From Catered Perks to Bagged Blessings
An Invitation to Extend Kindness this Holiday Season
I used to work at a sales office for a hotel company in downtown San Francisco. It was situated on the 33rd floor of a high-rise building with a 180-degree view of the city. Directly opposite my team’s pods, we had a partial view of the iconic Transamerica pyramid. The windows in the dining area where most office activities took place faced the bay. Catered events were a huge part of the sales team’s perks. The gourmet fare was always bountiful ranging from an array of appetizers served on platters, charcuterie boards filled with cheese, fruits and cured meats, freshly-made paninis, salad and pasta trays, cookie baskets to miniature tartlets and mousse cakes. Whenever there was a cause to celebrate at the hotel where I used to work, the food was either potluck, convenient, or budget-friendly like pizzas, donuts, sodas, and snacks. What a stark difference!
One afternoon as I was preparing to head out for the day, I saw one of the admin assistants discard a salad tray in a large garbage can. A quick check inside the stainless steel fridge revealed leftovers packed to the hilt leaving no space to store the rest of the food on the long table. The incident bothered me as I rode the elevator to the lobby level. In Manila where I grew up, my parents regularly reminded us to finish everything on our plates, underscoring the reality that many children like us faced hunger. Granted it was partly their tactic to convince my siblings and me to eat our vegetables, but the message endured and echoed in my mind. Along the route toward the designated meet-up spot with Tina, I noticed a few homeless people, roughly 5 of them before I reached Bryant Street. What if I bagged some of those leftovers and gave it to them? My satchel could probably hold 5 packs. I recalled one of the kitchen drawers in the office was stocked with saran wrap, aluminum foil, and Ziploc bags. After my shift the following day, I stayed for ten minutes discreetly wrapping leftovers. I glanced over my shoulder making sure no one was observing me. I didn’t want my colleagues to think I was hoarding the food for myself. I continued this routine after every catered event until I changed jobs and returned to another hotel in the city.
Tina’s office colleague gifted her a bottle of homemade strawberry jam one Christmas. After it lingered for several weeks in the fridge. I asked if I could use it to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the homeless in the city. She was on board with the idea and happy that the gift was being put to good use. That afternoon, I drove to Target for sliced bread and a bottle of peanut butter. I made the PBJs and distributed them over several days. Some refused while others expressed gratitude. When I encountered them asleep in front of shuttered storefronts, I slipped the ziplock bag near their belongings. While these small acts didn’t solve the hunger crisis, brightening someone’s day even for a brief moment was worthwhile.
As the holiday season unfolds, consider this as an open invitation to generously share the abundance in your lives in a way that feels personally meaningful to you. Think of the nursing staff if you visit someone in the hospital, the mechanic who services your vehicles regularly, a neighbor, a caregiver, or a friend who lives alone. Let your creative juices flow and think of ways to extend kindness.
As always, let’s meet each other in the comment section below.
See you all next Sunday!
ps. Last night, Tina discovered an app called Too Good to Go. It’s a social impact initiative to reduce food waste and a marketplace for local restaurants and food establishments to offer end-of-the-day unsold inventory at reduced prices (currently available in Europe, USA, and Canada). We picked up our first surprise bag from Bread SRSLY this afternoon and their sourdough bread was delicious! Check it out when you have a moment.
Such a beautiful, thoughtful post, Stella. I appreciate and deeply value the reminder to be kind - thank you for putting generosity at the front of my mind. 😘
Thank you for this gracious reminder about generosity!
Also - consider those who deliver your mail and who take away your trash and recycling - often they are the same people serving us each day or week.
And small-ish acts of kindness are important, too. I was recently in a Post Office. The only customer ahead of me finished up and left. As the clerk started to help me, by weighing my single large envelope, I realized she was also shouting into her phone, recounting to someone the difficulty her husband was having that day in picking up a prescription his pharmacy had apparently lost (and which, obviously, was something greatly needed). “He’s been there three times already,” she kept repeating.
For a few seconds, I was irritated - yet another “customer service” person paying more attention to their own life and interests than to me, the object of their job. The teens and 20-somethings at the supermarket registers, the bored clerks at stores, the distracted fast-food workers (all examples from my past two weeks!), all surreptitiously checking their phones with me being an afterthought and, ironically, a distraction to *them*.
But this post office clerk was unintentionally sharing a more human need - not looking for the quick hit of entertainment or friend’s gossip as the others were, but trying (albeit a bit inappropriately) to run a household and a post office at the same time. And who knows - maybe the medication she and her husband were seeking was for something covid-related, the scourge that has broken so much of the world’s routines.
Anyway, in the few seconds (literally) I was there, watching my envelope being weighed and stickered, paying easily and silently with my card, my irritation transformed into solidarity. As I left, with her still on the phone, I leaned closer and whispered, “Good luck”. And received a grim smile and a thumbs-up in return.
We’ve all been *there*, haven’t we?