been taught the world should be like. I’m not a therapist or a parking garage aficionado. I’m no problem-solving expert. I’m the baby of my family so I solve arguments with charm, banter, and hints of deflection. As I parked, I thought: Maybe if I drive slowly, the argument will stop. But when I got out of my car, they were still fighting. I walked slowly toward them.
“Hey, is there anything I can help with?”
The woman with the car, whom I’ll call the customer, lasered her gaze in my direction but never focused on me.
“She’s trying to make me pay for parking just because I lost the ticket!”
The parking attendant turned to me, too. “She doesn’t have the ticket. I was trying to help!” The attendant had a strong accent. In my head, I guessed she was originally from somewhere in Africa.
The customer responded, flailing her arms as she spoke. “She thinks I’m lying! Look! Look I just bought stuff. I have the validation! She thinks I’m lying!”
“I said I’d help her but I have to go into the box….” The attendant tried to explain the complicated process she’d need to go to in order to let the customer through without her ticket.
Both sides of this argument seemed accurate. There were Target bags in the trunk — seemingly making the minimum purchase for free parking. And the rules of public spaces are notoriously strict. The customer could have lost the ticket anywhere throughout her shopping trip.
But that’s not the only reason she angry.
“She was very rude and very disrespectful to me,” she said, pointing at the attendant. The customer was upset by how the attendant spoke to her and how the attendant meanly told her she’d have to pay the max parking fee without the ticket. The attendant interrupted this explanation several times. After a while, the attendant and customer were talking over each other, making their judicial cases to me.
I knew I had to say something. It’d been too long. So I geared up and put my best problem solving skills in drive:
“Err …..”
They continued to talk over one another.
Say something, Nisha.
“Hey I know you’re mad. I get it. These parking rules are dumb,” I said to the customer. I paused. “I have to say, I’m the daughter of immigrants, and the way things come across can sound offensive or attacking, but [the attendant] is just trying to do her job.”
It didn’t get through to her. The back and forth continued for another 20 minutes until finally, the attendant began to cry. I’d had enough. I went up to the attendant and asked how we could get the customer out of there for free and as soon as possible. The attendant continued to make her case while fumbling through her keys. She opened the pay box and lifted the gate. In a matter of a few minutes, the customer was gone.
Then it was just me and the attendant. I put my arms around her.
The attendant, still in tears, explained that she needed approval to let people pass without a parking ticket, especially after hours. She said that people try to cheat the system all day long, telling her that they lost the ticket so they can park downtown for free. But the attendant said the costs of people parking without paying add up. It made sense to me. I saw her side of it.
The attendant absentmindedly transitioned her story to her life, how she used to be a nurse back home in East Africa. She couldn’t afford nursing classes in the U.S., so she’d been working as a parking attendant for years, sending money back home for her young kids. In the most sobering of comments that night, made while holding back more tears, the attendant explained, “I wouldn’t be here if I had a choice.” In that moment, I was reminded that our jobs don’t only provide income, they offer us pride. Whether you’re a parking attendant at a Target or its president, it means something to do your job and do it well, with dignity.
In most situations, I won’t get involved if it has nothing to do with me. But we should work on building good instincts and if there’s something to contribute to benefit others — do it. You don’t have to be a doctor or a celebrity to positively affect others. The customer thanked me several times. The attendant hugged me again and again. It was about the power of listening to let two women feel heard that mattered, to give their dignity a protected place. And it was a lesson that in this era — once you make your decision about someone — it’s a long road to flip the perception and it won’t happen in a parking lot. The instinctual human connection is worth acting on if there’s a chance to do good, and in this divisive era, it’s an obligation.
