From Doug at Still Blowing Bubbles:
Breakfast At Mrs. Rigby’s
A man came in while I was chewing eggs, and it’s a seat-yourself restaurant, but a instead of sitting down he approached one of the waitresses and said, “Excuse me.”
“Hi,” she said. “You can sit anywhere.”
“Well, there’s a problem,” he said. “I can’t pay, but I’m expecting a check in the mail within the next few days. Would it be OK if I paid later?”
He was in his 40s, balding, skinny, not black but not quite white — maybe Mexican, maybe something else. He was asking Angela, a waitress who’s taken my order dozens of times, and she’s always nice. Being nice is her job, and she was nice to this guy. Without even a second of hesitation she said again, “You can sit anywhere, and pay when you can.”
A meal on credit, no questions asked. Apparently, I was eating breakfast inside an episode of The Waltons.
When Angela came to my table a little later, leaving the bill, I offered to pay for that guy’s breakfast. Said it quietly, so as not to embarrass him.
“Aw, that’s sweet of you,” she said, “but it’s not necessary. He’ll pay when he can.”
“Do you know him?”
“Well, I don’t ‘know’ him, any more than I know you, but he’s a regular. He’ll pay when he can.”
Saw a similar exchange once at Bob’s Diner in Madison, but it startled me then and it startles me now. This is America. You don’t expect kindness like that.