Small town service with a smile

Pin It A small town has so much less than a big city…the movie theater only recently got the movies which left the big cities weeks ago, the gas is usually $ .10 more expensive per gallon, and the public library—the place where you finally managed to find wireless Internet service—closes at 5:00 PM, making it incredibly difficult to get online for any lengthy period of time. However, a small town such as Sandpoint has what I like to think of as small town service.

An example of this service started out on Wednesday morning. You see, I went to Yoke’s grocery store in order to get a maple bar for breakfast. As I looked at the donuts, I saw some reddish-colored fritters and I wondered to myself if they were raspberry or cherry. I just had to ask…after all, I love raspberry fritters. Melissa, the employee working in the bakery, informed me that they only made cherry and apple fitters. Oh well, I could always get a raspberry one when I came back home, right? Melissa gave me a smile and asked if I had wanted raspberry. I told her that I was fine but she insistent and said, “I’ll tell you what, we’ll make some raspberry fritters tomorrow, okay? Isn’t that right, Dave?” She called over to the man who was working with her.

Dave, the baker, said that they would have one raspberry fritter especially for me the next day.

I hadn’t planned on going back the next morning, but I was curious if they really were going to make raspberry fritters. I got up early and before my drive to the town of Chewelah, and I stopped in at Yoke’s. When I walked up to the bakery, Melissa saw me and broke into a smile as wide as Christmas. “I’ve got your raspberry fritter right here!” she called, handing me the donut she’d carefully been saving to the side. “We made a bunch this morning and they went like wildfire…I had to set yours aside so nobody else would get it.”

I couldn’t believe just how much effort these two people went to just to make sure that an out-of-town customer could have something he wanted. I was so impressed that I had to mention it to their manager, who was not greatly surprised at the extra mile his employees had gone. To him, it was something which was expected, but it was nice to hear the appreciation from customers.

As I walked out of Yoke’s that morning, I left with much more than a raspberry fritter, I left with the appreciation and knowledge of just what going the extra mile can do for someone else. Did their making a donut just for me change the world? Probably not. However, did it make a day of live a little bit more enjoyable? Absolutely.

Never underestimate what a seemingly tiny act of small town service can do for somebody else.