Item

A Warm Hug

Title (Dublin Core)

A Warm Hug

Description (Dublin Core)

This personal item is a jacket I received from a customer back during the Spring of 2020. I was an essential worker at Lowe's at the time and quarantine had just been mandated. It was an extremely cold and rainy day; cold to the point of where the wind was blowing the doors to-and-fro and I could not ring up a customer without stopping to put my hands in my pockets. As I worked, a middle-age guest, comes up to register and noticed that I was shivering nonstop. She paused as she got ready to hand me her payment and asked if I needed another jacket. I smiled and told her “No, I’m okay,” but she persisted and asked again. I reassured her that I was okay and she nodded and smiled sweetly and told me “thank you” and to have a bless day. After she left, I did not think much about the encounter besides the fact that she was genuinely a sweet and kind woman. About 30 minutes later, the same woman approached me in my line again, but this time with a Target bag in her hand and jacket in the other. With a sweet smile again, she told me that she used the last bit of her cash she had on her to go buy me something warm so I would not freeze the rest of my shift. While it was a small act, it meant a lot to me considering that she was stranger and was willing to go that far to make sure I was okay. I was not able to give the woman a hug after the exchange (we actually gave each other a "COVID fist bump" out of solidarity,) but it honestly felt all the same. Her act showed me that despite race, gender, age, or orientation, we were all one in the same in that moment and that we were all going through the same trials, worries, and circumstances. To this day, I still have the jacket in my closet and I always wear it at home or outside when I need a warm hug. Whether there is an pandemic a war, or any crisis, going on in the world that experience taught me that it does not cost anything to be nice to another human being. Although there were many more hardships I experienced that year, I always looked back to moment for comfort and remembered that there was a sweet lady out there giving me love and endurance.

Date (Dublin Core)

March 16, 2020

Creator (Dublin Core)

Self

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Arizona State University

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HST580

Type (Dublin Core)

Photograph

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Clothing & Accessories
English Consumer Culture (shopping, dining...)
English Emotion

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

essential worker
jacket
Lowe's
emotion
love
kindness
charity
hug
clothing

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

pandemicobject
ASU
Arizona State University
essential worker
customer service
Lowe's
clothes
Spring2020
March2020

Collection (Dublin Core)

Service Industry

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

HST 580 Professional Experience/Archives course

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

05/04/2022

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

05/05/2022
08/02/2022

Date Created (Dublin Core)

03/16/2020

Item sets

Covid 19

This item was submitted on May 4, 2022 by Ashley Hampton using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://www.covid-19archive.org/s/archive

Click here to view the collected data.

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