random acts of kindness

ever have one of those moments when you experience something small, almost insignificant, yet it lingers in the corners of your mind. almost daring you to remember it, in all of it's insignificant glory?

i had one of those moments over the weekend. and it seems the only way i'm going to get it out of my head (so that i can focus on all of the monday-morning-tasks vying for attention), is to blog it. thank goodness it's the perfect day to talk about random acts of kindness!!

on saturday, i had to swing by the "dollar general" for some charcoal (yup, we grilled out this weekend!) a woman in line had just rung up $20.18 cents worth of stuff, and handed the cashier two $20s. the young cashier promptly handed back one of the $20s and said, "Here, I'm not going to have you break a $20 for 18 cents." the customer responded, "are you sure?" (probably assuming, as i had assumed, that the cashier would end up reimbursing the 18 cents at the end of her shift.)

the cashier smiled and mumbled something to the effect of "no problem." the customer was quite gracious. after i paid for my bag of charcoal (yup, it was grillin' weather!), i ended up with a few coins worth of change. i handed the cashier a quarter and said, "do you need 18 cents?" and SHE said, "are you sure?"

this is such a teensy weensy RAK, i'm almost embarrassed to post about it. but i believe that this young cashier is probably the type who does things like this for many customers throughout the day, and likely ends up paying back her employer at the end of the shift for the shortages. she was so gracious at my simple offer - i hope she will continue carrying out her own random acts of kindness.

random acts of kindness

i was the recipient of a random act of kindness the other night, and it felt wonderful!!

i was checking a guest into the hotel, and it turns out he is from Sweden. so i promptly used the three Swedish words in my vocabulary: gud yul, yultomten and (of course) lutfisk. (if you can imagine, i believe i used all of these in one extremely long, ridiculous sentence!). i explained how we're trying to make jack aware of his Swedish heritage.

at any rate, he seemed so surprised and happy to hear those few Swedish words. (he also chided my for not liking lutfisk, but, oh well.) he reached into his bag and pulled out two Swedish chocolate bars, one for me and one for jack's stocking! the whole exchange took 5 minutes, but is really left me feeling warm and fuzzy inside. i can't wait for jack to see that tomte really came to visit this year!

random acts

on tuesday night, i skipped out of work a little early and dashed into walmart to pick up a few things i needed. i purposefully tried to get in and out before the true *after work* crowd hit.

our walmart has recently installed those rotating bag kiosks - you know the ones where the teller keeps spinning it around and around until you have 14 plastic bags filled (approximately one bag per item, as best i can tell...)

so i wasn't too surprised that when i got home, i found a bag that wasn't mine! the bag included some deli turkey, 3 of the smallest bananas i've ever seen, and a 15 pound brick of colby cheddar cheese. 15 pounds? could've been only 5, but still...it was a huge brick of cheese.

oh, i did not relish the thought of trekking the 20 minutes back to walmart (where the *after work* crowd was no doubt milling around like lost sheep by this point.) but, we just knew someone was going to be missing that cheese!

matty made the trip. and to his credit, he *encouraged* the aloof customer service employee to make sure that they would make some effort to keep the groceries cold in case their rightful owner came back.

i hope they came back for the cheese.

does this ever happen to you? you should share your random acts of kindness over here. it feels so good!