I took this picture after one fine evening of work as a waitress at one of my former jobs last year. This, my dear friends, is two "francs". That is what they call a dollar in Switzerland. An old buddy of mine who was a foreign exchange student at our school back in 2010 came back to visit and tipped me this beautiful coin I never knew existed. I just figured I'd share that tidbit of information with you as I am about to tell you one of the coolest things God has shown me about money since I moved back home. Hold on to your bums, 'cause it's story time.
When I moved back home to Texas recently, I temporarily got a job as a waitress again just to earn some extra cash before moving on to becoming an unofficially official interior designer. Anywho, it was just another day of work as any other day, when all of a sudden...one of my fellow waiters realized that a fifty-dollar bill that he received from a customer was in fact a fraud. It had no watermark--no legal legitimacy at all! And you see, when a waiter at this workplace loses money, he has to pay back the company with the tips he worked very hard to earn. You know what that means, don't you? Right. Because of this unforeseen and very unfortunate fraud, this innocent employee's pocket just got robbed fifty dollars.
Now the story takes a bit of turn, you see. As I was watching this unfold, I felt so sorry for my fellow waiter that I thought to myself, "I will work extra hard my last few hours so I can give him some of my tips." Yes, yes...it was a very kind-hearted thought. But something happened, and I found myself in one of the hardest tests I've ever taken.
This waiter and another man with authority over me advised me that if I received a fifty or hundred-dollar bill from a customer, that I should come to them before I gave the change away. So I did what I was told. Several minutes later, I came to them with a hundred from one of my customers because I thought they would check it for fraud. But that wasn't the case.
"Here," said the waiter and the other. "Take this change to your customer." I looked at it, counted it, and realized the change was twenty dollars short.
"This isn't the correct change," I quickly justified.
"Yeah I know," said the other man. "I just feel bad for this guy losing his tip money like that so we're trying to help him out."
It certainly didn't take me long to respond, "That's not right at all."
"It wasn't right that I lost fifty dollars!" Said the waiter.
I realized that I was standing in a very, very sticky situation. "Yucky", as I would call it. Because it just made me feel yucky. But I knew the right answer.
"I know it wasn't right," I said calmly. "But it's not right to cheat a customer. My customer. I'm not going to do that to him."
"Do you know him?" Said the other.
"No."
"Then why do you care?"
"Because he's my customer and I care about my customers."
"Okay, I understand," said the waiter. "I'll just do it for you then."
"No." I sternly rejected, but tried to remain compassionate. "I'm sorry, but I am taking the correct change to my customer." And so I did. My customer was completely and entirely unaware of anything that had just taken place. He looked so innocent, and though to some people a twenty-dollar bill is a small sacrifice, to me at that moment it meant the whole world. I even counted the change for him, which I don't ever take time doing. It's just, I felt my heart grow so big for this innocent man that it overwhelmed me as I was walking back to the desk.
Then God brought something back to mind, a prayer I had said on the way to work that afternoon that I had never prayed before: "God, I want to bless my customers as if You were the one blessing them."
And then God spoke to me as clear as day, "Allison, you passed a huge test. I am so proud of you."
Dear friends, I'm sharing this story with you as a testimony so that you can learn what I did and run with it.
Wherever you're at, whoever is watching you or not...always, ALWAYS...do the right thing.
And you will never say you've never lived a fine, fine life.
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