Day 18: Activate a Social Network Thank a Person for Being Awesome

This is part of the UU Blogging Workshops’s Zero to Hero Series

Today’s assignment: If you’re already active on a social network, set up Publicize and link the account to your blog, and/or create a strategy for how you’ll use it.

Note: I am already WAY too connected via social networking sites. My blog is already connected to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube. I’ve been told if I join Pinterest, I will disintegrate like Flynn in Tron.

So instead, I will give a quick shout out to Inga, the woman who was in charge of the self-checkout isle at the QFC grocery store in the Northgate neighborhood in Seattle. Tonight I attended a community council meeting for my neighborhood, Victory Heights. Afterwards, I drove over to the store to pick up some surprise chocolate cake for the wifey.

I grab the cake, some bagels, and 2 for 1 Angus steaks! At the self-checkout isle, low and behold, I had forgotten my shopping bag! You see, in Seattle you have to bring your own reusable bag because there’s a plastic bag ban. I support this. However, at this moment I have no bag in which to put my Angus steak and chocolate cake.

I ask the checker on duty (Inga) if I can run out to my car really quick to grab a bag. (We keep about 10 of them in the car just in case) She laughed and said ok. So I run outside really quick, grab my bag, and run inside only to find that Inga had rung up my items for me… in the self checkout! It was one of those moments where a person took a couple minutes out of their day to do something small, meaningful and unexpected.

It wasn’t her job, but she did something nice for me. A complete stranger. She is awesomesause! So I asked her manager for a customer input card and let her know how appreciative I was of such a gesture of kindness. I hope she gets employee of the month, or at least a raise or something.

Which reminds me that I need to take advantage of more opportunities to do something nice for complete strangers. I need to pay it forward.

So how about you? Has anybody ever gone out of their way to do something nice for you without even knowing you? Let me know!