Random Acts will Follow

It’s 8:27 and, once again, you’re going to be late for work. If you don’t get your car parked and your butt in the door in under three minutes you’ll be going home early and spending the rest of your working days parking runaway shopping carts and bagging loaves of bread.

So there you are, racing around the tar, frantically searching for an empty space so you can unload your car, dash through the door, and jump in your chair before the boss comes around to check up on you.

Then, much to your surprise, you spot a space that’s front and centered to the door. Could this really be happening to you? How could all of your cutthroat co-workers have missed this incredible opportunity? You begin to get suspicious but you let it go as you grab your stuff and make a run for it.

A few minutes later, when you’re finally sitting comfortably in your cubicle knowing that you’ve managed to dodge the pick slip, you begin to get suspicious again. And for the rest of the day you keep leaving your cubicle to check on your car to see if it’s been towed away.

What you don’t know is this... one (or more) of your co-workers intentionally left that space open for co-workers like you who never seem to get a break. There’s no catch and no agenda to it. What you just experienced was a random act of unusual kindness. And these random acts of unusual kindness happen in companies every day. It just doesn’t happen often enough.

The more we spread these random acts around, the more pleasant our cubicle environments would be. So why don’t we see more of them? It doesn’t take much of an effort to think of one. I can think of a random act of unusual kindness right off the top of my head, although I did get a little help from the intercom system we just had installed here. Why not ask the receptionist to not page you on one designated day a month. Instead, have the pagee leave you a voice mail. You’d be surprised at how much work you’ll get done on that day, with less interruptions to distract you and your co-workers. Now, imagine if five or ten of your fellow workers joined in. Wouldn’t you have a much more productive workday not hearing all that unnecessary static over your head? And that’s just one quick example.

So, now you’re probably thinking, “How come my company doesn’t practice random acts of unusual kindness? And why hasn’t a co-worker ever left the parking space nearest to the front door free for me?”

Well... I ask you, “When was the last time you left the parking space nearest to the front door free for someone else?”

You see, a random act of unusual kindness begins with you.

“But why do I have to be the one to do it?”

Because if you don’t start doing more of these random acts of unusual kindness then you’ll forever be the one who gets stuck filling the copy machine with paper because the person who used the last sheet didn’t bother to do it. And you’ll always be the one who has to make a fresh pot of coffee, water the plants, clean out the company refrigerator, put stables in the stapler and change the toner in the fax machine.

Lastly, you’ll always be the one who’s stuck in the bathroom with an empty roll of toilet paper as you wait for a co-worker to come through the door to throw you a roll over the stall.

That in itself is a random act of unusual kindness. Don’t you agree?