I don't remember the first impression I had of him because I was seeing quite a good number of people the first day I resumed.
The closest I came to taking a good look at him was during our first company meeting. It happened a few days to working in the bar.
The matter arising was the loss of our juice and somewhere along the line, the loss of our manager's laptop.
When my director and everyone else kept going on and on about Silas being the suspect, I was fuming in anger. How could they judge him by his appearance? Would they still have blamed him if he dressed well?
When they were done, I had something to say. I did ask these questions out loud, and everyone fought me tooth and nail, but I stood my ground.
I did not say much about the missing laptop because I wasn't there long enough to know if my manager leaves his properties around carelessly or not. So, I concentrated on the disappeared juice.
The event surrounding the juice, according to the rest of the staff, is that we had a party, and the juice was some sort of promo for anyone who wins a contest. The juice was the reward. Silas said while he was packing seats and tables he found one of the winners forgot theirs. It was Easter period for crying out loud, in the midst of all those celebrations, they would have been too full of excitement to remember the juice on their way out, I argued when everyone said he was lying.
To me, if we are judging Silas by the fact that he is poor and he is prone to stealing then let's give him he benefit of the doubt and understand that as every other deeply rooted poor person, scavenging is a part of him.
I have read and watched most people who barely have what to eat on a daily basis go through the trash for food, and other things that could help them survive the next day. So, if Silas is considered poor by his colleague then there's no reason he wouldn't want to preserve his salary for other pressing needs while he scavenged for food through other means.
He was labeled a thief, no one cared to know his deep rooted nature. No one cared about his why. Just because the rest of them are wearing their white garment of righteousness at that instant, Silas was the bad person and they were the good ones.
When you look closely, being poor is very expensive. There are things you wouldn't do on a normal day but the situation you find yourself makes you snap and do the worst as considered by other humans.
I was triggered to write this when I saw the movie, Straw. Everyone kept talking about it but nothing prepared me for the series of events I saw unfold in the movie. Janiyah Wilkson literally snapped and went round murdering people and labeled a bank robber.
If her daughter didn't die, if she didn't feel worthless, if she didn't regret coming to the world poor and not being able to support her daughter until she died, maybe she wouldn't have become infamous the next day.
The system was created to keep the rest of us poor, you will hear people say and they are not wrong. Janiyah Wilkson worked two jobs but it was still not enough. She did not have insurance. Her daughter's hospital bill was extremely expensive. At this point, I don't know what Silas' story is. I don't know the series of hardship he went through to become this person I meet.
I believe that before you judge someone’s actions, you should consider the pain and poverty behind them. There are times that another person's method of survival will look like stealing to you because you are comfortable.
No one can say with all amount of confidence that they have everything figured out. Some of us are just faking it until we can no longer hold it together. The rest of the world is looking in, judging, thinking they know our story and sometimes writing the wrong part of the script on our behalf.
Image is not mine