Friday, December 25, 2020

A chain of 900 strangers...

 When I talk about chains on this blog, I'm almost always talking about kidney exchange.  But there are other kinds of gift giving chains. The Washington Post has this cheerful story:

A chain of 900 strangers bought one another’s meals at a Dairy Queen drive-through  By Cathy Free

"It started with an older gentleman who pulled up to the Dairy Queen Grill & Chill drive-through window in Brainerd, Minn., at the height of the lunch hour on a Thursday.

“I’d also like to pay for the car behind me,” cashier Darla Anderson said the customer told her on Dec. 3. “Whatever they’ve ordered, I’ll cover it.”

...

"two days and hundreds of cars later, she and the rest of the crew were still ringing up “pay it forward” orders as each person who came to the drive-through offered to pay for the car behind them.

“I’ve seen ‘pay it forward’ chains that went on for about 20 cars, but never anything like this,” said general manager Tina Jensen, 43.

"In the end, it spanned more than 900 cars over 2½ days.

"On the first day, Jensen watched as hour after hour customers paid for the ice cream and hamburgers of the strangers behind them. So she decided to write a quick post on the Dairy Queen Facebook page.

...

"People who saw the post wanted to join in, and a long line of cars was soon snaking along the drive-through lane.

...

"The first two evenings of the pay-it-forward chain, before Dairy Queen closed for the night, Jensen gave the last person at the drive-through the option to leave a few dollars to pay it forward for the first customer the next day.

...

"The chain was finally broken early in the evening Dec. 5, she said, when a customer said he didn’t have enough money to pay for the order behind him, which cost more than his. The restaurant was out of carry-over funds left by other customers."


No comments: