Locking your garbage up?

Yesterday I witnessed an event that totally blew my mind.

Behind the studio my man works at is a covered parking area big enough to house a 4/6' garbage enclosure and four cars. A couple of homeless men take turns sleeping in small space near the very back corner wall, just behind one of those short, triangular cement parking abutments. We see those men occasionally and sometimes they wave at us, but for the most part, they don't talk, they don't make eye contact and they sure don't mingle.

Next to the studio is a Jenny Craig location - you know, the weight loss Jenny that Kirsty Ally called when she ate herself into 350 or so pounds of fat (I guess the 'church of scientology' isn't that good at the stuff they say they're good at, given how fat that chick was/is soon to be again)....

This Jenny location has a large, square, green garbage bin out in their parking lot. I don't think there's any food in this Jenny Craig location, but I haven't ever needed their services, so I have no clue. As such, I can't imagine what the business might be tossing in their trash, but it must be really valuable because they have a padlock on their bin.

Yesterday, as I drove by, a Jenny Craig employee - a middle-aged white woman - was standing at the other side of the alley way, yelling at one of these homeless guys. I take it from what happened next that he'd been rummaging in 'her' trash bin. She was chewin' the hell out of that guy.

She then turned on her heal, totally ignoring what he was saying to her (and I thought she should have listened because the man hardly ever speaks), stalked back to the bin and made a great show of locking it.

Who locks a garbage bin? There are no bears in the city and the coyotes can't lift bin lids, so what for the padlock? Like seriously folks, if it's valuable enough that you don't want it stolen, it doesn't belong in the trash.

I suppose it is possible that 'Jenny' had thrown out food but, if they didn't want it and if they'd trashed it, why couldn't that man have it? I seriously don't get why that woman was so annoyed and so aggressive towards this homeless guy.

As I drove by, I wasn't exactly sure what I was seeing but as I parked and waited for my man, I watched in the rear view and it dawned on me that all this aggression this middle-aged, white woman (who has a job and was decently dressed and had somewhere to live) was showering on that man was just so out of place, unnecessary and really just so mean.

I suppose that somewhere in her obviously tiny consciousness she might have had the "but for the grace of 'god' go I," but then, the fact that she was so bizarrely possessive of her garbage gives me to believe she keeps her heart and soul properly padlocked as well.

What really sucks is that I just sat there. I could have got out and said something but I just bloody sat there because of a totally stupid reason: that woman's actions and aggression towards a weaker person reminded me of a nasty, mean, terrible female boss I had a few years ago. Dumb hey!? I hate that part of myself that doesn't act due to an old fear that I've transferred to an unrelated situation.

That makes me way worse than her.