The end of the postpartum period is a milestone rarely celebrated or talked about, but oh, how I am loving this stage of life. Working without guilt, drinking a coffee without rushing, not minding handing off some of my son’s care without having to take it to therapy afterward. And mine arrived right alongside spring in Vancouver — literally the light at the end of the tunnel of dark, rainy and, after 6 winters here, I’d also say unhealthy winters — along with a boutique curation project for an iconic hotel in Brazil.
All of this has me so excited that on one of the daycare runs for my son, who’s almost two now, I stopped at a café to order my iced oat matcha latte — now that I’ve been to Japan I’ve fallen for the hype and I think there’s no going back — and to do some work. Arriving at the shared table, which are the only ones left at this very hyped-up café in West Van, I sat across from a woman who seemed to be in back-to-back Zoom meetings. With each call she’d hang up on, she’d jump straight into the next link, opening with “so sorry about the background noise — I came to work from a café and didn’t realize it would be this packed, but anyway, how’s your week been?”
I remember that era well, with zero nostalgia — working in corporate environments with meetings all day long, an action plan list for every meeting, and never any time left to act on any of them. And in the office hallways, the shared lament: “when exactly are we supposed to produce?”
Then at some point I got up to grab a water — here in Canada there’s always water available at any restaurant or café for whoever wants to help themselves — and I picked up two glasses because I’m trying to flush out all the post-Japan water retention. Walking back to the table, I looked at the woman, looked at my cup, looked at her again, and left a glass next to her. At the end of yet another meeting she said to me, “oh my god this is so incredibly generous of you, thank you so much” — and emptied the glass in under two minutes.
About fifteen minutes ago I had to call Aeroplan to sort out some miles drama that wasn’t linking up with the last ticket I bought to Brazil. One of those calls you put off because you know you’ll have to wait, verbally confirm your name, phone number, date of birth, address, hair color, favorite childhood cartoon, the poutine recipe you liked best, and whatever else they need to prove you are you — and probably end up frustrated because your problem won’t be solved that easily.
Susan answered in the voice of what I pictured as a childhood friend’s mom: the warm one, full of energy, always inventing little games, on top of being welcoming and trustworthy. Susan didn’t have the power to solve my problem herself, but she walked me through the path to a resolution, gave me confidence that one way or another she’d take care of it, came back on the line every so often to say she “hadn’t forgotten about me, they were just dealing with high call volumes and long wait times” — and it was all so pleasant that it made me want to be pleasant back.
I told her that, from the small sample I’d had, she was exceptional at her job and should be proud of it. And I asked to speak to a supervisor I could pass that comment on to directly.
Recently I’ve decided to commit to making small acts of kindness for others — especially the unexpected ones, like the ones I just mentioned. Not purely out of the goodness of my heart — maybe a little out of ego, the satisfaction of feeling I’d done some good for someone — but also as field research, so to speak.
Will Guidara writes in his book Unreasonable Hospitality that acts of kindness are contagious and make people want to do the same. The good old kindness begets kindness. Will brings this into the hospitality world and shows how to spread through a team the genuine desire to surprise people where they least expect it.
And I love this so much — partly because I practiced it for nearly a decade at Aesop, where I graduated in the art of retail with presence, active listening, and customer experience — because it’s proof that surprising people, whether your partner, a stranger at the café, or your customer, is so, so much simpler than it seems. And sometimes it costs nothing at all.
I have a few clients and business owners I know who’ve recently told me this is their biggest struggle. Thousands dollars, or brazilian reais, spent on customer service training, data management software, discount coupons to bring customers back, in-store events that struggle to get any engagement — when sometimes the best return is in building a culture of hospitality, in quality of communication and listening, and in the energy of kindness and of surprising someone in small gestures.
Now, maybe you don’t work with customers, or maybe you don’t work at all, but you’ll still find all sorts of ways to do small acts of kindness throughout your days. Buying your husband his favorite freshly-roasted coffee and bringing it to him at the end of a long workday, complimenting the haircut of your building’s concierge whose name you still haven’t memorized even after seeing her every day for three months, helping your neighbor carry her shopping bags upstairs and walking them all the way to her door.
The woman at the café doesn’t even know my name and Susan has probably taken another two hundred calls since mine. But I remember both of them, and I remember exactly how I felt — light after the coffee, and grateful after the call, which I never thought I’d say about a phone call with Aeroplan. And that’s what I mean when I talk about experience: it’s what stays once everything else — the product, the service, the problem — has passed.
Thank you for reading this far,
Mafe