Thanks, It's Friday

"Wealth in this area is not measured by possessions or security, but by how thankful you are for what you have. These people who have very little by our standards are the most appreciative people I've ever met." - Ryan Davis, 18-year old visitor to Guatemala

The connection between gratitude and well-being proves its strength to me almost daily.

I had an opportunity to give feedback to an organization that had recently declined an offer that I'd made. I decided to provide some constructive feedback, at least a little bit out of a base of discouragement from having been declined. But by starting off the note with a paragraph of thanks for the chance to participate... I found myself perfectly content to simply stop there, instead of continuing on to less joyful content. In fact, I wrote a couple more paragraphs of thanks before pushing the "send" key.

A week ago after the Spelling Bee a bunch of us went out to our local TGI Fridays restaurant. We had such a delightful experience that we signed a hard copy of this letter:

"Last Saturday night we were at your restaurant and had the pleasure of being served by Demetrius Triplett.

We arrived around 10:30 p.m. and were all pretty tired from performing a play that evening, and the light bulb above one of our tables was burned out – the base of an old one was jammed into the socket.

We understood that electrician work is probably not part of the job description, and had fun passing off the darkness as “ambient mood lighting.” But Demetrius went to the back, returned with a pair of pliers, worked the old bulb out and replaced it with a new one. Dinner was brighter in many ways after that!

Please give him our thanks, and hopefully a bunch of money. It was truly fantastic service, because he made a fan club that night."

We received back:

"Thank you for emailing to let us know about your experience at T.G.I. Friday's. We appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to kindly recognize our restaurant operations and their staff.

Your comments regarding the enjoyable service provided by Demetrius Triplett, will be shared with our Bloomington, IL management team. We too appreciate our great employees and value their commitment to our guests. Your feedback enables us to provide excellent services to continually meet your expectations. Thank you for sharing such a gracious compliment.

We look forward to your continued patronage at our many worldwide T.G.I. Friday’s restaurants."

Sharing smiles is such a contagious exercise!