Passing it Forward
I’ve got two pretty positive ones. The first one came a few years back when I was delivering pizzas. I was taking a redelivery for an order that was wrong the first time. It was going to the worst hotel in our delivery area. The redelivery was a single, one-topping medium pizza.
I pull up and there’s a guy that says he needs some cash for a tow truck. He gives me the typical sob story about wife and kids and blah blah blah.
Normally I don’t give into those things, but occasionally I take the approach of, “Well, if this guy is lying to me, shame on him.”
Aside from that, for some reason his story seemed more plausible. We graduated from the same high school (supposedly), although he was a bit older than me.
I cut to the chase, asked him how much cash he needed, and gave him the $7 he asked for. He ran back over to the gas station and I didn’t see him again.
I had a pizza to deliver! I run up the stairs to the hotel to the room, give them their replacement pizza, apologize for the first mistake and leave.
As I’m walking away the guy comes out and is like “Oh wait, we forgot to give you a tip.” Any tip on a redelivery is a win, so I hustle back to the room.
The guy hands me a $50 bill and tells me to have a good night. I work for an events company and the morning of our biggest annual event last year, I was sent to the office to pick up a couple things. As I’m leaving the office, another guy approaches me with a similar sob story as the one above.
I’m in a hurry, and I cut him off and was just like, “How much do you need?” He said $10 would do it, so I gave him $10 and headed on my way.
Event went fine. Wasn’t great in terms of the money we made. We sometimes get bonuses at my job, usually tied to this event based on the amount of money it makes.
I wasn’t expecting a bonus due to a sub par year, but two days later I had a bonus check worth 5% of my salary sitting on my desk.
Would either of these events happened without the monetary donations? Probably. I like to think the karma gods were smiling on me, though. WhiteLightEcho