The year was nineteen hundred and ninety-four. I was a fresh-faced, twenty-one-year-old college graduate, and even though I had a degree in pastoral ministry, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so I worked at Chick-fil-A to pay the rent until I figured it out.
It was an older CFA store, and it was losing money. (Crazy, right?)
One contributing factor was theft. Customers would call in from a carryout order and say we didn’t give them all their food. Since it was an all-cash business, there were no receipts and no natural way to know if they were telling the truth.
So, we came up with a plan.
When a customer called and said we didn’t give them all their food, we asked them to bring in their carryout bag. At least then, we would know they had been in the store or willing to rummage through the garbage to get one.
The plan was in effect, and we would stop this theft.
I was the manager on duty. The phone rang. A guy launched into his story about being short food. I tried to explain our new policy kindly. (To be honest, I was twenty-one years old and a bit arrogant. So I’m guessing I was condescending.) It didn’t land well.
He was pissed. He called me a few choice words. He promised never to come into our blankety-blank store and hung up the phone.
It was intense, but I stopped a thief. I felt pretty good about myself.
Fifteen minutes later, a co-worker walked into the back room, “There is a guy out front who wants to talk to the manager he talked to on the phone.”
I gathered myself and walked out. I calmly explained that I was not personally accusing him of wrongdoing. It was just our store’s policy.
He didn’t have it. He threw his carryout bag at me and continued his lesson in verbal expletives.
Wanting to defuse the situation, I reached under the counter for a gift certificate for a free sandwich.
And as I bent over, he PUNCHED me.
Yep, you read that right. A customer punched me in the head over a $2.25 chicken sandwich.
We looked at each other, and it dawned on him, “I just punched a guy over a chicken sandwich.” He pushed a stainless-steel canister off the counter. He ran out of the store—never to be seen again.
After filling out a police report for aggravated assault, I can assure you that the customer is not always right, and it was not my pleasure.
That happened nearly thirty years ago, but I think about it once a month. And I am always left with one question, “What was that guy’s story?”
When he was five years old, and he was asked, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” He never said, “One day, I hope to assault a fast-food employee.”
When he woke up that morning, he didn’t have punching a fast-food worker on his to-do list.
But something was happening in his story that his amygdala fired up when I challenged his motivations. He overreacted and punched me.
Every day, we interact with people who are living unique stories. Some of those stories leave people happy, fulfilled and hopeful. Other stories leave people defeated, deflated, and discouraged.
This truth is why people-centered leadership is so essential today. Individuals need leaders with empathy who realize that, as Wendy Mass said, “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about, so be kind.”
I’ll never know for sure, but I’m guessing if I had realized that at twenty-one, I would not have been punched in the head.
Be kind. You never know another’s story.
