Kindness On Their Dime

I’m in line at the dollar store, a basket full of about a dozen items. I’ve had a long day and just want to get home. There’s only one checkout lane open, and the customer in front of me asks for a few balloons that they sell and inflate there. I’m thinking, great, it’s going to take forever for the checkout person to do them. However, the customer checking out notices the line behind her and says to the checkout person to take care of me first.

I thank her, but the checkout person goes into awesome mode, simultaneously blowing up the woman’s balloons and checking out my items.

As she tells me the total, $10.12, I groan, as I’ve only got a couple of $1s and $20s and a couple of pennies. I hand her the $20, apologizing that I don’t have exact change.

Around here, the dollar stores request smaller bills, as they get inundated with $20s and can’t make proper change sometimes.

I then tell her I only had a couple of pennies, when I thought I’d had more change, and apologize again.

Then, to my surprise, the person behind me places 12 cents on the counter. And a few seconds later, the woman in front of me who was waiting for her balloons to be inflated handed me a dime.

I was weirdly flustered because I’d never been in a situation where strangers are just handing me money.

To make it fair, I went ahead and took the woman’s dime and gave the 12 cents back to the man behind me, and thanked them both profusely.