en español, por favor

Last night I stopped at Safeway to buy some salad to go with my dinner. I got in the "express" line. There was only one person in front of me. Unfortunately, he had a big problem, and he didn't really speak English. He was trying to buy bread, milk, and orange juice, and he was trying to pay for it with his food stamp card. In case you don't live in a neighborhood where people buy stuff with food stamps, the way it works is you get money put on a card, which looks like a debit card, and you run it through the machine just like you would your credit or ATM card to pay. Anyway. His card was out of money. He didn't understand what the checker was trying to tell him. Finally, the checker said, "no dinero." The guy turns to me and asks if I speak Spanish. I don't. The guy behind me, does, though, so he goes up to the front to help him.

The poor guy didn't have any cash. He asked the checker to just ring up the bread, which was $3.99, and he started frantically looking for cash. I was about to just pay for his bread myself when the translator stepped up and paid for it. I felt so bad for the guy. I mean, here I am, not worried at all about spending $11 on salad, water, and granola bars. This guy can't even buy milk. And he can't even understand why he can't buy the milk. It must be incredibly frustrating to live somewhere and not be able to communicate with people. I mean, when I lived in France, sure, there are things I wanted to say that I can't, but for the most part, I am able to take care of myself and my business in French. This guy couldn't do that.