One of the many joys I find in my daily delivery work is meeting new people. Whether moving studio apartment belongings, wooden furniture from workshops, exhibition pieces, heavy exercise equipment, congratulatory potted plants for new businesses, or secondhand furniture from Carrot Market, I often drive with customers who ride along, chatting about this and that. While most conversations revolve around light daily topics, work, or neighborhood gossip, I frequently spot business opportunities, learn unknown facts, or gain good ideas from these talks.

Yesterday, I had an amazing conversation with a regular customer while moving personal belongings and a dog from Incheon to Hwaseong City. This customer had previously thanked me for providing affordable moving services when I helped move their belongings to their sibling’s house last April, promising to contact me again. True to their word, they reached out once more. I treat anyone who contacts me twice or more as a VIP and strive to help them to the best of my ability. That’s because the reviews from such grateful customers accumulate to determine my rating on Carrot Market. This time, as always, I helped with the delivery wholeheartedly.

I never dreamed that the conversation, which started with her mentioning she was moving a bit farther away, would eventually turn into life counseling. Turns out she’s a 15-year veteran mom with a daughter in 7th grade and a former social worker counselor. She was living a life straight out of a drama, having an affair with a younger man. She ended up separating from her husband, a taekwondo instructor, and was destroying herself with self-blame and regret over the huge disappointment she’d caused her daughter. This woman, who was also a pastor’s daughter, now found herself needing counseling, filming the final episode of her own life’s melodrama. She was even staying at the home of a man she met on a suicide pact website, a man whose own story was another melodrama.

This man, who had set up a new home in a newly built apartment in Hwaseong City and was about to marry, had also attempted to end his life in various ways. Each time, however, he failed to achieve his goal due to some mistake (?), and upon meeting this woman, he was preparing to try again. Yet, he found himself confiding his situation to her, a former counselor, and ended up receiving counseling himself. The neighborhood was so nice and tidy that I was a bit worried if these two made an extreme choice, it might cause property values to drop in the peaceful new apartment complex in the countryside. But as I listened to their story unfold, the melodrama was turning into a comedy script, which was a relief. Even though she was contemplating ending her life, she still had a sense of humor. And perhaps because she had worked as a counselor for so long, her professional instinct kicked in—seeing that man, she felt he was even more pitiful than herself, so she was counseling him.

I cautiously brought up my own story too. I opened up about my mentally painful past, how I ended up working in delivery, and my family situation. In the end, I ended up counseling the counselor instead. The entire drive back was filled with explosive conversation, completely shifting the mood into healing mode. When the conversation abruptly pivoted to proposing solutions, he asked, “What can I do now to make a living?” At that moment, I thought, ‘I’ve saved one person.’

I even guided her on marketing methods to meet elderly patients awaiting nursing home admission who need counseling, or the many customers needing conversation during the COVID era. Then, I gave her gifts: the dog carrier I found in Songdo and the QT book that was in my car. Despite having only 300,000 won to her name, she insisted on paying extra for the delivery fee. I added the ‘Frog-Eyed Sister’ from Dohwa-dong—whose voice is crystal clear, perhaps because she used to be a soprano in the choir—as a KakaoTalk friend and told her to contact me if she ever felt overwhelmed. She responded, saying she’d like to reach out often for some healing. Next time, I should consult with that exercise-addicted, broken-hearted guy in Hwaseong City while selling his used flip-flops on Carrot Market. After all, we must save people and protect the apartment prices in that neighborhood. 🙂