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Some Faith in Humanity Restored! (stories of humanity remembering to not be dicks)
Posts
If it was easy, everybody'd be doing it. If everybody was doing it, we wouldn't need this thread...
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
Nothing major, but it felt good.
The dog comes zooming from the middle of the road, straight into my arms. After calming the feller down, I hand him to the girl, who's rather thankful. I guess it's the closest I've ever been to saving someone's life.
Another story, when I was a child, I had to cross a less dangerous road (but still busy) to get to school. There were no crossing lights, just a sign, and if the person felt like it, there would be a child crossing guard. Across from it, a group of elementary school students always stood there, waiting for a bus to either the local Catholic school, or the private Christian school. I never really associated with them. One day, when I was seven, I stupidly misjudged and ran across the road, getting hit by a car going at a fast clip. The impact sent me flying, then rolling, until I hit a curb. This happened right in front of these kids, who if they were average kids, would have just watched, pointed, and laughed.
Not these kids. Within moments, the 4 strongest ones were grabbing me from the road, picked me up, and set me down on the grass, another grabbed my backpack, and brought it to me. Another kid asked me for my name and address, and after reluctantly giving it to them (I was terrified I was going to be in trouble with my mom) one of the other kids sped off to my house, which was two blocks away. I never got to thank those kids. Sure, later on, first aid told me that you're not suppose to move a person due to neck and back injuries, but hell, these were kids, none of them older than 13.
WoW
Dear Satan.....
Me and some friends regularly go bowling about every other week. We're at a pretty wide variety of skill levels: at one end of the spectrum, I have one friend who owns his own ball and shoes and might bowl a 130 on a really bad night, and at the other end of the spectrum, we have my friend Nate, who has broken a score of 90 maybe one time in six months. The point is to make sure that everyone is having fun regardless of how well he bowls, though, or else people will stop coming. And then we'll have to take up golf because one does a lot less damage throwing a golf club into a lake out of doors in frustration than one does throwing a bowling ball into a refreshment stand out of frustration. And that's no good; I hate playing golf.
Anyway, the first time we got Nate to come out bowling with us, he seemed to be feeling pretty low. Not only is he objectively terrible as a bowler, he's been having some problems at home, it looked like he was on the verge of divorce, and so whenever he missed, he'd just kind of shuffle back to the benches while muttering to himself with his shoulders slumped. And we'd do the polite thing and say, "Aw, hey, good try, Nate," and stuff like that, but it didn't really do anything to cheer him up.
I guess everyone else in the bowling alley seemed to notice that Nate was having a pretty horrible night for reasons that probably had nothing to do with bowling because once he got a couple of frames under his belt, he stopped throwing gutter balls. By the sixth frame, he picked up a spare, and not only did all of his friends in our lane stand up to clap for him -- the total strangers in the lanes on either side clapped for him, too. On the very last frame, he picked up a spare off an 8-10 split (which was pretty impressive in its own right) and knocked down nine on the extra frame. About ten people mobbed him to give him high fives and slap him on the back, and he didn't know half of them.
I think it was the first time I'd seen him smile in a non-ironic way in a month.
http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=414132
You sure his personal problems weren't related to a group of persistent stalkers?
(In all seriousness, great story.)
Since then, I always assume people are having the shittiest day when I see something bad happen and I try to help out. Most recently, on my way back into my apartment on the campus shuttle, I saw a car sitting in the turn lane on a big (3 lanes each direction) road with the door open. I thought it was weird, but hey, it's Florida, maybe his AC is broke and it's a million degrees outside.
About 15 minutes later, I'm heading out of my apartment myself towards my girlfriend's place when I realize the same car is in the same spot I saw earlier. I pull a U, stop behind him, and get out to see what's going on. Turns out his radiator was shot and he'd been stuck there for 30 minutes because no one else would help. I went back and pulled my car up onto the median and got ready to push his car out across traffic and into the parking lot of a Walgreens that was right there. A crossing guard for the local high school helped out when it took longer than the length of the turn signal to push the car out of the way, but I pushed this guy's old mustang the 60 yards or so in the Orlando summer heat and then took him into work so he wouldn't get fired. I left him my cell number and told him to give me a call if he needed a lift back home, but I assume he managed to find someone.
