I experienced my fair share of days walking in severe, gusty wind. The weather alert on my phone warned me of peak gusts of over 90 km/h and when it did, I relied on my walking sticks to keep me upright. I also paid extra attention to potential falling branches and even entire trees – gum trees have notoriously shallow roots. Strong wind also made for noticeably longer, or shorter, walking days depending on the wind’s direction and it played a role in whether camping was hard or simply impossible.
On one of these days the pegs that secure my tent to the Earth refused to stay in the ground, causing the tent to behave more like a kite than a shelter. While wrestling to set up my home for the night I spotted a bare patch of land next to a coffee shop on the opposite side of the road and decided it would be a better place to set-up as the building would shield me from the wind.
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My plan met an abrupt end when the shop manager came out.
He told me the shop’s owner had a strict no camping policy. He was nice about it; he had seen my many failed attempts to keep my tent on the ground. Once he realised that I was travelling on foot and had limited options in where I could spend the night, he phoned the owner hoping to overturn the ‘no camping next to the coffeeshop’ rule.
A harsh ‘no’ spilled over the phone in the tone of someone annoyed at being disturbed by such a trivial thing. Unable to convey the significance of iguanas in the Galapagos Island in workplace design over the phone, the café manager tried one last time before the owner hung up without a goodbye. Genuinely sorry, the manager looked at me and tilted his head, as if to say, “well, I tried.”
The café was in the middle of nowhere and it was getting dark. I was tired. The wind refused to let me set up my tent and the rain was about to start. If ever there was a time for violins to play in the background, this was it.
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As I was packing my gear a voice broke through my intense concentration, which was not for packing, but for thinking about where I was going to spend the night.
Clearly word had spread. I jumped at the offer knowing it involved a detour into town that would add several kilometres to my next day’s walk. That night I slept under a roof with four walls firmly attached to the ground. It still rained, but I was safe and dry inside my room.“Oi” the voice said, “I’m the cook. I’ll finish my shift soon and can drive you into town.”
The next morning, I used the extra steps from the detour to think about empathy. In particular, how empathy seems to become stronger the closer we are to the situation. A sort of a radius of empathy, in which its effects decay as the radius increases.
I can only speculate that the owner of the café might have shown empathy if he had been there and seen me struggle with my tent. He might not have let me camp there, for a variety of good reasons, but he might have been more sympathetic about it – maybe even suggested an alternative, like his staff did.
A signpost with a compelling reason for having people collocated at the workplace:
Fortunately, not every day was windy. Some were calm, sunny, crisp winter’s days. One of those days was perfect.
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