When Lisa Aldrich popped into a Michigan, US, grocery store for a birthday cake, she got a lot more than she bargained for.
Lisa posted on Facebook that she went straight up to the in-store bakery and asked what she assumed to be a bakery employee to decorate the cake and ice the words, “Happy Birthday Mandy”.
Lisa thanked the girl as she was handed over the finished cake and, without a glance inside the box, went to pay.
When she opened the box, Lisa couldn’t help but laugh:
At the checkout, employees offered Lisa a replacement cake but she turned them down. “It didn’t really matter to me that it looked so bad,” she explained.
But, after a chat with the manager, a cashier took Lisa aside to clear up what had happened. “One cashier put her arm on my shoulder and said, ‘the girl who wrote that has autism,'” Lisa explains.
“‘Thank you for smiling and thanking her — even though she’s not supposed to write on cakes, you probably made her day.'”
Lisa’s post has been shared over 140,000 times and she’s had hundreds of messages from people with autism thanking her for sharing the heartwarming story.
“Be nice. That is all,” Lisa later wrote, “I can’t believe how awesome God is that he is using this story to bless so many people! God is so, so good.”
“I guess the moral of the story is that kindness is important.”