Farther back than that, it's just little things that, like @MalReynolds was saying, could have been someone trying to scam me, but I just have to assume they weren't. Helping people out with some groceries, putting a few bucks in gas in someone's car so they can get back home, helping replace tires. I like to thing that if I, someone who is, by all rights, an ass, can manage to help out people occasionally, that we're not in as shitty a spot as it seems.
So, it's also a rare week when some other customer sitting in the place doesn't stand up and pay for their bread/muffin/coffee/whatever. A couple times it's almost been a race to the counter to see who wins the honor of buying stuff for strangers. It's usually a very small gesture, just a couplefew dollars, but the whole thing never fails to make me smile.
My sister and I went to Johnny Rockets for lunch, and we sat at the counter. For those of you who do not know Johnny Rockets, it styles itself as a 50s style restaurant, and all the serving staff wear outfits out of the 50s. The lady who was going to wait on us comes over, and we get to chatting, and I ask how her day is. She replies that someone left cash on the counter to pay for their bill, and that when she went to collect it, someone else had taken the cash and disappeared with it. This money was going to come out of the waitress's tips for the day. My sister and I express our sympathies, and lunch continues from there. As we go to pay, I leave a tip large enough to more than cover the money the waitress lost, and tell the waitress "I hope your day gets better from here on out." The waitress looks a little puzzled, and looks in the check and then sees how much I left. She then runs around the counter and gives me a giant hug, and starts to cry as she thanks me. She says it's too much and she can't possibly accept it. I say I don't know what you're talking about, and wish her a nice day again and leave.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Now that you say this, I think more likely is that just the tip portion of the bill was cash (the rest was charged or whatever), and that is what disappeared. You're right in thinking that business can't force employees to pay for things like that. Either way, the waitress was robbed.
Edit: Just thought of another simple one. About two weeks ago on the way to work I came upon a van that was on the side of the road with a guy of African-American descent tryng to catch a ride. I live in a very small population community and I have to drive 35 miles every day to get to work. It has been 20s or below for the last few months and so I stopped when the other 5 cars in front of me didnt. The guy was very grateful and stated he had been up since 3AM trying to get back home as he work 90+ miles away from his wife and family and his wife was late to work. He was an immigrant from Jamaica and stated that he was having a hard time with life because of his horrible van and the fact that he has to work so hard to try and make money. After I dropped him off he tried to give me some gas money but I stated "I was heading this way anyway and I couldnt take him all the way to his destination" he insisted that as a man it would help him feel better and that he was very grateful and left the money on the seat. I still have his money and intend to pay it forward.
Over the past couple of years I lost over a 100lbs, mainly through working out. At first I used the threadmill at my house, but eventually I decided I needed to start hitting the gym. Now this terrified me, as I was always self consious about my lack of physical activity and felt everyone was going to judge me. None the less I signed up for a gym, one that had a small indoor running track, and did my best to run around it.
After a couple of days, some random in shape gym person came up to me and told me that I was busting my ass out there and to keep it up. Just such a small gesture but it really motivated me.
Sad part is this is pretty common practice for servers. Or if they make a mistake ringing up your bill and shortcharge you, they're usually paying the difference. Oh they could explain it to their boss and have the company cover it. Same way they could tell their boss if their wage+tips doesn't equal minimum wage to get paid the remainder. It's a great way to get fired, though.
On the happy side, this is why I always tip 20%, unless it's the worst service ever. Then they only get 15%.
Oh also in WA state they have to pay minimum wage before tips. So go Washington.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Car story 1: When I was 16, 2 friends and I went out for some Black Friday shopping. They picked me up, and we were exiting the trailer park (...) and I said to my friend who was driving, "You know there's no way across the median..." and he responded, "Nope." as we headed straight into the large median of a 4 lane highway in 18 inches or so of snow. It wasn't but 2 minutes of our flailing attempts to push the car out before 2 people, a young guy in a pickup and a middle aged guy in a beat up sedan both stopped, and with a rope to the truck and 4 of us pushing we got the car out.
