Monday, October 22, 2007

Pay It Backward

If it’s Monday, it must be Dunkin Donuts….Actually, I go every morning for coffee and I mean every single morning. I would say that I’m not really awake until I have had a medium black coffee from Dunkin Donuts. Forget going to Starbucks. Without a drive-thru, Starbucks never had a chance to hook me on their strong java jolt. The drive-thru is great…you can put anything on and just go…the clothes on the floor, heck even your PJs….whose gonna know (not that I would do that or anything.) But the biggest thing is that I don’t think I could have an intelligent conversation if I had to wait in line for my coffee. If I ran into someone I knew and I had to string 2 words together....real trouble. How do Starbucks people do it? Maybe they are a more intelligent species. I wanna hug the person that invented the drive-thru!

This morning, I made my usual trek over to DDs. Our Dunkin Donuts has two ways to enter the drive-thru. I usually sneak behind the Liquor Depot and get in line from the back way. A lot of times I have no trouble with this tactic, but this morning there was already a huge line of caffeine deprived drivers queued up from the main entry, ready to receive their morning boost. Hmmmm… I would just have to wait patiently (sure I can do that) for everyone to go through….then I would get my turn for my caffeine fix. Well just imagine my surprise - the person in the big black Cadillac waved for me to go ahead…..actually motioned for me to cut the line!!! Wow, that is a biggie when you are talking about your morning coffee. So I did what most crazed caffeine seeking individuals would do…..I cut the line!

As I approached DDs and my cup of joe was moments away, I looked in my rear view window to see what nice individual would let me jump ahead. The person was an ole guy with a Veteran license plate and a Boston Red Sox cap (Go Sox) proudly displayed on his dashboard. I thought he was very kind to help me in my quest for coffee. When I got to the window, I told the DD attendant, “I want to pay it backwards….I want to pay for the nice gentleman behind me.”

You’ve heard of “Pay It Forward”…you know, doing “random” good deeds for people. Well, you can only “Pay It Backward” when you are in the drive-thru line… think about it, the guy would be gone already!!! Okay, so I know I’m not a champion of the world or anything….but I felt that he had done a good deed so I wanted to show my appreciation. I’m sure he wasn’t expecting any return on his good deed (if he did, he might have ordered more than the 2 coffees!) It’s just important when we are out in the world, that we are nice to each other….

Sure better than me sneaking through the back way, squealing in on two wheels, forcing my way into the line, ramming my car up to the other guys bumper, flipping the guy off behind me and yelling “Have a Nice Day.”

So now it’s Tuesday….It must be Dunkin Donuts.

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