Netizens were riled up after video of a security guard engaging in a shoving match with a girl wearing a high school uniform and selling sampaguita necklaces outside a mall in Manila became viral on the internet.
In the video, the guard grabs her sampaguita necklaces then destroys them, she fights back by hitting him, he kicks her, they struggle some more.
The guard has since been dismissed and his violent actions toward the seemingly underage girl condemned. And rightfully so; no one should do the things he did to anyone at all, male or female, underage or no.
But then again, not all is what it seems. Because the alleged victim in this case wasn’t exactly who she was pretending to be, either.
As it turns out she wasn’t a teenage sampaguita vendor. In fact, she was already 22 and a college scholar. Her parents admitted that she wears a high school uniform when she sells the necklaces to make more sales.
And while she isn’t a member of any syndicate and she didn’t violate the law by wearing clothes that presented her as underage, her deception in using the uniform to win sympathy from people --and which led many to assume she was a helpless minor-- is leaving some people with a bad taste in the mouth.
This, however, still doesn’t justify the actions of the guard. He could have treated her with more respect. In fact, a little respect from both parties could have gone a long way. The guard could have kept his job, while the sampaguita girl could have kept her dignity and not been unmasked as a fake.
Now both will suffer the consequences of their actions.
Our takeaway here? We must always find out the entire story before shooting our mouth off. Before condemning, before judging, and before calling for punishment. Because there is always more than one explanation, more than one narrative to everything we see and hear.