r/randomactsofkindness

I was at a CVS store in the pouring rain in Texas. An elderly woman was outside with a basket w/ wheels full of things, just standing there. I asked her if she needed help. She told me she was waiting for the rain to stop. I was in a small car, no room to put in the basket and her, so I asked her how far she was going. Her apartment was right behind the CVS. I asked her if she wanted me to walk her home. I pulled out my big umbrella from the back of the car, walked her and her groceries home, it was less than a 5-minute walk. She told me that it was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for her, and she was so grateful. It was a simple thing to do, took less than 10 minutes, but I changed her day, and gave her something that every human should do for another - help them out. One kind act per day, my mom always told me. And I was so glad I noticed her, and said something.

I wanted to post this as it was exactly 60 years ago. I was 12, my sister was 6. My dad was in Vietnam with the Air Force. We were driving back to SC from VA, early in the morning. Halfway there, at 6 in the morning, I was asleep in the back seat and my mom blacked out (we think). It was a horrible accident, it was pretty clear I was going to be the only survivor. No family within 150 miles. I’m in a hospital bed, just too stunned to function. A lady comes in, introduces herself as my mom’s doctor’s wife, and says, My son thought you should have these. 6 comic books. I mean, I’m still amazed.

I don’t have a car so I’m familiar with both rideshare and grocery delivery. Yesterday the Instacart app and website were glitching, so I took a Lyft to Aldi (it was 91 degrees or I could have walked), did my shopping, and ordered another Lyft to get home. Both drivers were fantastic. I unpacked my groceries and realized I was missing a bag. Fortunately nothing perishable but still a bummer.

This afternoon I got a text from my downstairs neighbor saying a guy dropped off a bag saying a woman who lived here left it at the store. He must have made another trip to Aldi.

Dwight, I favorited you in the app. I hope all your rides tip 50 percent (I certainly will), the other side of your pillow is always cool, and all your favorite music groups stay together and keep putting out good music.

Aaj thoda reality check mila. 😅

I recently joined a beverage manufacturing company in the Quality Assurance (QA) department. We work in rotating shifts (Morning, Afternoon & Night).

My father has glaucoma, and we had to visit a doctor in another city (almost a 2-hour journey) to fix the date for his eye surgery. Unfortunately, I was scheduled for the afternoon shift.

So I asked one of my seniors if he could swap shifts with me. He would do my afternoon shift, and I'd do his night shift. This way I could take my father to the hospital without using my paid leave.

The thing is... I've done the same for him 4–5 times in the last 3 months. Whenever he needed a shift change, I agreed without thinking twice.

This was the first time I needed his help.

His answer?

• "My wife is not well."
• "There's no one at home to make breakfast for my kids."
• "I can't come again after finishing my night shift."

At first, I accepted it. It sounded genuine. 🤷‍♂️

But later, a few colleagues told me something interesting...

Apparently, this is his pattern. He regularly asks others to adjust for him, but when someone else needs help, he always has a reason why he can't. Different situations... same outcome.

That honestly hurt more than I expected.

Now I've decided one thing:
I'll still help people, but I'll stop expecting the same in return. Helping someone should be a choice, not an investment expecting returns.

But I'm also wondering where the line should be.

Should I stop helping him in the future?
Or should I continue helping without expecting anything back? 🤔

Life really teaches you about people in the smallest moments.

This was last November, but this story still makes me smile. Also this is my first post, I apologize if It doesn't fit here!

It was my very first time vending/selling things at a convention. I was so nervous, yet somehow excited, to be haggling off my wares of homemade fidgets, earrings, kandi singles/beaded bracelets (These are important for later), paintings, etc.

Enter; the spunky, sweet, albeit a little overwhelming kiddo who was in love with my booth. She couldn't have been older than 10 years old and was a tiny little thing.

She visited my booth several times (at one point even for 45 minutes because I was too nice to tell her to leave because I had customers) and at one point even brought her Dad over to purchase one of my cuffs. Her dad saw the Kandi cuff and called it "Art", and bought it. He also stopped by to bring her back to his own booth with a quiet apology for her stopping by so much but I didn't mind my tiny fan, haha.

At one of her many visits, she asked if she could show me her Kandi. I said I'd love to see it! She scurried off, and came back with a bowl of kandi charms and beaded bracelets. She showed me each one in excitement, and asked if I wanted one. That gave me an Idea.