10 miles into our trip, there was a car in the ditch, so of course we had to stop. Another fellow with a truck stopped a few minutes later and with one friend and I pushing, the truck pulling, and the my other friend standing in the middle of the highway to stop traffic for a moment, we got the woman's car out of the ditch as well.
Car story 2: I went to my in-law's with my wife and kids, and left them there to visit a friend who lives nearby for a night of DnD, Flux, etc. The next morning, severely hungover, I headed back to my mother-in-law's. Halfway there, and this is out in the country on a Sunday in the middle of the day in August, there's a car stopped heading the other direction with it's truck open and an extremely befuddled looking woman staring into it. I really had no desire to stop at all (but probably also had no desire to see my wife and mother-in-law yet as hung over as I was), but I pulled a U-turn anyway and stopped behind them. Then I saw what looked to be an able bodied 30 year old guy sitting against the side of the car facing the ditch, and I didn't know if he was an asshole for making this older woman deal with their flat tire, or if he was hurt.
It turns out that he was her son, and he had Downs. She was just totally at a loss for what to do. Her cell phone had no signal where we were (neither did mine), her son was confused and sad about what was going on, and she hadn't known if anyone was going to drive by any time soon. So I changed the tire and chatted with them a bit. She tried to give me $20 for helping but I somehow convinced her that it was ok.
Boat story: I went sailing for the first time when I was 15 or so. A friend of mine, 17, and his younger brother, 13, had a couple of sailboats in their family and were relatively experienced, so we headed out alone to a lake in the area. The boat we had was a Flying Dutchman, this used to be the boat used in 2-man sailing in the Olympics (or so I was told, I don't think I've ever checked that...). Of course the people doing that were 6'4" 220 pound guys with years of experience. We probably weighed about 300 pounds all together, it was my first time sailing, and they were two arguing brothers. We sailed for a good 2 hours and were making our last tack to head to the boat landing, when the younger brother accidentally jibed (turned the boat across the wind with the boat heading downwind). Jibing can be a kind of fun, exciting, thing to do because it happens really fast, but it's very dangerous if you do it stupidly, which this was. Luckily, none of us was hit by the boom swinging across the boat at full force, but unluckily, this is because we'd both been, well, doing what they're doing in this picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapeze_(sailing), leaning out to balance the boat. Of course once the boom swung, and the wind was coming from the other direction, we were not balancing anymore, and the boat almost instantly capsized.
It took about 8-10 seconds for the boat to fully flip. We were all wearing lifejackets (I'm a terrible swimmer), and were uninjured, and were able to crawl up on top of the boat. We were not able to right it though, even with all three of us pulling on the centerboard. We learned later that it was because the mast was stuck in the bottom of the lake. It was late september, maybe early October, I think, in Minnesota. The water couldn't have been more than 55 degrees, it was very windy, and we were more than a quarter mile from shore. No one expected us back for a few hours, and we had no cell phone. There was no one else on the lake all day, and in fact it appeared that many of the cabins and homes had already pulled their boats out of the water for winter.
I have no idea how long we sat on the boat. It was at least 15 minutes, and probably less than 30, but it felt like forever. We were shivering like crazy and debating the merits of sending the dumbass who capsized us to try to swim to shore when a boat left its dock and came and rescued us. They pulled the sail boat upright eventually, bending the mast in the process (because it was stuck), and got us to shore. Why friend was pretty incoherent when we got there, and I'm rather convinced that he was beginning to suffer from hypothermia.
The dudes that saved us were as nice as could possibly be. They just happened to be looking out their window when we capsized and luckily hadn't winterized their boat yet. They didn't give us any shit or tell us how stupid we were, they just called my friend's parents for us, dried us off, gave us blankets, got our sailboat back on the trailer for us, and hung out with us until the parents got there.
