A Year of Kindness: Be kind to a service worker

“Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.” – Dalai Lama

Take a moment and think about all the interactions you have throughout your day. Of course, you have your family, and you have your co-workers. But many – if not most – of our daily interactions are with service workers. There’s the barista with your morning coffee, the mail carrier making a delivery to your office, the checker at the grocery store, the waiter taking your order at lunch, the receptionist greeting you prior to your appointment…the list goes on.

With the holiday season fast approaching, now is the perfect time to turn our Year of Kindness focus to those working in the service industry.

With crowded stores, overflowing to-do lists, and overall seasonal stress, we can easily lose patience during these micro-interactions – especially when lines are long, mistakes happen, or things don’t go according to our plans. The cashier accidentally rings up an item twice, cannot fix the situation on his/her own, and calls the manager over to make the correction. The line of waiting customers grows longer, frown lines on faces deepen, frustrated sighs become more audible, irritated glances at watches become more frequent.

But what if we all chose to take a deep breath in situations such as these and stop the negative momentum? What if we replaced impatience with kindness and grace – and put ourselves in the worker’s shoes? Through the lens of compassion, we would likely see someone just trying their best to perform their job well. But just like in life, mistakes happen. Being rude or expressing your displeasure with what the worker is (or isn’t) doing isn’t going to help anyone. It is just going to make that worker’s day a little worse and the negativity will ripple to those around you.

This holiday season, let’s try to be extra kind to the people whose job it is to provide services to others. It won’t cost us a thing and we’ll never fully know the difference we can make. Please join us in following the prompts below and go be kind!

November: Be kind to a service worker