The Extra Mile

"I had a customer in tears today," my husband said to me.

He had told me earlier about all his registers crashing during the day and the chaos that had resulted as IT worked to get them back up. As you can imagine, inoperative cash registers in a major grocery store is not a good thing. I could easily picture a customer, standing in a long line with a cart full of groceries and perhaps a young crying child, dissolving into tears herself in that situation.

As it turns out, my imagining was far from the real story.

The customer my husband described was actually a man in his mid- to late-sixties, and he wasn't crying out of desperation or frustration. He was crying out of gratitude.

My husband had seen the man many times shopping in his store, always alone. What he didn't know until this day was that this customer was alone because a disability made it difficult for his wife to shop with him. In fact, it made it difficult for her to even come into the store.

On this particular occasion, the man had come not to shop but to get his Covid vaccine. While he was there, he told the pharmacist about his wife. She was in the car, but unable to come in to get a shot herself.

The pharmacist could have said that's too bad. He could have said he'd be happy to give her a shot if the man could find a way to get her inside the store. He didn't say either of those things.

Instead, he gathered up the necessary supplies and followed the man out to his car and gave his wife the injection.

It was a small act of kindness and compassion, but even small acts have the power to move a man to tears.