Gratitude

Saturday evening - I and my roomie were watching a movie on DVD and waiting for the cable guy to come and install the cable modem... He was already late for his appointment and when he finally arrived it was around 8:00 pm

He was not an American - he seemed to be an immigrant from some African nation I guess - his English was heavily accented as well... He took about 15 minutes for the installation and we did a routine check to see things were working fine...

The guy left and we continued with the movie... 15 minutes later one of my friends asked - What do you use this box for (he was pointing to a steel box which had a clip on one of its faces to hold papers). All of us were staring at each other with a puzzled look and slowly it dawned to us that the cable guy had left his box...

We checked the contents of the box and it showed a lot of receipts and cheques and we garnered that it would be important for him and gave him a call right away...

It was difficult communicating to him that he had left something behind - in the beginning when my friend called, the cable guy thought we were accusing him of taking something

I took the phone and explained to him that he has left his work box behind and slowly the truth dawned upon him - that his whole days work and collections was in that box - He quickly apologised and said he would be there in 15 minutes and was really sorry for the trouble

An hour later the cable guy calls and my friend goes down to give him the box... When he came back he was holding a 1 litre Mountain Dew bottle... I asked him - hey you bought soda is it -

My friend said "No, the cable guy gave it to me...".

I was pleasantly surprised... There are a lot of instances when some unknown person helps us and we just say a thank you - and go on our own way..

This cable guy showed us a lesson or two about how to show gratitude... It was not about the Mountain Dew bottle - the guy was a poor man and I am sure he would be finding it hard to earn his living but still he had heart to give us a gift to show his gratitude... And also teach us a lesson or two in Humanity