Random acts of nice

In the last few weeks, there have been a handful of instances that have caused the cynic in me to stop and rethink my cynicism with regard to people in general. I am not sure exactly why it is that I am such a cynic, but for whatever reason, I tend to be. Incident #1 happened on October 3rd. We were on the way to the airport at the asscrack of fricking DARKTHIRTY in the morning so I could go to Maryland for my birthday weekend. We stopped at Whataburger on Rufe Snow so I could have a bite of breakfast, and a Dr Pepper before I was stuck at DFW airport without access to Dr Pepper. We pulled into the drive through, and I ordered a biscuit with bacon and a kid size dr p. Note that at no time did the words EGG or CHEESE come out of my mouth. We were the only car in the lot at all. About 8 minutes after we pulled up to the window, she finally handed me my dr p, but not my food, then walked away from the window, leaving my bag sitting just inside the window. I looked at the receipt and when she came back, I told her “umm, I ordered a biscuit with bacon, not a bacon, egg & cheese biscuit”. She went to get a manager, who came back and apologized, telling me that they were out of biscuits and wouldn’t have more for another 5 minutes, and that she was going to refund my money, and that I could either wait for another, or not. Kudos to her for refunding not just my biscuit money, but ALL of my money. As I was sorta antsy to get to the airport and get past security, and in the grand scheme of things, the dr p WAS the most important part of the order, I passed on the biscuit and just got pretzel sticks when I got to the airport. I’m pretty sure that the overnight shift or early morning shift, whichever it was, as it was like 5:15 a.m., in a 24 hour fast food restaurant is the suckiest one there is, and I’ve encountered my share of surly people, but this lady was very nice, and ultimately, was more interested in making sure the customer was happy than she was in making the sale, which was quite refreshing. Incident #2 happened one day last week, I think it was Wednesday, actually. I stopped at the Racetrack gas station nearest work to get a dr p. (hmmm do you see a pattern here?) As I came back out to the car (at like 6 a.m.), I saw a trucker walking across the parking lot. A middle aged man, I would say probably late 40s to early 50s, but I suck at guessing ages, in what looked to be freshly laundered western shirt & jeans. As I reached my door and unlocked it with the remote, he was about 3 feet away, and said “ma’am, hold on.” Now I have no idea what possessed me to not just grab my door handle and jump in the car, other than I didn’t feel threatened by him at all. I glanced at him as he got to my car, and opened my door for me, waited for me to get in, and closed the door behind me, then waved and went on in the store with his coffee mug. Being a rennie, I know that chivalry is not dead, but honestly, I don’t see much of it from random strangers, and it was a pleasant change. Incident #3 happened yesterday morning, at a different Whataburger. We stopped for caffeine on our way to run a couple of errands before lunch. There was a pretty good sized line, but I was desperate, so I waited, ordered my drink, my roommie, who was with me, didn’t want anything. We pulled up to the window, paid for my 1 dr p, and had to wait for the cars ahead of us to move. There was also one car in the outside lane. In a minute, here came the cashier, back to the window, with not 1 but 2 dr p’s! She said “I am giving you an extra just for the hassle of trying to get out around all the traffic. WOW! Whataburger’s got it going on, where customer service is concerned. As it turns out, the way that the line in front of us was and where the car in the outside lane was parked waiting, there was plenty of space for me to get through. YAY!