Gracious.

I had lunch with a vendor today. He found out a couple months ago that my birthday is this weekend, and he sent a meeting invite for lunch today. I accepted it and figured I’d get out of it with an excuse a couple weeks before (given my weird social anxieties), except a legitimate excuse never presented itself and Tony encouraged me to go.

I’ve known this guy in a professional capacity since I started at this job in March of 2010, so 4 1/2 years now, and we’ve never gone to lunch.

I chose Corner Bakery, since it’s one of my favorite places and I am obsessed with love their iced tea … it was loud, as most of them are, and I wondered to myself how the cashier was even able to hear our orders. He decided to order dessert, and ordered their pumpkin poundcake. When she came up with the dessert, she had the lemon poundcake instead. He looked at me and told me he thought he’d ordered the pumpkin. I replied to him that he had, but she likely misheard because it was so loud.

When he mentioned it to her, she got really flustered and apologetic. (I assume if she had gotten the correct thing, the wrong thing would have had to be thrown away.) He shrugged and told her, “No problem, the lemon sounds good, too, don’t even worry about it.” She was still apologizing to him as she rang up the order, he said, “You know, if it’s not too late, would you mind adding the pumpkin, too? I’ll just take it to my kids.” He smiled and she smiled in return and everything was instantly smoothed over.

I watched the interaction and was struck by how gracious that was for him to do. Not everyone would think to do that, truthfully, I might not even had thought to do it. I’m also not sure if it was an intentional or an intuitive act on his part, or whether that even matters… it was a kindness.

Oh, and he also got two desserts. 😀