Investing in karma.

Investing in karma.

So yesterday I’m at Au Bon Pain, rubbing my high falutin’ ways in front of anyone and everyone walking through the underground walkway, getting some lunch. I purchase said lunch, decline my receipt like I always do, and headed back to the office. A few minutes later I get a call from my bank saying something or other about suspicious activity on my account so I call them back. Turn out my attempts to withdraw money to pay my rent from an ATM the day before had tripped their system so they wanted to make sure it was me and no hank-ypanky was involved. I assured them all was well, thanked them for their diligence and as I was about to hang up the phone the voice on the other end said, “That’s great news we’ll reinstate your account immediately.

It didn’t hit me at that second but about an hour later I realized that if my account had been frozen there was a good chance I walked out of Au Bon Pain without paying for my food! I checked my bank account, saw there was no charge for a sandwich, and ran downstairs to rectify the situation.

I explained myself to the manager on duty, but she had just come on and the day manager had left. (Obviously it is here you may correctly infer that I tend to eat my lunch very late in the day. What can I say, I’m busy!) She said if I really wanted I could talk to the day manager the next morning, so I set off agreeing to do just that.

So, I arrive bright and early this morning, head straight to Au Bon Pain, hunt out the manager, tell her what happened, apologize, and pull out my money to settle my unintended debt. She looked at me stunned.

“They never come back!” she said.

She explained to me what happened was commonplace and more often than not an honest mistake, but that she was kind of touched by my honesty and I felt al warm and fuzzy and was pleased that deep down I really am the guy who wants to do the right thing, even if every time I don’t actually do so. In this instance my ethics steered me the right way and I felt good about it.

So I walked out and gave GalPal a call to bring her up to speed since she had seen how distressed I was at inadvertently “dining and ditching” only to find my phone wouldn’t work. So I get to my computer, check my account … and find my service has been cut due to a billing error.

Sigh.