I don't know why I bother trying to help people sometimes.  

This morning I had to go into work really early in the morning.  I got to the parking lot at about 5 A.M.  It was still dark out and I wasn't fully awake yet and feeling pretty out of it.  I'm fumbling to reach my phone because I have to punch in on it when someone knocks on my car window.  I roll it down and there's a lady standing there holding jumper cables and saying her car is dead.  

I don't have a lot of time to mess around, but I know it sucks to have your car die on you so I agree to help her.  I actually bought a little jumper box thing a while ago for purposes such as these.  It's quick and easy to set up and it works really well.  I know that it does because I've used it a few times already with great success, including jumping my big work truck a couple times and also it worked on a car once when jumper cables didn't.

Well, the first thing this lady says is "That little-ass thing isn't going to work on my car!"  I assured her it would as I had her pop open her hood.  Then she tried to show me her battery on the wrong side.  I found it on the other side.  It looked like it had some cover over it that maybe needed to be removed because I couldn't see an obvious spot to connect the jumpers.  There was just this really narrow slot and I was kind of looking and the lady abruptly grabs the cable out of my hand and is like "this one goes on the red right here" in a tone of voice like I'm stupid.  She points out another little metal thing that I guess looks like the black one could attach to it, but once again it's housed in this narrow little crevasse.  I can't get to it when I open the clamp on the cable and when I get it narrow enough to fit in the crevasse, it's not open wide enough to catch the hook.  So I mess with that for a while before I finally somehow get it open/closed enough to fit and catch.  

All the while the lady is still loudly complaining about how that "little-ass thing" isn't going to work.  Once it's hooked up you have to turn it on and then push a button until the light turns green and then you try to start the car.  I barely even have the thing turned on and she's already trying to start her car, which of course, isn't working.

I did notice the charge level on the box's display started to rapidly drop.  I knew I'd used it a few times and hadn't fully charged it yet.  I'm still fairly new to it, so I'm not sure how often it needs to be charged, but it had been still at like 91%, which I figured was pretty good.  But it did start to drop kind of quickly and fell to about 72%, which I think should still be a decent amount of charge.  

I was trying to push the button that makes the green light turn on, but it wasn't coming on.  I don't know if that's because there wasn't enough juice left in the box or more likely the connections weren't on right.  I reached out and checked the red connector that the lady had done and it just popped right up because it wasn't connected to anything at all.  I tried to mess with it but between it still being dark outside and not being able to see down in the narrow little slot, I have no idea at all what I'm doing.  It felt like it caught on something, so I tried to turn on the green light again, but it's still a no-go.

This whole time I can still hear the lady screeching about how this little-ass thing isn't going to work and she keeps trying to start the car when the box isn't ready for her to, so of course it isn't working.  She's also screaming about how this is a nightmare and why couldn't I just use her jumper cables because she would have been out of there already.  Never mind that regular jumper cable have to be connected properly to work, too.

Under normal circumstances if I was dealing with a rational person, I would have just said "Hey, let's just take a minute to make sure everything is hooked up correctly.  And then if I determine that my box isn't working I'd be happy to try your jumper cables."  But she was already irritating me and I felt like she was rushing me, too, which I hate.  

Finally she just starts screaming "Get that fucking thing off my car!"  At this point, I'm done with this lady.  I took my box and just said "Sorry for trying to help you."  I didn't feel inclined to do her any extra favors.  You know, a good bit of life advice:  if someone's trying to help you, maybe don't be a jerk to them.  It's supposed to feel good to do something nice for people and instead I left feeling pissed off.  It kind of made for a not-so-great start to the day.  

When I came back out a few hours later her car was gone, so I guess she found someone else who was able to give her a jump.  Good for her I guess.