I was wearing a skirt that day covered in aliens and an alien earrings. I leaned over to my basket of beaded bracelets/kandi singles and found one that had black and green beads and said "Alien" in letter beads. I gave it to her saying "Here, something to remember me by". She was THRILLED! She put the bracelet on after deciding to exchange it for a kandi pizza charm (In kandi culture you exchange bracelets/charms/cuffs/etc.)

I still keep the kandi pizza charm in a tiny storage spot in my bedroom, and I'm officially doing my third convention this coming November.

I didn't see the kiddo at my last convention (The cons I vend at are all held by the same people), but if I see her at the November one, I just may have to trade with her again!!

I slipped and hurt my knee hiking in a small town and an elderly gentleman came over and said he would wait and help me up when I was ready. So sweet. Then the local cafe gave me a bag of ice to put on it and people everywhere were being considerate. I waited out front of the pharmacy for it to open to get some Advil. A homeless man held the door open for me with compassion on his face for my pain. I was really encouraged that people’s hearts are still working.

I need a pick me up to read on my hard days. Tell me your stories that make me believe in humanity again.

I've been having a rough month. Life has definitely been lifeing. I kinda just need some hope right now. I just want something pure and honest to read. So if you have anything, I would love to hear it

I had an experience that has stuck with me for months now, and wanted to share. I was parking at the veterans parking at the local supermarket, and this old leathery dude started approaching me. I am brown skinned and he looked like those crusty old magas you see making performative videos on r/iamverybadass, and therefore was half expecting a confrontation. Anyway he asked me where I served, I replied, and without breaking his stride, he gives me a big hug and says “thank you for your service brother”. I broke the fuck down in this man’s arms. Life has been HARD lately. Alongside the country I love being turned into an authoritarian theocracy, I have been partially paralyzed, I am fighting cancer, my ac unit needed to be replaced, etc. Life was kicking me in the balls and this man’s actions broke the dam I didn’t realize I was holding back. He just held me (I am assuming awkwardly) until I was able to regain composure and embarrassingly apologize profusely, to which he replied “anytime man”.

So many of us are struggling and you never know the effect a kind gesture might have on someone. Now while I wouldn’t suggest doing what he did, as that was kind of crazy, I was inspired to check in on some friends I just “never had time to” before. Take care of each other out there.

I was traveling recently with some friends and on the trip home, we missed our connecting flight. We ended up getting scattered seats on a flight a few hours later, and I ended up in the exit row. I've never been in an exit row before.

After getting settled, someone came down the aisle and he was so tall he was hunched over just walking in the plane, and he took the tiny seat right behind me. His knee reached into the aisle and was literally beside me. This man was SO. FREAKING. TALL.

So I turned around, tapped him on the knee, and asked "Hey, do you want to switch seats?"

His expression literally turned into a puppy. He was like "Are you sure?" and I said "I'm SO tiny." (I'm 5'6, flexible, skinny, and I can do intricate origami with my body while on a plane. All that leg room was completely wasted on me.)

So we switched, and he was super grateful. And I even got an empty seat beside me, which let me sit with my legs crossed and do other origami. Even seated normally, I still had like 4-6 inches of space between my knees and his seat.

Turns out he'd also missed a flight and had just barely gotten on this one. So those circumstances of both of us missing flights, ending up near one another, and it being extremely convenient to switch, idk I think it was meant to be.

He was super thankful, the flight attendants acknowledged it and said it was nice of me. Genuinely, his expression when I asked to switch made it all worth it. (And the good feelings of having done a nice thing, too.)

Saw him in the airport later sitting down and WOW he was just ALL legs. I was too shy to ask how tall he was, but it had to have been over 6'6.

So there’s a McDonald’s right near my gym that I frequent every morning for a coffee after a run. Recently, I started grabbing breakfast there too to try and collect all of the different FIFA World Cup cups. It’s so silly, but it makes me feel like a kid again (27M). For the most part, it’s always the same gentleman who takes my payment. He’s super sweet and last week I guess some customers must’ve been pretty hard on him cause when I pulled up to the window to pay he said “just give me a second” to which I replied “there’s no rush sir please take your time”. In that moment, he looked at me with a surprised look on his face, smiled, and then thanked me for my patience before venting to me about how rude some people are. Anyways, fast track to today and McDonald’s is running a special where you get 2 of the cups in the meal instead of one. Well, I only needed 2 more, and after driving hours to exchange with others on Facebook marketplace to trade my extras for ones I didn’t have, I figured I’d try my luck at the other 2. Anyways, I pull up to the window this morning, and the gentleman gushes to me about how it’s crazy it’s 2 cups now and how he has a bunch extra of the Yamal cups, to which I respond “awe man, I’m so close to completing the collection, I just need the David Beckham and grimace”. I saw his eyes light up and he asked me to pay at where I normally pick up the food, before promptly taking off. So, I go pay, grab my meal and cups, and excitedly open them in the parking lot, and as I’m sure you have all clued into by now, get the last 2 I needed to complete the collection. I don’t know how he did it, but I know it was him. Honestly this just made my day and probably my week. It’s crazy how something likely so small to him had the biggest impact on me.

