Showing goodwill and trust in complete strangers

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I’ve told this story once before, but I like it, so here it goes again. Backstory: I’m trainhopping across Europe, just arriving in Switzerland.

So, I arrive in Montreux at 11.30 at night (after a lovely train ride involving dinner, wine, and pleasant conversation with an Argentinean gentleman who was able to identify Swedish writing, which is pretty unusual), walk around a bit trying to find a place to stay and finding only fully booked hotels. I go back to the train station and drop on a bench, sleep for a couple of hours, and then wake up with a pressing need to visit the restroom. I have a medical condition that changes this situation from “highly annoying” to “actual emergency”. The bathrooms in the train station are all closed, so I start to look around town for a public bathroom, stumble upon a hotel that I hadn’t seen before, ask for a room but get the same answer, but I do get to use the bathroom in the adjoining bar.

While I’m on my way out, they’re closing the bar for the night and one of the bartenders asks me what I’m going to do now. I reply that I guess I’m going back to the train station, I only needed a place to shower and change my clothes. He immediately offers me his own room. Floored, I accept. He shows me the room and the bathroom, hands me the key and asks me to stay until five, when he comes back from a visit to a friend. I happily promise to do so.

The thought that he might have gone to get Zed and tell him the spider just caught a fly does occur to me, but by then he’s left and I haven’t got much choice so I finish my shower, change my clothes and pass out on the floor of his room for a couple of hours. I make sure I can leave as quickly as possible and psyche myself up in case I need to fight.

He comes back and we talk a little. He offers me something to eat and I politely decline, but he rummages through his drawers and gives me what he has - a tube of Pringles - “just in case”. At this point I just have to ask why he’s being so nice.

“I’ve done a lot of bad things in the past, and I’m trying to make up for it.”

I met Earl Hickey. In Switzerland. By now I’m feeling bad I ever doubted the guy. There is good in the world, people.

22

This one happened to my mother. About 55 years ago when she was a young teacher in her early 20’s, she was in a car accident. Thrown through the windshield, through a wire farm fence and into a field. Both legs were crushed and her right foot was mostly amputated. The rescue people heard her moaning and got her to the hospital. In the emergency room they told her they were going to re-attach the foot, and to decide if she wanted to wear high heels or flats for the rest of her life, because they’d have to bolt in in place and needed to know the angle. They did surgery, rods in both legs, bolting on her foot. It was doubtful that she’d ever walk again, because the juries were so severe. Weeks later she’s on crutches, her first day back teaching school, and she falls over and rebreaks both legs. The great doctor reset them. In her final visit, after she’s off the crutches and walking freely, the doctor said, “That’s all the payment I need”, and never charged her.

StG

23

Once when I was 17 in the middle of winter my car ran out of gas on the side of the highway. A guy stopped to help me and offered to drive me to the gas station a few miles down the road. Ever wary of strangers, I politely declined, making it clear that I was just trying to be safe. The guy took off.

I supposed I was going to have to walk to the gas station myself, since I didn’t really have anyone to call for help except possibly my Aunt who was at work. It was bitterly cold so I made sure to try to contact everyone I could think of for help before venturing off.

About 10 minutes later Mr. ‘‘Hey come with me to the gas station’’ came back with a full canister of gas. He refused to let me pay him for it, telling me he just couldn’t leave me stranded on the side of the road like that. I felt like a total tool for being suspicious.
Another random thing I’ve heard, which tickles me to no end… apparently in San Francisco they have an interesting random carpool system where people will stop their car at a designated spot every morning and a bunch of strangers will pile in who are on their way to work/school and need a hitch. The tradeoff is the person hauling the strangers gets to ride in the toll-free carpool lane. What a cool idea!

24

A few years ago, I needed new rear tires. I went to the shop, wherein they told me I needed all four tires. I agreed, and went to lunch with a work buddy, leaving my car there.

