Story highlights
Two women were crying in a restaurant; "Someone just got diagnosed," a man nearby wrote
The man picked up the tab for the women and left; "the mother was overwhelmed with emotion"
Waitress Nikki Pirog had seen the two women crying. The women – she presumed a mother and daughter – and a single gentleman were her only tables in a small and secluded section at the Daedalus restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
She didn’t know what had happened until the man passed her his bill with a credit card and this note: “Do me a favor and bring me their check too. Someone just got diagnosed. Don’t tell them.”
“I combined the two checks, and he paid for both,” Pirog told CNN in an e-mail. “Neither of us really spoke of what took place, as he had obviously not wanted to make a big deal out of it. He wrote me a second note on his new bill thanking me for my help, and telling me to relay the message ‘Best Wishes’ to the ladies when they were ready to leave. When the ladies were ready for the check, I told them the man near them had taken care of it, and the mother was overwhelmed with emotion, which I have to admit almost got to me too.”
Pirog first posted a photo of the man’s note on Reddit. She was compelled to share it because “I’ve never really had anything this moving happen to me while at work,” she said. “People sometimes need to be reminded that there is good in the world.”
There’s something about restaurant customers’ acts of kindness that people just love to share online. Last month in North Carolina, a story about a stranger who left a touching note when paying for a family’s meal went viral.