The Wise Man who Only said Yes
by Tedisking   

    I have worked at a resteraunt for three years now and during most of my employment the social group I recently seperated from has picked on and degraded various employees.  It wasn’t so much to be spiteful, yet more of a group activity to rid ourselves of boredom.  It wasn’t our only activity it was just one of a few.  Our sub-group in the resteraunt was composed entirely of gamers.  You would have to play this game called World of Warcraft to get in.  Anyone who didn’t play it was fair game for ridicule.

    One day a man who’s name I will not give out began working at the resteraunt.  He was from Albania he moved over to the states after the iron curtain collapsed like so many others to avoid the chaos that had enveloped the former Soviet Union or at least that’s the story I’ve come to know.  It has been said he was a poliece officer.  Some say he was a soldiure but regaurdless of those stories I knew only what I saw.  An old man who could speak little english.  So little that I’ve only heard him say three words during my entire three years working with him.   

    This man who shall remain unnamed would cook eggs silently with a scowl on his face.  The unnamed man would ask for nothing and only do as he was told.  My friends and I were an ignorant bunch back then.  In fact some of our former group still are, however back then it was worse.  We would make fun of that unnamed man behind his back. We’d make fun of about anything from his posture, to the foul smell he spread when he walked by.  We’d also make fun of this man because of the speed of which he cooked the orders.  We’d say, “Faster,” in his foreign tounge just to taunt him.  The unnamed man never seemed to notice any of this.  Perhaps this was because he is illiterate to english.  Perhaps he just wanted us to think that.  He might not even have cared. 

    After awhile we stopped making fun of the man and moved on.  Some of us grew up and some didn’t.  The unnamed man continues to work there every week and whenever he is asked to do something he always says the one word we attribute to him, “Yes.”