Your mission today is to perform at least one random act of kindness at work. A small, nice, generous, funny, surprising, silly, amazing, touching and/or kind act for someone else at work.
If you’re stuck for ideas, here are a few suggestions:
- Bring someone a cup of coffee, without them asking
- Leave a flower on someone’s desk
- Leave a nice, hand-written note for a co-worker
- Help someone carry their stuff
- Pass out candy in the hallways
- Do you have more suggestions? Write a comment!
For bonus points, do a random act of kindness to total stranger on the way home from work.
Have you done this? How was it? What happened? How was it received? Tell us all about it in a comment – we’re curious, dammit :o)
One of the greatest gifts anyone can give me is the gift of time. So I chose my random act of kindness to be just that for my partner. I prepared an initial planning document for my partner so he has to modify instead of starting from scratch which should save him some time. Today I had the time and he has some deadlines that make his time a little scarcer today.
Everyone would need to determine the best way for them to save someone time and of course not be too stressed by the time commitment it requires. But I believe what goes around comes around so an investment in time today with the added bonus of being a random act of kindness will pay back plenty.
Our organization is undergoing substantial changes and the staff is being asked to embrace some pretty broad shifts in thinking/process. Some people struggle with this, and with the uncertainty change brings. I firmly believe in the power of RAKs and the effect workplace morale has on job satisfaction/productivity/client service..all that good stuff so I have been actively doing RAKs in my office for the past 6 months or so. They have included little anonymous “To whomever finds this..” gifts of candy, potted plants, coffee gift cards,; posting inspirational posters and stories in the common areas; and on World Kindness Day I placed a decorative package containing a mini chocolate bar and a quote about kindness in everyone’s mailbox. I think it has helped and it sure makes me feel good!!
Closing the door someone left open.
Bringing in a home-made cake or cookies for your co-workers is likely to be popular!
I have a friend here at work who is a smoker, and her hands are always cold. So I bought her a hand warmer contraption that hooks into the USB port of her computer to keep it charged so she can use it outside when she needs it.
I have done things like that and there are always welcome, you can also take a minute to ask how was his/her weekend and share those minutes enjoying his/her happiness.
We had a admin, who sadly has since retired, who would buy pre-made cookie dough, and make cookies every Friday afternoon and walk them around to everyone at their desks. I miss the Cookie Lady!
Keeping open to opportunities for kindness can be fun. I saw on twitter last week one of my coworkers had broken his plastic spork he always used for lunch. I just so happened to have a spare one very much like it in my car, so I was happy to be able to present it to him :D
One of my favorite ways to incorporate random acts of kindness into my work day is to surprise the person behind me in the cafeteria line (breakfast or lunch) by paying for their meal. It’s so unexpected, they are jarred out of whatever thoughts/mood/moment they were in. Once, I received a very nice thank you email telling me how my random act of kindness snapped the recipient out of a very bad mood and turned her day around :-)