Tink Week...Tuesday's Report

Well Tuesday was another day of reaching out for Tink Week and I feel so good!!

1.) My bus monitor, Tish, is having some hard times. Her husband, Alan, was recently fired from his job, he's having trouble getting unemployment or finding another job. It's a weird story...his boss recently died...the next day the bosses wife fired most of the people who worked for her husband. She's denying his unemployment and her reasons are trumped-up, ludicrous and unfair. The caseworker said she has approved the unemployment but the bosses wife has 30 days to appeal. So they don't know if or when they are going to get any money. Tish and Alan also live in a house his boss owned and they got an eviction notice Monday night. It wasn't a legal document so they may have some more time than they think (the note said Nov. 1st.) Tish and Alan don't have much and they pretty much live paycheck to paycheck. He's been picking up a little cash by "junking"...finding old appliances, copper wire, etc that he can recycle and get a few bux for. She was pretty down all day yesterday and has no idea where they'll live. I made a few calls for her...to some of the low income complexes in the area. I didn't get very far, but will continue to call around for her. She's having a hard time talking about it without crying and getting pretty upset and it would be very difficult for her to make the calls herself. I'm going to do all I can to help find them a place to live.

2.) Our paycheck stubs (it's mandatory that we have direct deposit) came Monday but no one's money was in the bank yesterday, when it was supposed to be. The bookkeeper made one wrong keystroke while she was doing payroll and she deleted all of our accounts!!! So every check is having to be deposited manually instead of having it just go thru a computer program and all happen at once. There are so many of our workers live paycheck to paycheck..hand to mouth... and need their money as soon as they can get it. Especially after a summer of minimum wage jobs or no jobs at all. Bills get behind and things get particularly tight. One of our drivers, Denise, has an especially rough time. She has three kids, and a rather deadbeat husband, they have 2 grandkids and another on the way...they all live with Denise in a small house trailer. She works two jobs (it was three jobs until she had to have knee surgery last spring). She is one of the kindest people I know...she is always doing things for others and would give her last dollar or the shirt off her back to help a friend. (I admired a t-shirt she was wearing one day and the next day she handed it to me, all laundered and folded!!) She's always leaving little trinkets in our buses that she knows will make us smile and it's usually just a little .25 yard sale thing (for me it's usually little chicken knickknacks or tiny vases for my mini-roses) This is one of her little gifts to me...



She was crying at work today because of the checks being messed up and I asked her what I could do to help. I won't go into all of it, this is getting long enough, but I ended up loaning her a couple hundred dollars so she could deal with a couple of very pressing bills. She cried harder and hugged me and I told her not to cry, that this was a good thing...not a bad thing. I know acts of kindness don't have to require money, but in this case it did and that's okay. I'm a little short now, but I don't live as close to the belt as some of the others...I'm lucky that way. But I know what it's like...I've been there before. I just know it was the right thing to do and it made me feel good. And I know it made Denise smile and she deserves to smile.

3.) This one is sort of funny and sort of an anti-act of kindness. They sell Little Debbie snacks at the bus garage. One of my co-workers has two kids who go to our district schools and just ride their bus back to the bus garage after the bus driver is done doing her route so they can ride home with their mom when she's done with her route. Her kids are both very chubby and shouldn't eat so many Little Debbie snacks, but I see them eating at least 3-4 of them everyday. And that's just the ones I see!! The chubbiest had a treat in his hand that he was working on and asked his mom for another one...I almost reached in my purse for the money to get him another treat when his mom said she had no more change. Then I thought to myself..."It would be better if he didn't get another treat!!" I didn't get him a treat and that was my favor to him!

I did a few other little things, like letting someone go in front of my bus instead of having to wait for me...I gave a few compliments that I probably wouldn't have thought of last week. I made a point of greeting everyone with a smile and a "hello" at work this morning.

This is getting to be a pretty cool feeling. I had almost forgotten how neat this is!! I even got a fortune cookie Tuesday night that seemed to appreciate my efforts!! (It said "You are never selfish with your advice or your help.")



Just for the record...I keep feeling like I'm bragging when I tell these stories. I usually do this stuff in confidence and don't talk much about it. Please know that I'm a little uncomfortable talking a lot about these things, but I'm just hoping that they inspire you to do some random acts of kindness too. I'm definitely NOT doing this to get any reward or praise for myself from you guys. My reward is the look on peoples' faces when something unexpected and kind is done for them.

Happy October First!!!!

I love this time of year. I love fall, I love Halloween!!

Just for fun...

HALLOWINDOW