Day 6: Shopping Bag Giveaway - 30 Days of Kindness

Shopping Bag Giveaway was Day 6 of 30 Days of Kindness, and for this act of kindness I hit my first roadblock and was shut down by store management. After I was told to stop I did, and I remained respectful and did not argue with them. I see where they are coming from, they are bound by policy and just doing their jobs to enforce it, nevertheless, it is still disappointing.

The idea with The Shopping Bag Giveaway was to go to a grocery store (one that shall not be named), purchase reusable shopping bags, and then give the bags away to customers waiting in line along with a kindness card and a brief statement about God's love (a, message that is more watered down than some of the greeting cards sold in the checkout line).

I was accused of soliciting. I had to refrain myself from arguing the definition of the word solicit, which is: to ask something of someone. Technically, I was not asking asking anybody for anything. This was a giveaway. I experienced no ill feelings from the customers. In fact, here was my approach. If I saw a customer in line that looked like they could benefit from this giveaway, I then approached them and asked, "Excuse me. Would you like a free reusable shopping bag?" Every customer took me up on the offer with a smile and a "thank you" and I ended up giving away 15 reusable shopping bags (and getting stuck with 9). After the customer took the bag, I then passed out a kindness card and proceeded with my controversial message and said, "This is an act of kindness my church is doing to show God's love."

Even though I was not technically soliciting, and my message was far from controversial, I was however confusing the customers. Apparently one reason that I was shut down was because one customer interpreted my offer of "a free grocery bag" as a literal bag of free groceries. After I moved on to the next checkout line, this customer then proceeded to fill his free shopping bag with groceries and tried to use the kindness card as a voucher to pay for it. Only in America.

Perhaps I should have asked permission, but I  knew the store would say no. This was the same store that would not even grant me an audience to listen to my idea about providing customers with free gift wrapping last December. Apparently, this store has become so PC that they have enacted a nationwide policy removing all community groups from doing any activities on their property, with the exception of the The Salvation Army during the holidays; and judging by the Facebook post I read every holiday season from my PC friends encouraging people to "boycott giving to the Salvation Army," I think their days are numbered. I used my judgement and decided that for a small giveaway like this, it is better to ask for forgiveness then to ask for permission. 

I remain committed to my belief that  doing acts of kindness is the best way to reach people in our overly-sensitive culture with the love of God. The Redemption Movement is a Bible-based church that takes the command to evangelize seriously, and we have discovered that in today's world, serving people's needs with a message of hope is a better approach than going door-to-door with our Bibles or passing out religious tracks downtown. As we push forward and do more acts of kindness to spread God's love, we will continue to learn from our experiences and discover the best way to do things.

I will close with a positive story from this giveaway. I gave out a shopping bag to a young couple with a cute 6 month year old baby named Emma. I could not resist asking about their baby. The couple told me this was their first one. The father went on to tell me that he loves her so much that he would also like to have a son. I joked about twins, he joked about needing to get 10 jobs if he was to support twins, and he is already working 2 jobs. One of the two jobs he is working is an overnight job at a retail store, the same job I had for 3 years. It is a rather drab job and I chatted with him about its hardships.

I then noticed that the mother was paying for their groceries with food stamps. I quickly pulled out our 30 Days of Kindness calendar and pointed out the Free Oil Change this Saturday and the Parent's Night Out on March 22, where we babysit kids and parents get a date night and a free meal at Joe Ruffino's Italian restaurant. The man seemed interested, but the team of managers standing behind me did not. It was at this time that they made their move and shut me down.

If anybody is interested in joining me and helping out with our controversial acts of kindness ministry. Feel free to contact us, we have 24 more AoKs to go before our big grand opening on Good Friday, March 29.