Thanks for reading. And thank you sir, if you see this.

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My local convenience store sells alcohol, which is where I stop by on my way home from work to get my coolers. As the guy is grabbing my stuff for me (it’s locked up), there’s a man cashing out for 1 cooler. He’s already drinking the exact same cooler with a straw in it, so I guess he’s just getting another to keep the buzz going. Looked a little rough, had some heavy duty boots on that were roughed up, but of a dingy backpack, but decent clothes. Maybe a blue collar guy just hanging out wanting a drink by himself, maybe he had no where to go, I don’t know. He pays for his cooler and leaves.

So as I’m in line, I ask the guy who’s grabbing my stuff to grab me one of the coolers the man was drinking. He charged me for all my stuff and I walk out.

I had no idea if that man was going to be still outside when I left, or he was going to be gone, but I had a feeling he was going to be sitting on the stairs outside the store because if he’s hanging around to get another cooler after he just finished his other one, he’s obviously hanging around the store.

Sure enough, I see the man sitting on the stairs. I pull the cooler out, hand it to him and go “Here you go😊” and he was hesitant to reach for it, and was like “This is for me?” And I was like yeah here ! He took it and was like “Thank you so much! Thanks!”. It didn’t exactly light up his life, but it did seem to brighten his night.

I don’t know what this man’s situation is, if he’s okay or not, once I saw his face, he had no teeth and definitely had some dirtiness to him, so I’m sure he was either homeless or in some sort of similar situation, but I hope giving him 1 more drink for the night maybe cheered him up.

Thinking about it now, I feel like I was trying to do a nice thing, but it wasn’t exactly in the best way… Giving more alcohol to a guy who’s struggling? Maybe I should’ve asked if he wanted something to eat instead.

Did I do something bad? Or was it alright and I’m over thinking it?

I have some pretty heavy stuff going on right now, so to be able to help someone else out with just a drink at break time was really nice and took my mind off things. He was surprised I offered. You could see it on his face. I could tell he was grateful.

I got into my first ever traffic accident today. Another car was speeding while I was crossing and t boned my car without braking. My car spun and slid across the road and landed safely in a ditch. The entire ordeal felt very traumatic and out of body, but two kind strangers helped make it a lot better. One man was a witness and checked to make sure I was fine - I was having a full blown panic attack when he kindly opened my car door so I could breathe. Another woman saw the crash and came to check in on me as well. She was a physician and stayed by me until paramedics arrived on the scene. This was/still is a very scary situation, but thank you to these kind strangers for helping when I needed it the most. I wish I could’ve grabbed their contact information to thank them.

My submission:

My grandmother used to give all of her grandkids pajamas every year for Christmas. I’m not biologically hers (she’s my mom’s dad’s brother’s ex), but one year she decided to get me pajamas which felt like her way of accepting me into her family as her granddaughter and so those gifts were always really meaningful to me. Since her Alzheimer’s has gotten worse, she never does it anymore. This past Christmas, she got me pajamas again and I was so happy because it felt like she was getting better and becoming herself again. It then became clear later on that she had definitely not gotten better, and my grandfather (her husband) told me that he’d gotten the present. I realized that he’d lied and let her pretend that she’d remembered so that she could feel like she was still caring for her family and, for me, like she was getting better. 

Was suggested I post on this subreddit instead, so here I am: (Edited out the other 2 parts)

For Friday among things I appreciate is:

The kindness of others. The bus driver asking if I needed that bus, making sure. The free bottles of water at the station. The 2 girls on the train - at that point I was struggling a bit physically & emotionally - asking if I was OK, the 1 with a seat offering me a seat, reminding me to drink water (heat wave). Also grateful that when I sat down I was next to some1 with a battery fan and some1 with a paper fan & felt the breeze from both.