{"id":19594,"date":"2016-10-31T06:00:51","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T10:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=19594"},"modified":"2016-10-31T06:00:51","modified_gmt":"2016-10-31T10:00:51","slug":"random-acts-of-kindness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=19594","title":{"rendered":"Random Acts of Kindness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I woke up Sunday morning in a funk. I have been battling a cold that isn&#8217;t bad enough to make me miss work, but irritating enough that I wish I could. The weather has been decidedly grey and rainy in Vermont and has started to weigh on me. The long walk I had planned at Shelburne Farms with my dog Allie was curtailed by being told dogs won&#8217;t be allowed until Tuesday. Poor Allie didn&#8217;t understand why she was going back in the car so quickly, and my explanation was lost on her. I was cranky when I got to work.\u00a0<!--more--><br \/>\nThen my Sunday staffer texted that she was battling a sore throat, swollen glands and a fever. She said she&#8217;d try to rally for her two o&#8217;clock shift. I suggested she just take the day to get better. Faced with an unplanned Sunday alone, I realized I didn&#8217;t have good food for lunch. I was beginning to feel like the day was going from bad to worse. I opened the store at 11:30 and hoped for the best. The front door opened immediately, almost before I had settled in, and I was delighted to see David, our wonderful staffer, home for the weekend from college.<br \/>\nDavid is essentially a ray of joy when he comes in. He&#8217;s happy, cheery and also sarcastic, which I find to be a lovely combination. We were happily getting caught up when a difficult customer walked in. David, bless his heart, practically vaulted over the counter to help her. It&#8217;s not that I couldn&#8217;t have helped her, I just wasn&#8217;t in work mode yet and David was. He rang her up and then helped another customer. After he left, I thought again about lunch. Faced with a now cold toasted bagel with cream cheese, I was about to forage for food in our slightly scary fridge in the back room to see what could pass for lunch, when Luiza walked in.<br \/>\nLuiza works next door at Green Pasture Meats and is a chef. She was carrying a shiny tray with <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-19595\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/sundayfood-2.jpg\" alt=\"sundayfood\" width=\"320\" height=\"286\" \/>little pastry shells and three containers. She literally dropped them on the counter and said, &#8220;Chicken salad cups, and three kinds of pasta salad,&#8221; and left. Now, I have never been a fan of chicken salad, until Sunday. It was perfect. I don&#8217;t know if it was the little pastry cups, or just Luiza&#8217;s amazing cooking, but my goodness, they were good. Secretly now, I was glad to be alone in the store, lest I feel guilty about not sharing.<br \/>\nSo, in under an hour, my day totally turned around because of simple and unexpected kindness. A very good Sunday, indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It doesn&#8217;t take much to turn a grey day around when you work at an independent bookstore. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}