Good Eggs

Part of living abroad is that I am forced to confront my implicit bias every day. I approach life with a mindset that seems to me natural, normal, and reasonable, yet I am confronted daily by people, practices, and reactions that are often very far outside my expectations. It’s good for me. It challenges me to be more patient, to worry less, to accept and relax. It also makes me extremely frustrated, sometimes in tears, and often ready to throw a tantrum like this panda and book the next flight outta here. 

There are some big categories which (to use a phrase I absolutely abhor) “really grind my gears.” They include anything to do with bureaucracy and customer service. As an American who grew up in a town that thrives on tourism, “the customer is always right” attitude was ingrained into me during my formative working years. This is not a principle that translates very well into Italian.

The customer is rarely right, but nor is whoever serving them. The idea of there being only one way to do things is not taken into consideration and so there’s just not a right way. In my experience, the best customer service in Italy usually occurs when you and the person helping you agree that someone else is wrong, even if no one. is right.

As for the bureaucracy, the same principles apply: there is absolutely no standard procedure, but whatever you do, it’s not going to be correct. But since there’s more red tape involved in that story, I’ll stick with a little experience from the supermarket a couple of weeks ago. 

There’s a big supermarket in my town called the Deco Gourmet. It’s clean, it’s always open (even in the middle of the day and Sunday), and it has a wider selection of hard-to-find things such as oatmeal and Lindt dark chocolate. A couple of weeks ago I went to buy said oatmeal and picked up a carton of eggs as well. The eggs were packaged in cardboard and when I got to the checkout line, the barcode wouldn’t scan because the packaging had been glued incorrectly.

The cashier, a young man, very kindly explained the problem and asked if I would take another carton so it could scan properly. I said of course and headed towards the shelves doing that little half-jog/quick-walk you do when people are watching and waiting. “Wait,” he calls, holding up the defective egg carton. “Can you put this back on the shelf?” 

Here’s where our system thinking differed: why not scan the new “good eggs” and put the “bad eggs” into my bag to bring home, thus taking the bad eggs out of circulation forever. Or why not scan the good eggs, give them to me, and keep the bad eggs behind the desk to eventually fix? Instead, the bad eggs are sent back to their home on the shelf so that the same problem can recur over and over. 

The situation has stayed with me. It’s been a couple of weeks but I still get tripped up. I feel frustrated with the young cashier, that he didn’t have the capacity to see another solution that would have ended the bad egg cycle. But I also feel implicit in the situation: I did nothing to take the bad eggs out of circulation. 

I start wondering how we take responsibility for the bad eggs in the world (and in our world). I saw myself so connected to a larger system at that moment: I thought back to the chicken, the egg, the packaging, the quality control, the shipping, the shelving, my own choice to grab the carton, the cashier, the scanning machine, the exchange. I saw all these points of intervention where a small change could have produced an alternative outcome. 

In the face of big systems, tough situations, hopeless moments, I think we all have the possibility to say, “Well, what I do doesn’t matter.” But big changes come from small steps. As we go about making personal changes, it's important to reassess and evaluate our whole system: our environment, our mind, our physical selves, our community.

Where are the obvious points of intervention? What are less prominent opportunities to make change? What parts of the system are we in control of to influence the outcome? How can we take the best care of making sure bad eggs are avoided, returned, or transformed while also restocking the shelves with good eggs? 

And last but not least, what's cooking with those eggs? :) 

Wishing all of you smooth days ahead and moments for rest and contemplation. Sicily is in bloom, full of spring buds and blossoms. I wanted to share a photo of this beautiful, dried Queen Anne's Lace still hanging around among all the new life. A reminder of nature's cycle and the abundant space in our world for all stages of growth. Thank you for joining me here! If you want to connect, you know where to find me. 

Sending sunshine,

Henna