If you didn't know, for the last 5 months I've been working at Taco Bell Corp. as an intern. The brand is super popular with the gen z's and millennials (lol) especially with its fire Twitter presence, but I have to share something even cooler:
I've really been blown away by how passionately these people care for the underdog, the disadvantaged, the forgotten. Yesterday at the dept's end of the year holiday lunch, our chief public affairs officer gave us all gifts – one was a $25 bundle of $5 Taco Bell gift cards – but she said there was a catch. She wanted us to "pay it forward" to someone who really needed it. She wanted us to remember why we do what we do and what our brand ultimately stands for – feeding people's lives with Más.
Well, on my hour-and-15-minute drive home that evening, I did something I hadn’t truly done with intentional thought in a while. I prayed that I would come across someone to pay it forward to, where there was no question they needed it. I knew this gift would benefit pretty much anyone I decided to give it to, but I wanted it to be the "right" person, whatever that meant... I just did.
Not 15 minutes later and I was finally off the freeway, turning onto Harbor, very ready to be home, when, against my own will, I decided to stop to fill my tank then instead of later. One of a female's worst fears happened to me when I got out of my car, all alone at night at the gas pump: a young male was definitely approaching me. Also, that was definitely a shopping cart he was pushing. Fortunately he kind of kept a safe, respectable distance from me, so I didn't feel the need to grasp my keys in a knifelike fashion when he spoke.
"Hi, sorry to bother you, but I'm homeless, and to be honest I'm just really, really hungry. I'm trying to buy food. Please, even if you could spare even just a dollar, that would be amazing."
"Ohmygod yeah TOTALLY! Yeah! One sec. JUST ONE SEC!!" I think I was a little too excited as I opened my car door to retrieve the gift cards (which took longer to find than expected), because the dude slowly walked away like he wasn’t sure if I was ever going to reemerge from my car. But finally, I found them.
“Okaaay, SO sorry for the wait… but here are some gift cards. I hope you like Taco Bell,” as I handed the bundle to him. He started to say thank you when I ended with, “$25 will get you a lot.”
His eyes widened at that last sentence, and he seemed genuinely surprised. I abruptly darted back to my car when I heard the gas pump stop, and he kept walking. As he walked away, he showed his gratitude by thanking me again, saying “God bless you” and other things like that. But what I will always remember is seeing his reaction when he found out he was getting $24 more than he had asked for, and hearing him gasp, “Wow.”