The Miracle of Ice Cream

Yesterday the Hope Thrift store was hopping. Pam and I arrived just before 1:00 for our afternoon shift. There was a very long line at the cash register. Pam, as a cashier, was in for a long day. When I arrived at my post at the donation door in the back the place looked like a disaster, boxes of donations covered every inch of floor space, my buddy Bruce was busy serving the three cars in line by himself. I have no idea what the occasion for all of the hubbub was. It seemed a perfectly normal November Saturday to me, but for some reason business was booming.

About an hour later Bruce and I had managed to restore order and finally there were no cars at the back door. When this happens I usually do a walk through inside the store to see if my limited skills are needed in some other department. When I made it through the swinging doors which separate the back room from the store I noticed something I had never seen before at Hope Thrift. The line to the cash registers had backed up almost to the end of the clothing aisle!! If you have never been inside the store before this won’t mean very much to you so. I will try to explain with a football metaphor—the line was the equivalent of 1st and 15!!

I walked beside the line checking out the facial expressions on the customers and was not encouraged. There was a lot of frustration. I tried some garden variety apologizing, “So sorry you folks have had to wait. I’ve never seen so many customers in this line before! Ha!” My attempt at light-hearted banter fell flat. I then glanced up to the cash registers and saw Pam and Lynn and two other volunteers who had been taken off other duties to help with bagging. They looked totally overwhelmed, but all were smiling cheerfully. It was at this point when the idea popped in my head. I needed to come up with a way to make the people in line start smiling, instead of plotting an overthrow!

I ran to my car, retrieved a small cooler I had brought from home for just such a time as this, and then walked next door to the Food Lion. Just my luck, the ice cream sandwiches were on sale. I got four boxes of 12 for a grand total of $13.49!! I paid for them and proceeded to open up each box and stuff the proceeds into the cooler while the attendant looked at me with bewilderment. “What’s ya doin?” She asked after seeing my Hope Thrift volunteer badge. “You taking those to the thrift?” 

“Yes,” I answered. “But not all of them.” Then I handed her one and said “Wish me luck!”

Once I made it back to the store the first place I went was the very back of the line where I began offering everyone a free ice cream sandwich. The first guy looked very suspicious of my intentions. “How much?” He asked. “They’re free,” I explained. The man dismissed me with a two word response I heard no fewer than a half dozen times over the next 30 minutes—“I’m diabetic.”

But as I made my way through the line I began to have more success. A few ladies who had initially balked because of some diet they were on, eventually couldn’t resist the price or my roguish charms. As more and more people took the ice cream I noticed other shoppers trying to figure out what was going on. Soon I was handing out ice cream to smiling people like it was my job. In less than 30 minutes I had given away 48 ice cream sandwiches and a quick inspection of the still long checkout line revealed a total 180 change in attitude. People were smiling, talking to each other, proving once again the scientific fact that it is impossible to be in a bad mood and eat ice cream at the same time.

The lines never thinned all afternoon. Pam had virtually no time to visit with the other volunteers because of the sheer volume of customers in the store. We were both exhausted by the time the place closed. But what incredible fun it was to see the looks on people’s faces at the spectacle of being handed free ice cream from a weirdly aggressive and overly friendly man who probably looked like he was off his medication. But you know who didn’t give me the suspicious side eye? The kids. I would offer one to a Mom and she would say, “No, but that’s my son over there. He would love one!” When I offered the kids ice cream I always got an immediate smile and a huge Thanks!!, or No Way!! There’s a lesson there somewhere, I think.