Being an Agent of Chaos does not mean I'm Evil

[butterflydreaming]

When I'm a little early heading into work I'll get off the bus one stop short and walk the 10-ish minutes the rest of the way to the building where I work. I don't get anywhere enough excercise during the weekdays, so this mollifies my guilt. Yesterday on my way in I noticed a couple of plastic cards on the sidewalk: a Flexpass (that's the big, $500, yearly bus pass) and someone's gym ID. I looked around in the bushes nearby for a discarded purse or anything else that might have belonged with the cards, but there wasn't anything. Most likely the owner dropped them, but they could have also been discarded by a thief who didn't see any value in them.

I won't pretend that keeping the bus pass for myself didn't cross my mind, but the thought didn't even last as long as the bad thoughts that I get sometimes to put my bare hand down on a hot burner element. Not only is a Flexpass costly, but they are often issued by employers. If you leave the job, you're expected to give them back. So as soon as I got to work I checked the online white pages to see if the woman on the gym card was listed (she wasn't), then I called the gym and asked them to give her a call and let her know that I had found her cards.

Then I went home "sick"... but I promised myself I wouldn't post about that. (That's why I was answering emails midday.) The office manager said she'd take care of the lost cards, and offered to take them to the gym so I wouldn't have to. I figured I'd leave them there, and the owner could pick them up.

Today the woman who lost the cards came in, gave me a coffee gift card, and told me that I'd restored her faith in humanity. {smile} She lost the cards Monday night while jogging and the Flexpass wasn't even hers but her husband's. The cards fell out of her pants pocket and she didn't know where... she never would have found them, had she tried to retrace her path, because she didn't remember exactly where she had been running.

I like the idea of expanding this by passing on the gift card, which is a very generous amount, to someone or some agency where it will do more than it would for me. Some charity auction type thing, maybe, but I don't know where.

I don't do these things because I'm virtuous. I do them because it changes the way someone else perceives their world.

In other news... Giant Squid, caught on film in Tokyo! (thanks for the link, mimerki

Comments

:)

[amber-sherise.livejournal.com]

that is so sweet of you! very "pay it forward"! :)