An Applebee’s waiter’s random act of kindness was repaid in the most unexpected way.
Kasey Simmons is a sweet guy who just wants to make others smile. He did just that for an elderly woman he found crying in an aisle at the grocery.
Simmons, who works at a Dallas-area Applebee’s restaurant, was waiting in a grocery store checkout line when he noticed another patron, an older woman looking dejected. Simmons tried to cheer her up with a light conversation. And when she reached the register, he even paid for her groceries.
“It was only $17, but it’s not about the money. It’s about showing someone you care,” Simmons told CNN. He had no clue that the next day at his job at a Dallas-area Applebee’s, he’d see the money returned to him in another gesture of kindness.
The next day, the family came to the restaurant specifically on the hunt for Simmons. Her daughter visited Simmons’ workplace, and after serving a woman a $0.37 flavored water, Simmons received a $500 tip!
“They ordered the cheapest thing on the menu of flavored water — it was $0.37,” he said. “But my tip was about 50,000 percent.”
The woman wrote on a napkin to explain the tip that Simmons had helped her mother at the grocery store. She let him know that her mother had felt overcome with sadness on the third anniversary of her husband’s death.
The napkin read, “On one of the most depressing days of the year…you made my mother’s day wonderful. You insisted on paying. Told her she is a very beautiful woman. I have not seen this woman smile this much since Dad died.”
Simmons is grateful to the woman and said he would like to meet her and her mother to thank them in person.
Simmons’s story shows how wonderfully generous people can be to one another, and all it takes is a bit of compassion.
Watch it here: CBS19/Youtube
Sources: OpposingViews, CNN