Then he handed his balloon to the girl, said "OK all done" to me and waved bye. The mother looked at me while her daughter laughed but I just shrugged... it was all his idea.
Sometimes it helps to hear it.
It really does.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
I'll make sure to tell someone tomorrow, and I have someone in mind for Saturday too.
Also, @MalReynolds, you've posted quite a number of awesome stories yourself, so:
And especially those people who post here and make the community great.
Seriously.
You are all fantastic people and I love you all dearly.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
http://bygonebureau.com/2013/01/23/advice-for-boys/
It's the story of a woman who answered the awkward questions of teenage gamers for years, helping them get through one of the harder parts of anyone's life. She didn't have to be decent and kind about it. She even comments that it would've been in lockstep with the site she was on not to. But she was decent, she was kind. The readership followed.
Her last comment is how I feel about human culture as a whole, "I like to think it’s sort of like Web 1.0 — we built a good foundation. It’s still there."
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
My ex and I, we were a pair. There wasn't a single situation that she and I couldn't figure out together. And when she joined the Air Force, I told her - this is just a drop in the bucket for us.The rest of our lives won't measure a thing, because we, we're forever.
I ended up breaking things off with her about six months in, because she was in a facility for self harm, 2000 miles away, and I thought everyone there would look after her.
We met up a couple of times after those shenanigans; I remember talking to her a month before it happened, because I wanted to hear her voice.
So please, just tell people how much they mean.
Please.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Eventually I left to go buy some bottled water, and just after I got back this car pulled up, and this lady got out. At first we thought she was going to yell at us for parking on a private drive or something (this was in one of those fancy city within a city areas) but instead, she handed us a couple of ice cream sundaes and some water. She'd driven by earlier a couple times on her way places and seeing us still there thought it was entirely too hot for folks to be out. We started chatting and it turned she'd just been hired for the hospital my wife and I both work for as well.
I'm sure some of you are familiar with Meetup.com. It's a site where people create groups of similar interests in order to meet people and what not. I joined it 3 years ago when I moved to Dallas, found and group and made some really cool friends. The organizer of said group (and a good friend) moved out of Dallas, so I ended up taking over.
Now until recently I would never categorize myself as outgoing or extrovert, but since I was the organizer of the group I took it upon myself to make sure to make everyone feel welcomed and part of the group at any events I ended up doing. Just being friendly, including people in conversations, if someone seemed out of place or by themselves talking to them. Nothing special really but sometimes that combined with the stress of organizing events gets to me/
Well, last night a friend who I met a couple of months through one of the events I hosted thanked me for "changing her life." She was at a rough spot when she joined the group (Broken up with fiance months before her wedding, feeling like she didn't have any real friends ) and even when she tried meetup she was hesitant and had no idea what to expect. She told me how it was specifically me being so welcoming and friendly that made her want to continue to come to events and hang out with our group. She credits all the friends and awesome times we had to me.
Made me feel kinda awesome really.
It's a small thing, but I try it make eye contact and say thank you as directly as possible when buying something at the grocery story or a fast food place. I know those jobs for the most part suck and can be soul crushingly repetitive, so if I can express some personal appreciation perhaps it will make the day go a little better or faster.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
One of our customers has a reputation for having an extremely caustic personality. Not just among us, either -- years before I worked there, I volunteered at a special event where she was catering. She was rude to all of us, and constantly complained about the facilities. Hella good food though, so...you know. Whatever. At first I thought it was just me, that maybe I'd inadvertently offended her, or was imagining her attitude. Then one of the other volunteers (who I'd literally never heard say a negative word about anyone) just blurted out after the caterer left, in her perfect Southern Belle accent, "Yeah, she's a bitch." Some of the other volunteers chimed in, stating that they'd had similar experiences at her restaurant, or had friends who had worked with her and felt the same way.