I came back from lunch and pulled out my checkbook to pay them. I had no more checks! And no credit card. They trusted me to come back the next day, after fetching more checks from home. (I lived an hour from work.)

25

I wonder how those things get started? I’ve always been tempted to pick up the people waiting at bus stops and give them a ride to class, since I’m going anyway, but I’ve never done it because I thought it would be misinterpreted.

26

I had the same situation at a Waffle House. Never been to one before but my daughter said her dad takes her there and she loves their hashbrowns so I stopped. Noticed the cash only sign after we ordered and they started cooking. Sheepishly told the waitress I needed to cancel and the reason why.

She said that I could just bring the money back.

Which I did. I drove straight to an ATM and added a $20 tip for her trust. When I brought it back, she wasn’t the least bit surprised to see me. I liked that.

She even refused the 200% tip but I insisted saying we both made each others day.

27

Yeah, that may be true. In retrospect I should be thanking the tech for sticking her neck out, too. That is the reason I didn’t try to push her into selling me the two packs in the first place- my convenience isn’t worth somebody losing her job. I do think that it’s probably OK, since she did get clearly unrelated DL info from me and the other woman- from a records standpoint we just happened to buy the same item one after another. that’s why I gave the woman the money to pay for it, rather than just handing over the second $5 myself. A manager might have gotten touchy, but that store seems to have enough trouble staffing their pharmacy (sketchy neighborhood, high turnover) that I don’t think they’d get too bent out of shape over something like that. They have the records to cover their butts if I get busted for my (nonexistent) meth lab- they only let me buy one box, it isn’t their fault if I suckered somebody into getting another for me.

28

I’ve been trusted to come back and pay at two local establishments, a country store and a Subway. But they both knew me pretty well as a local and regular customer.

My girlfriend recently started a new job working as the clerk at a small local store. The store is small so only one clerk is on duty at a time. On her first day after a little instruction and training, she was given a key to the store and left alone all afternoon and trusted to close up at the end of the day, and cash out the register. I told her it seemed like they were sort of foolish to trust someone so much on the first day.

Then there was the mother of one of my then 11 year old daughter’s friends, I had never met her before but she called me one time to see if her daughter could ride the bus home with my daughter, and then I could take them both to the school dance that evening. I was fine with that and agreed to do that. Then the mother said her daughter could spend the night at our house if she wanted. I’m a single dad and she’d never even met me, never seen my house, had no idea what I was like, but she wanted her daughter to spend the night. I politely got out of that one, thought it was a bit too weird. If my kid was going to sleep over with someone I would know the parents and know where they lived.

29

This one happened while on a trip to England. Now, you should know this was a completely unplanned trip for me- two friends had planned to go for a music festival, one backed out about two weeks prior to the trip, and my other friend didn’t want to go alone. I was the only friend she had with a passport, plus I really really wanted to go, so I scrambled for the money by selling my plasma and scrap metal.

Even so, I was pretty much broke after the plane ticket and hostels- for instance, I’d bought a big pack of Power Bars to bring with me to eat, because I had basically zero money to spare for food. And our pee was brown because we could barely afford drinks while we were out on the town, so we ended up thoroughly dehydrated that week.

So we’re on our way to day 2 of the music festival, and we need to get to the train station. Some other Americans who were staying in our hostel told us we could walk to the train station, so we followed their directions. But we took a wrong turn and ended up lost and on the other side of town.

We see a man standing out front of his place, and ask him how to get to the train station. He tells us we’re rather far away, so we ask if he has the number for a cab, intending to use the phone booth on the corner. Instead, he pulled out his cell phone and called a cab for us. Then, we chat while waiting for our cab, and he offers us biscuits and drinks.

When our cab pulls up a few minutes later, he gives us the rest of the biscuits and sends us on our way. It probably didn’t seem like a big deal to him, but for us, the lost, starving, dehydrated Americans, it was a total lifesaver.

