Married to the Empire

Friday, October 26, 2007

Random kindness from a stranger

I have a book of pet crafts. One of the crafts is a pattern for making a stuffed cat out of fleece. My sewing skills are minimal, but I think I can manage this. I intend to attempt to make a kitty for my niece, who will be 4 in December.

I took the book to Kinko's this afternoon to have the pattern enlarged. I was working the guy pretty hard because I wasn't happy with the size of the enlargement. He enlarged it some more; I still wasn't happy. Then the next one was too large.

And then I realized that I had given him the wrong pattern to copy. Oops.

I apologized profusely, said I'll happily pay for all those wasted copies, and handed him the correct pattern. He did the work and gave me the finished product. Then he started dealing with another customer.

I continued to stand there because I needed to pay for the work done. He stopped his conversation with the new customer, and he told me I'm all done. I said, "But I still need to pay." He told me not to worry about it; it's free. I argued a bit, reminding him of the extra work I'd created for him with my mistake, and he just smiled and told me again that it was free and don't worry about it.

Wow! I'd been having a bad couple of days due to some church stress, and I'd been feeling rather down about things. This random act of kindness really lifted my mood and gave me some much needed encouragement.

I don't know who he is, but I just have to say a huge "Thank you!" to the Kinko's man. He made my day.

2 comments:

Jen said...

God know when we need a boost, doesn't He?

Ann said...

That's awesome! It reminds me of this thing our church is doing. It's called Ark Almighty from the movie Evan Almighty. ARK stands for Acts of Random Kindness. I think the website is www.arkalmighty.com

It's really cool.