A co-worker (female, early 20s) commutes to NYC from Connecticut each day. On Wednesday night she had bought a sandwich at Primo Cappuccino in Penn Station and took it with her on her train. Before the train had left the station, she unwrapped the sandwich and ripped it in half, only to find a dead cockroach inside. A middle-aged man sitting next to her noticed that she'd become visibly upset and insisted that the two of them go back to Primo Cappuccino to complain. So they got off the train and showed the evidence to the Primo employees, who denied any responsibility, saying that the food arrives pre-prepared from a distributor. At first they refused to give her money back, but after a solid argument from the middle-aged man, they offered a refund and gave the phone number for the distributor's headquarters.
What surprises me most about this story is not that she found a cockroach in food purchased at Penn Station, or that she encountered surly employees, but that a man volunteered to miss his train home and wait 45 minutes for the next one to help a total stranger get $4 back, simply out of the kindness of his heart. I know I never would have made such an offer, and I would guess that such a response would not even occur to 99 out of 100 people. Good to know there are still kind people in NYC. I guess they live in Connecticut.