‘Tis The Season To Give Well

I am handling customer service in early December for one of the larger department stores. When it’s her turn, a woman comes up and starts putting several bags of clothes and toys up on my counter; all of it looks appropriate for a child roughly twelve to fourteen years old.

Customer: “I know it’s asking a lot, but is it possible to return all of these and get it all credited back to my credit card? The receipts are in the bags.”

It’s our policy to accept returns so long as they have a receipt, though I’m slightly hesitant to accept that much back at one time.

Me: “Was there something wrong with these items?”

Customer: “Nothing’s wrong. They were supposed to be Christmas presents for my son, but apparently, he isn’t getting presents this year, so I’m hoping I can return it all.”

Me: “Oh, no. I hope he didn’t do anything too bad.”

Customer: “No, no, nothing bad! He’s the one that asked us not to buy him presents.”

Me: “Really?”

Customer: “Yep. He wants us to take the money we would spend on presents and donate it to charity, instead.”

Me: “Oh, wow! that’s really generous of him. For such a good cause, I’m sure we’re able to get you credit back on all of this.”

I start the process of crediting everything back, but since there are a few bags of items and we have to hunt through the bags for receipts, we have plenty of time for small talk.

Customer: “Yeah, we were shocked by it, but he was really adamant about it. He even picked which charities we could donate the money to.”

Me: “What lucky charity is getting the money?”

Customer: “Apparently, he got the idea after one of his teachers told him about a website that looks at other charities and decides which ones are the most effective to donate to, so he said we could donate to any charity they recommend. I think we’ll be donating it to this one that immunizes newborns in third-world countries.”

Me: “That’s really great. You have a very generous son, though it’s too bad he won’t get anything for Christmas.”

Customer: “Well, he did say we could still put some money in his college fund like we usually do, and, if we insisted on it, we could get him one present. My husband and I are going to stretch his rules a bit by putting extra in his college fund and getting him one present from each of us. And his sister is still making him something, so he can’t be upset that she wasted money buying him anything. I think that’s the most we can get away with without risking offending him by not respecting his wishes.”

Me: “I’m glad he gets something, at least. It sounds like you have a really amazing son.”

Customer: “Oh, yes, we do. He’s definitely a unique child; he does his own thing and marches to his own drum, and he keeps coming up with strange situations like this that we never thought we would have to deal with as parents, but in the end, we’re both very proud of him.”

My break is coming up around this time, so not long after I finish helping her, I catch my manager to tell her about the woman and her son. She is also impressed by the story.

Manager: “Did she say if she was going to be staying to do any shopping afterward?”

Me: “I think she said she was waiting on a prescription to be filled.”

Manager: “Great! Quick, let’s look her name up so I can get to the pharmacy before her.”

My manager apparently made some sort of arrangement with the pharmacist to catch the woman when she came to fill her prescription. My manager explained how impressed she was with her son and offered to donate some money in his name to the charity just as a way to say thank you to him. She even got the son’s email address so she could send a short email thanking him. The story slowly spread through the rest of the staff of the store — I may have had a little to do with that — and a number of other employees, including me, offered to add some money to my manager’s donation.

Ultimately, we managed to collect what I consider a small but quite decent amount of money, given the impromptu nature of the collection, to donate to the kid’s charity. It turned out that you could donate the money directly to the charity site and have them grant it to the appropriate charities, and if you did that, they had an option to send a short customizable email to someone telling them that a donation was made in their name. My manager did that and customized the email they would send to thank the son from all the staff at our store for putting others’ needs ahead of his own.

It’s been a long while since I worked at that store, but still, every December, I remember that generous kid fondly. To me, he sort of represents the spirit of giving that Christmas is supposed to be about.