I was gassing up a rental car last week before heading out on a road trip, and I spotted a caffeine emporium (Starbucks) across the street. I live in Brooklyn, so it would be faster and easier to leave my car at the gas station instead of trying to find a nonexistent parking spot.
It would only take about five minutes for the round-trip excursion, I estimated, and I was confident that I could make the trip before the gas station proprietor called a SWAT team on me. But wasn’t there another way?
I went inside, let the gentleman know the vehicle I was in (so he could see how much I had spent on purified dinosaur extract), and asked him if I could leave the car there while I grabbed a coffee across the street.
Despite my being the only patron at the moment, he would have been well within his rights to decline my request or ask me to move the car away from the pump, but after looking outside, he said, “If it’s only going to be a couple of minutes, it’s fine.”
Candidly, this is the response I expected. It was early morning, my walk inside was a third of the way to the Starbucks, and most importantly, I put him in a position to be generous and to feel good about giving me a break.
If I had acted entitled and counted on him not bothering to make a fuss, would there have been a problem? Probably not, but that’s not the point.
The point is that we all have dozens of micro-moments to give people the dignity, respect, and consideration that they might not get elsewhere.
It’s easy, it’s free, and it matters.
