Mom Goes To Target To Pick Up A Few Things, Leaves With An 'Invaluable Lesson'

This mom’s story about a kind Target employee is going viral.

A mom popped in to Target on a quick errand yesterday, but what she got instead was a front row seat to something truly special. In a viral Facebook post, she describes the sweet way a Target employee helped out an elderly customer and taught her and her kids a valuable lesson about kindness and patience.

Sarah Owen Bigler was shopping at a Glendale, Indiana, Target with her two children in tow and a sick husband at home when she hopped into the shortest line she could find to pay for her purchases. She was in a hurry but, as luck would have it, she’d unloaded her cart behind an elderly woman who was paying for several items individually, and counting out the cost of each one in change. Bigler felt annoyed at first, but as she watched the cashier take care of the woman, her perspective changed. She writes:

“Part of me… was frustrated with this woman and the inconvenience she had placed on me. BUT then I watched the young employee with this woman. I watched him help her count her change, ever so tenderly taking it from her shaking hands. I listened to him repeatedly saying ‘yes, mam’ [sic] to her. When she asked if she had enough to buy a reusable bag, he told her she did and went two lines over to get one for her and then repackaged her items. Never once did this employee huff, gruff or roll his eyes. He was nothing but patient and kind.”

Even more amazing, writes Bigler, is the effect the exchange had on her children. Her daughter, Eloise, stood transfixed, “witnessing kindness and patience and being taught this valuable lesson by a complete stranger.” She adds, “I realized that I too needed a refresher on this lesson.”

No longer in a hurry, Bigler paid for her items and then found a store manager to let them know what an incredible job their cashier was doing. She writes, “I wanted her to know of the employee’s kindness and patience, and how much it meant to me. After tracking her down and sharing the story with her, we left Target with a cart full of consumable items, but what is more a heart full of gratitude for such an invaluable lesson.”

Since her post went up, it’s been shared almost 4,000 times. It’s resonated because almost all of us can relate to Bigler’s predicament. We live in a world where being busy is a virtue, and we’ve all been in situations where we’re hustling through our to-do lists and even the smallest hold-up feels unbearable. What this cashier did was take just an extra few minutes to treat someone with care, and his actions had a ripple effect that not only influenced Bigler’s kids, but is also rebounding across the entire internet.

Bigler’s post is an amazing testament to the importance of being kind. It’s also a great reminder that we’re never too short on time to show compassion to the people around us. No matter what’s going on, we could all stand to be a little bit more like that cashier.