Two Acts of Kindness

My day started out ordinarily enough. I drove down to St. Vincent's Hospital, picked up my ticket, and parked on the roof. Then I walked ten laps on the second level of the Atrium for my morning exercise. Next on the agenda was some planning for my English as a Second Language tutoring session one on one which I will have on Friday morning. Most of that I had already finished; there was some more I wanted to do, and I can use my laptop in the Atrium because St. V's has wifi service available which is very nice.
Now it was about 10:45 and I thought I should take a walk over to City Hall and a return visit to the City Manager's Office. I didn't want to go there, but felt that I should. I had been there last week. You see my street has been sinking very slowly for the past four year due to water undermining it from a leaking sewer pipe. (This is what we think.) The pipe from my house to the main pipe in the street broke four years ago and I had to pay about $7,000 to a private contractor to reconnect it. We are afraid that it might happen again. I thought I might find out something in the City Manager's Office this morning, but I got no information.
When I came back to the hospital,it was time for lunch and the hospital has an excellent cafeteria which I have eaten at several times. I went to the cafeteria and bought the following:
l. soup---(lentil)
2. bread and butter
3. a 14 0z bottle of white milk
4. a pear
5. a fresh green salad
I know the routine. When you get to the cashier, you put the salad on the scale and you pay a certain price per ounce. I PUT MY SALAD ON THE SCALE. That was a mistake because there was a man in front of me who also had a salad and I did not realize that he had not yet put HIS salad on the scale! The cashier told me to take my salad off the scale because it was not my turn. I apologized. (My mind was still in the City Manager's Office, you see.) However, the man in front of me said, "Oh, that is all right. I know the routine" Then the cashier proceeded to cash me out AHEAD of this man. My cost was $8.01. I thanked both the man and the cashier and proceeded to carry my tray into the cafeteria. A few minutes later when I was seated at a table, the cashier came over to me and looked over my food. I thought something was wrong. She said that the customer was a doctor and thought that I had PAID TOO MUCH MONEY FOR MY FOOD! The cashier came over to me to doublecheck to make sure that I had paid the correct amount of money. As it turned out , I had.
I thought, "How often does something like that happen these days?" It kind of restores your faith in people. When I got through eating, I went to find out who these two people were. One is SANDY BRYTOWSKI and St. Vincent's Hospital's cafeteria is fortunate to have such an honest employee working for them. The other person is Doctor CHARANJIT RAO, a general surgeon, and if he cared about a stranger's pocketbook, I am sure he probably is a man of compassion also-----just perfect as a surgeon! You both made my day!