A woman’s offhand act of kindness has shown just how big of an impact a small gesture can have.
Kirsten Kinzle was eating breakfast at Mimi's Cafe in Victorville, Calif., last week when she realized her table's boisterous conversation might have disturbed an older couple seated nearby. She decided to pick up their tab as a preemptive apology.
“You just see people sometimes that just look like a great couple and they really loved each other,” Kinzle told CBS Los Angeles.
Stephanie Miller, a server at the restaurant, waited until the couple asked for the check and then told the pair the bill was taken care of. After thanking her, the man walked toward the door, but the woman hung back. She told Miller that the gesture meant a lot because the man had just lost his brother.
Miller said she had to let Kinzle know how much her kind deed was appreciated.
“I knew there was no way to tell the table what had happened without breaking down myself. So I put it in a note,” Miller told The Huffington Post.
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The message touched her.
"While my sister and cousin were fighting over who was going to pay our bill, I looked at the note and just started crying," Kinzle told HuffPost.
A photo of the note was posted to Facebook, and the story has since gone viral.
The events happened to unfold on a day that had special meaning for those at Mimi's Cafe: The staff's general manager had died from a heart attack on March 12, 2013.
“His name was Dave Allen, a very missed part of our restaurant. We have a plaque in the lobby, and I had just placed a candle and a rose under it that morning when I got to work," Miller said.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story indicated that the woman eating breakfast at Mimi's Cafe was named Kristen Kinzle. Her name is Kirsten Kinzle.
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