A Stranger saved my Valentine’s Day
I was late, I did not have time to go to a nice flower shop to get some roses for my wife. (I hope my wife does not read this part of the story (:-)) I figured better than no flowers at all is to buy some roses in the supermarket. I rushed into the store, threw some groceries into the cart and went for the the roses. Fortunetely, they were not sold out. It was three minutes to eight, the closing time of the supermarket.
I am always short of cash and rely on my bank card. The salesperson at the cash register swipes my card thru the card reader but it displays an error message. She tries it a couple of times but the error message remains. She mentions to me that the card reader terminal did have some problems today but eventually accepted the cards. I give her my second bank card but the terminal displays the same error message as before.
The line of waiting customers is growing, she opens another cash register, tries my bank card but the results are the same, my bank card causes an error message.
It is too late to go to a bank to withdraw cash. The salesperson calls her boss who apologizes but tells me if I can’t pay I have to leave without the groceries and the roses, nothing to be done about it.
So I am leaving the supermarket without the cart when a stranger approaches me and offers to pay for me. He gives me his bank account number so I can repay him later. I offer to show him my ID but he doesn’t want to see it and replies: Sometimes you have to trust each other.
We leave the supermarket, I have the roses for my wife and a story to share about trust – and my Valentine’s Day is saved