So flash forward several years, I'm at my new job, and I see the name of her restaurant come up on the caller ID. I pick up, take her order. She's very brusque the whole time. So, you know, not much unexpected there. After it's done, my coworker sees my expression and says, "Yeah, she's always like that. That's why I let you pick up first." (<---story of humanity forgetting to not be dicks)
Over the next few weeks, she's calling in all the time. Placing orders sometimes, but often complaining about incredibly minor things. And you know, complaints are fair, obviously. But you'd think, from her attitude, that we'd delivered her 12 cases of panda shit. Just a wildly overblown aggressive attitude about even the smallest things.
So I decided to experiment with the old wisdom about kindness drawing kindness out of people.
It started small, with a sincere "have a nice day" at the end of each call. Then, I started preempting the business discussion by asking how her day was as soon as she identified herself. Of course, I already knew who she was because of caller ID, but people respond positively when you respond positively to their name.
Before long, she was calling every day. Not complaining anymore. Just holding a brief discussion about our respective days, "how's business", "oh, did that really happen?" sorts of things. I considered it mission accomplished, wisdom confirmed: kindness really does breed kindness.
One day, she calls in to place her order.
Her: "Hey, this is _______ with ________."
Me: "Oh hey! You doing OK today?"
She started crying.
Me: "I'm...are you OK?"
Her: "No, but thank you so much."
She hangs up. About 5 minutes later, she calls back, places her order quickly, and hangs up again.
We still talk almost every day, just little nothings between mostly-strangers. But it taught me to believe that nobody is really just an incorrigible dick. Even the people that drive us crazy, who seem to be mean for no reason, are still people and that responding with genuine humanity can make life better for everyone involved.
http://www.facebook.com/Nolimitstrackdays/posts/572464006114448
Yeah, small things like that help a lot. In London the etiquette is pretty clear about pregnant women, the ill and the elderly, but people ignore it enough that it is nice when it happens.
I remember once half a dozen friends and I were entering a Tube carriage to head home after a night out. I saw a seat and sat down (I justified this to myself on the basis of my commute being 2x as long as theirs and drunk). Anyway, they were standing and talking while I was zoning out. Then I noticed they started giving me angry looks after a stop. It wasn't clear why and they refused to speak to me and tell me. So they then got off and so did some others and then I saw that one of the women who had entered at the previous stop was heavily pregnant. Before I could offer her my seat, someone else did. Then at the next stop an elderly person got on who looked like they needed a seat. So I gave up my seat, now being hyper conscious of such things. The next stop saw someone with a crutch getting on and so the pregnant woman gave up her seat, which we couldn't let stand and then without realising it, we had a game of musical chairs as people got up or swapped seats in an effort to be considerate.
My friends didn't see any of this and of course wouldn't believe me!
So me, my wife and 2 sons (6 and 3 year old) have been temporarily displaced due to crapstorm Sandy. (couple trees fell on our house) so we've been staying with relatives in the northern part of the state while our house is repaired. my older son is in kindergarten, and has been having a semi rough couple months, being out of his element, so to speak (not at home, being in a new school...after only being his other new school for 2 months, before the storm hit). Well, anyways, today in the mail, he gets a package, and inside is about 20 letters from all of the kids in his kindergarten class back at home, with messages of we miss you, and adorable 5-6 year old drawings. i got a bit choked up watching hime reading them, saying "hey i remember this person etc". so yeah, perhaps there is hope for us all, yet...
gamertag:Maguano71
Switch:SW-8428-8279-1687
A few years ago just before Christmas I got into a major accident. Everything turned out okay in the end, but in the 3 weeks after it happened I was broke, and didn't know what was going to happen. My friend showed up one day and bought me groceries as well as a $200 gift card to the grocery store. Turns out, at Christmas time he'll find someone when he goes shopping who looks like they could use some good news and buys their groceries for them. He'd been doing it for years. I had no idea.
This man is the antithesis of a 'typical' contractor / blue collar construction worker.
"Eh, just get 'er done."
"No. Get it done right."
