About 10 years ago, I was working as a waiter. Our restaurant offered a set lunch, and some old man came in, asked the price, sighed, and was about to leave.

I felt sorry for him, so I fed him and paid for the lunch myself. The manager scolded me, saying that they would never stop coming now, but what was done couldn’t be undone.

And in the evening, an ordinary-looking guy left me a very big amount for a tip. At that time I needed money very badly to pay off my rent and my debt. And this amount was enough for everything.

Life has a strange way of repaying kindness.

Ten years ago, I was just a young waiter, trying to make ends meet. The restaurant I worked at had a set lunch, reasonably priced but still out of reach for some. One afternoon, an elderly man walked in, checked the price, let out a deep sigh, and turned to leave.

Something about the way his shoulders slumped hit me hard. Maybe it was the exhaustion in his eyes or the quiet resignation in his movements. Without thinking twice, I stopped him and told him not to worry—I’d take care of it. He sat down, and I served him a warm meal, paying for it from my own pocket.

My manager wasn’t pleased. “You’ll regret this,” he warned. “Word spreads fast. They’ll keep coming now.” But what was done was done. I didn’t regret it. The man left with a grateful smile, and I went back to my shift, pushing the moment to the back of my mind.

Then, later that evening, something unexpected happened.

An ordinary-looking customer finished his meal and left. When I went to clear the table, I noticed something—he had left me a tip. But not just any tip. It was an amount so big that I had to count it twice to make sure I wasn’t imagining things.

At that time, I was struggling. My rent was overdue, my debts were piling up, and I was barely scraping by. That one tip covered everything.

To this day, I don’t know if it was just a coincidence or if the universe decided to repay a small act of kindness in the most unexpected way. But I learned something that day—kindness has a way of coming back, sometimes when you least expect it.