How we should treat immigrant workers?

Four women are at the coffee station at a business conference.

Three are guests. The third wears a catering uniform.

The event space is the fru-fru kind. 

Modern art and mouthwash in the bathroom. Sparkling water on tap.

There are blood orange slices in the glass water cooler. 

“Excuse me. Where’s the trash can?” one of the guests asks the caterer. 

“¿Trash can? ¿Trash can?” the caterer says in the tone of a Duolingo-trained tourist. 

She’s heard this word before. She should know it, but her brain can’t recall what it means under pressure. 

She looks around the room for a hint and then shrugs apologetically.

“Basura,” say three voices in heavily accented Spanish. 

“¡Ah!” The caterer pointed. 

I accidentally dribbled my milk. “¿Me pases las servilletas, por favor?” I asked the caterer, who was standing next to me. 

She pointed and the woman next to her passed a couple of napkins down the line. 

The caterer and one of the guests walked away. The woman who passed the napkins and I stayed behind, cleaning up after ourselves.

“I swear. More goes on the counter than in my cup,” I said, blotting up cream from a drawer handle. 

“Me too,” she said, wiping the sugar from her palm into the trash. 

If you try really hard, you could see this scene as a sign of decline. 

The caterer "should have" spoken the language of the people she was there to serve. 

And while she was there, she "should have" cleaned up their mess.

That's what she was being paid for.

But how gross must it feel to go through life thinking that some people’s only purpose is to accommodate you? Just because you don't understand their language.

The caterer wasn’t there to clean up after us. 

She was there to bring out fresh pitchers of milk and cream. 

Which she did. And I accidentally spilled on the counter.

You COULD see it as a sign of a decaying society. Or you could delight in how cool it is when humans connect.

Three people saw someone who was alienated and struggling. They accommodated. 

They didn’t have to be fluent in another language. 

They just had to remember enough high school Spanish to recall the word that this woman was blanking on. That's all it took to welcome her back into the conversation. 

Communication resumed, and we were all able to complete what we were there to do. 

Join the conversation