Holmes has been a household name in Canada, and his show is the only 'reality tv' program I think is worth a damn. He & his team partner-up with various specialists & building supply retailers / warehouses, and they fix people's houses after they've been ruined by fraudster 'contractors' (Canada's regulations as regards home renovation companies are a sad affair; as Holmes himself has noted. just about anyone with a hammer and a truckload full of base boards can call themselves a home renovation contractor and go around scamming people out of money while damaging their home).
Holmes does the repair work - some of it being weeks of back-breaking labor - for free, he does it with a smile on his face, he only talks to the owner to tell them that they'll be taken care of and he doesn't put on the whole egotistical macho attitude when dealing with his crew. He thinks that we'd have a much better construction labor force in the country if the 'be a REAL man!' attitude disappeared from the industry, it would be much stronger & involve far fewer accident / mistakes each year.
1) I used to live in one of the dorm complexes here at Western, and that year I had a position as president of the complex's hall council- generally we go around and make repairs, put on free events with catered food that residents can come to, all that kind of stuff. Part of my responsibility as president was to make sure that every shopping list was handed in to the complex director.
It's a chilly January afternoon, and I'm heading out after getting the latest batch of lists in to the director. I look down as I'm coming out of Zimmerman and there is just an actual, honest-to-whatever pile of crumpled money blowing around. It takes me a bit, but I collect every bill I can see (had to chase a twenty across the street and damn near got hit by someone racing out of the rec center parking lot while they were chatting on a phone). I stop and count it- there's about a hundred bucks here.
I know some people among my friends who would gladly pocket the money and walk away whistling, but... honestly, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. So I walk into the lobby and ask some of the people standing there if anyone had dropped some money.
Turns out one of the people in the lobby remembers his friend fretting about having lost money, so he calls his friend and has him come down. He comes down and almost falls down the stairs, and when I hand him the money, he's almost crying in happiness. It turns out that he was on the lowest meal plan the university has, and well... that was his eating money for the next four days. His parents couldn't send him any more and he was thinking he was going to be living off a loaf of bread and some butter for the rest of the week.
2) This story takes place at the NACURH (National Association of College and University Residence Halls) convention back in May a few years back. I had a close female friend back then, and when we got to the hotel, she made a pretty crappy discovery: it was apparently time for Mother Nature to give her the monthly gift, and well... she'd not packed enough in the way of napkins for the weekend.
Saturday of the convention, we were in the middle of Muncie, Indiana, looking for a way that we could possibly go find these blasted things. The city buses are running, but our jag-off coordinator won't give us the hour it would take to go run to find these things. Instead, he tells us we can skip lunch to go get them, but we'd have to go, buy them, and be back in less than forty-five minutes... or risk getting charged for the entire cost that the school had paid to send us on this trip.
There's one last hope before she has to start asking her friends if they have any extra pads- the university we're staying at has a small student store full of drinks, junk food, and minor toiletries. She's hoping they have them, I hope they have a decent amount of snacks, because I am jonesing for a quick chocolate fix.
Lo and behold, there's a miracle: they have her brand. She grabs three of them and joyfully heads up to the counter ahead of me, and pulls out her card to pay for them. This story has a happy ending, right?
Not just yet. Apparently the student store only takes cash, and she looks like someone just kicked her in the stomach and tasered her at the same time. She was on her was past distraught and heading up towards upset.
A word of wisdom- satisfying a chocolate craving isn't worth seeing one of your best friends cry because they don't know what they're going to do.
So I step forward and add the two packs of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to the pads, and then toss down a twenty. "I got 'em." I say, and she looks up and starts protesting that I didn't have to do it. I keep insisting, and eventually she relents- especially when I just hand her the bag with the candy still in it (Reese's cups are her favorite).
On our way back to the dormitory where we're staying, she stops and gives me a hug, and doesn't let go for a minute. Then she wipes her eyes and tells me "Jay, you're a true friend." Apparently, word spreads among the female members of our party, and I apparently gained a lot of respect for it. I just felt like I was doing what was right.
I can has cheezburger, yes?