My Experience for Fish Food bank

I noticed that how different people can have different perspective for the food. In fact, some petty things that we don't really think about. For example, a can of beans or a small bag of rice.

My job there was to guide people how much food(grocery) they can get as per the number of people in their family. The 'people' here, I am talking about, are the people who are fighting for the survival. I observed that they were not looking for their favorite thing or the things that their kids love the most; they were looking for food that they can feed themselves as well as their family members for long.

After knowing how the system works and what's the ratio for food as per the people, I tried to keep myself in their shoes and check what things will I choose to take. *

In the start it was easy to choose between a can of diced tomatoes or beans. I chose beans thinking its healthy and will last little longer. Then comes the choice between 2 different kinds of canned fruits, which wasn't hard. Grabing a loaf of bread was easy too. Further comes the time to choose, if I want a big (a gallon, I think) thing of *concentrated orange juice* , *fresh juice* or *Milk*.(any ONE) Since I knew what are other food items coming up so I chose milk in my mind.

Ouch! This people doesnt know what other food items available, so if someone chooses juice, they dont get milk but they do get cereals !?! These are some of the small things that pinched me while being the person who monitors that they dont take more food than they are suppose to.

I also noticed a social-workers/volunteers, the one who stood by the fridge and provided people the dairy items. I noticed her being really generous to one race of people, by giving them a adequate amount of food and being nice. On the otherside, she strictly made sure that other people did not get more than what they are supposed to. In fact, she was little grumpy and rude towards us too. I talked to my classmate 'Vickie' about it and her reaction was :"I was about to tell you the same thing, it's funny that you noticed it too". That confirmed, it was not just me who observed that. However, there was another person doing the samething to the other race, so it was strangely balancing it out. I am hoping this to be a rare issue in the places food bank.

I also met few individual who were generous. It will not be a lie if I say I learnt a small lesson of being kind and generous through them. It was easy to guess that they needed food like everyone else but they tried their best to make sure that they live things for others. One of them was this gentleman, who was about my height, age 30 (i guess), wearing blue jeans(unwashed) , a jacket, torn gloves, shoes full of dirt and a beanie. He disagreed to take another loaf of bread (as per the rule everyone can have one loaf of bread from two diff sections) and other food items like cereals. I asked him the reason and he said, he just need to fill one body(himself), and continued 'there are people outside standing in line with kids; they will need some too'. I was speechless, all I could respond was "Thank you" and he replied humbly "No, thanks to you guys !". It's hard to describe the way he reacted, like he knew exactly what he was doing.