30

They say that cheaters will accuse other people of cheating because they assume since they are scummy enough to do it, everyone else is scummy enough to cheat too. Sounds like this guy was an asshole and assumed everyone else must be an asshole. That’s the only explanation for finding an insult in such an inoccuous gesture of goodwill.

My story: I worked on a TV series that had a lousy production manager and scheduling was always a mess. I was in the set-building department and we were working crazy hours. Sometimes we’d be in the middle of building something and the shooting schedule would change, so we’d drop everything and be sent somewhere else to set up some fake walls or something.

For two days in a row, I had a modest dinner and this little hole in the wall of a diner hidden away in the corner of a small plaza. One day, due to fatigue, I had left my wallet behind. I realized what I was done and was crestfallen. I’d only had 2 hours of sleep and this was the only meal I was going to have that day. I got up, apologized profusely, and cancelled my order. The owner made a “tsk, tsk” sound and told me “Oh, you can pay us tomorrow.”

Ever been so tired that if someone said: “Sorry, I think you missed your bus.” it would be the final straw that made you cry? That’s how tired I was. I was this scruffy, long-haired, kid, covered in sawdust and wearing yesterday’s stinky work-clothes. The kindness of offering me that free meal (even if it was only free until tomorrow) almost made me bawl.

31

In days of yore, I was the pizza guy. Worked in all neighborhoods, in all weather (look, I needed the money, and it was a relaxed work atmosphere).
One day, I did something quite dumb- I ran out of gas. The nearest station was ~a mile away, and it was FREEZING RAIN. Really. I was major bummed out, since I’d only thought to wear a windbreaker when I left the house that morning. As I walked down the road, a lady pulled over, and gave me a lift. To AND from the station. In dreadful road conditions. She refused my offer of payment.

It gets better. She was black; I’m very white. And I live in a town where racial hostility is far from unknown. Bless you, lady.

32

Wait, what? I’m confused. Where you live, you have to show ID to buy Sudafed? And you can only buy so much of it?

33

Yeah, in some places in the U.S., since people were buying cough syrup by the case to make meth out of some ingredient therein, it’s over-the-counter, but the pharmacist keeps it beind the counter and will only let you buy one package at a time. :rolleyes:

34

It’s like that in a lot of places, because the pseudoephedrine in it can be used in the production of methamphetamine. Limiting and tracking the sale is supposed to deter this method of procurement of a vital ingredient.

35

Yep, Psudoephedrine products have sales limits and must be signed for here, too.

I’ve had tyres changed for me, my car towed for miles, "pay me next time"s and a lot of other kindly deeds as mentioned by posters here.

The most stunning kindness wasn’t from a stranger.

“T” had been my enemy, all through school. I’d been beaten up by her friends and had awful rumours started about me. Making my life a humiliting hell had been her life’s goal between the ages of eight to sixteen, it only stopped because I left school and that neighbourhood.

Fast forward twenty years and I take delivery of a large package - with a note from “T”.
“I heard you were pregnant. Here’s some stuff you might need.”
And a huge suitcase full of baby gear in perfect condition. Not just clothes, but bottles, blankets and toys.

That and the thankyou note have been the only communication between us in (now) 30 years.

36

Stories like these make me think that maybe, just maybe, humanity isn’t simply one big fuckall. Keep 'em coming!

37

Wow. Just…wow.

38

Last year I jump started a lady’s car. You just do it if your in the land of cold and snow, but it’s becoming less of a given. This year at 0 F I started the truck. but the battery was dead at Walmart. I thought I might have to jump a car for somebody that day. Before a person I called came to jump the battery, I got a jump. It was an older gentleman and lady, which isn’t a surprise. I don’t think anybody under forty would do it.

I have to say that the courtesy that most people mention, is what commonly is practiced by farmers and the older residents of the rural community. The new subdivision people are not in the group.

39

Yep, everyone under 40 is a heartless bastard. You nailed it. :rolleyes:

40

Thanks for the confirmation, that nails it.