As India battles a devastating second wave of coronavirus, a Canada woman's post urging people to show kindness in tough times is going viral. In her LinkedIn post, Sarah Bezanson said she called tech support and ended up on the phone with an employee from India.
"I had to call for some tech support yesterday. While we waited for a diagnostic program to load, the gentleman on the phone made some small talk. Asked me where I was," the Toronto-based senior manager said in her post.
Ms Bezanson answered his question and asked him the same thing. "His voice caught," she said in her post.
The tech support employee told Ms Bezanson that he was from New Delhi. She paused, then asked him how he was doing - and the man on the other side of the phone broke down. "He wept," Ms Bezanson said in her post.
"I'm so sorry. It's really bad here. I've lost someone every day for 10 days," the employee from Delhi told Ms Bezanson.
Delhi reported close to 400 deaths every day when infections peaked and the capital and surrounding areas suffered shortages of oxygen, hospital beds and medicines.
In her post, Sarah Bezanson said she tried to offer some comfort and told the tech support employee that she was available to talk.
"Told him to forget the issue I'd called about. That he had nothing to be sorry for," she wrote. "That we could talk if he needed to or just leave the line open in silence so he could take a break from the phones and hold space for his grief."
They stayed on the phone for over an hour, she said.
Ms Bezanson concluded her post by asking her readers to show patience and empathy - especially when calling up a support centre or a toll free line.
"There's a person on the other end and they may be valiantly showing up and doing their best while they are living through absolute hell," she said. "Please be kind."
Her LinkedIn post, shared two weeks ago, has received thousands of comments and reactions. It was re-posted on Twitter yesterday, where it is being shared widely.
The post has clocked more than 3,000 'likes' and a ton of comments on the microblogging platform. In the comments section, some praised Ms Bezanson while others shared instances of similar happenings.
Amid the devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic across the world, several small acts of kindness have captured hearts. Read about some of them here.
