The Kindness of Others
So, I’ve been wanting to write a post about this topic for quite some time. And now that the power to our building is out, I’m sitting down and taking the time to do some actual writing.
The topic I’ve been meaning to share with y’all is “The Kindness of Others” because it played such an important role for us during our buildout.
The incident that brought it to my attention occurred months ago. We had filled in the giant hole in our floor and gotten rid of most of the epic pile of concrete and dirt that had been occupying most of our floor but we still had a little bit left. We figured we could handle it ourselves, load it up in some trash cans and take it to the dump but our ambitions definitely outweighed the time and effort realistically required for the task. So we called around for some prices to have it hauled away for us. None of the minimum prices seemed reasonable for the small pile we had left.
One of the business we reached out to was 1-800-GOT-JUNK. We had actually used their services twice already to get rid of most of the pile. But even their minimum price just seemed too steep to be worth it. Less than an hour after we had called for a quote, the manager, who had helped with our last two piles, texted me and told me he and his team would come by and remove the rest of the pile, free of charge. He expressed his desire to help support our endeavor and his great appreciation for our work as a new, local business.
We were floored. It was such an amazing display of kindness. This one act made our day and our lives so much easier. We were so grateful and shocked that by the afternoon, the pile was gone and our floor, for the first time in months, was free of debris.
There are many other instances such as this that truly helped us to bring about the opening of this coffee shop and I'd like to share one more with you:
One of the most important displays of kindness (mixed with grit, patience and tons of work) was from our good friend David, whom we had approached to help us with the buildout of the shop. He has vastly more knowledge in the “building things” arts than either myself or Will. We estimated his involvement would last a couple months and included his coming to work on the buildout with us after he got off his normal day job. He ended up working with us for SEVEN MONTHS.
Dave was truly our fifth Beatle and felt many of the frustrations and victories of our buildout right along with us.
That’s the last story I’ll tell but our many thanks for acts of kindness extend to our families, our significant others, our friends, to Dark Horse coffee roasters, to the College Area Business Improvement District, and to our neighbors: Stuff and Paws and Bows for putting up with our dust and noise for so long,
The support and kindness shown throughout this process has been inspirational, stunning and humbling. We are so happy to be here and to be serving the community good coffee finally.
-RC