This is actually one of my most recent stories as it took place on the way to Collectivecon 2021. Our group decided to drive to this event and it’s about a 9 to 10 hour drive alone, not including stops and traffic. So needless to say we were going to be pretty worn out by the time we got there. Before I get into the details of the story I want to say that the kindness shown here was just me honestly being kind, it’s who I am as a person. Even though my kindness does get rewarded I firmly believe that being kind because you think you will get something back for it will ultimately fail, but genuine kindness has a way of rewarding you in the end.

When our group arrived to our hotel it was about 4pm and we have driven throughout the night so everyone, especially the person who did the driving, felt the wear and tear of such a long trip overnight. For anyone wondering why in our group we only had one person driving, it’s because his car takes some practice to get the hang of so he was the only one who could drive it well. When we went to check in to our room we were unfortunately told it wasn’t ready but to check back in after about 15 minutes. We waited; however, when we tried again the room still wasn’t ready. Turns out due to the fact that the hotel changed ownership recently and due to the extra cleaning procedures needed for Covid the front desk was still waiting for the ok from wait staff to allow people in the room we reserved. The staff was nice enough to offer us free drinks while we continued to wait but I will be honest we were rather frustrated as we really wanted to get to our room and chill for a bit to recover from the long trip. Even so we didn’t vent any of this frustration to the staff as we’ve already seen people get aggravated with them and we knew they were doing the best they could do and the circumstances just made their job incredibly difficult. So we smiled and thanked them for their kindness and continued to wait. The even offered us the option to use the pool to relax which normally requires you to be checked in first but we were too tired to swim at that time.

About another 15 to 20 minutes pass and the person at the front desk called my name. We were quickly given our keys and they were very apologetic regarding the wait, but I smiled and told them it was perfectly fine. It was at this point they offered us some options as a way of saying thanks for waiting and we had the choice between free parking or a free meal voucher. Now free parking meant free valet parking and remember my friend’s car takes some practice to get the hang of so we already decided to find our own parking so I asked if we could do the meal voucher (I had no idea what the food cost when I asked for this) and she agreed and stated it would be a free meal for our entire group and to just charge it to our room and she would remove the charge.

Later that day we went down to enjoy our meal and that’s when we discovered that the appetizers were $8 minimum and up to about $15 and the meals were about $15 to $33. It quickly became clear that the amount we would save with our free meal was a lot more than what we expected so in order to not abuse the kindness we received we elected to get one appetizer between the four of us and one of the cheaper meals. Once we got the final total including drinks and a tip it wound up being about $100. The meal was delicious especially the wings we got as an appetizer and we left really satisfied.

When we checked out of our room we had someone different at the front desk who took our room keys and said there were no other charges on our room. We smiled and left after a very enjoyable trip.