When a woman’s trip to the grocery store to get a cake decorated goes viral, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. Not this time.
Over the weekend Lisa Aldrich posted to Facebook a photo of a birthday cake she bought at a Michigan supermarket. The white-frosted cake is adorned with pink icing on the edges and a not-entirely legible “Happy Birthday Mandy” written on top.
Aldrich explained in the post she asked a “bakery-looking employee” to write on the cake, so she did.
“I looked her in the eye and said thank you before I even looked at the cake,” Aldrich wrote. “After looking, I nervously laughed and headed to check out — it didn’t really matter to me that it looked so bad — I thought people would think it was funny.”
But cashiers and other employees, including a manager, gave the cake a serious once-over before Aldrich discovered what made the funky writing so special.
“One cashier put her arm on my shoulder,” Aldrich wrote, “and said ‘the girl who wrote that has Autism. Thank you for smiling and thanking her — even though she’s not supposed to write on cakes, you probably made her day.'”
Aldrich ends her heartwarming post — shared more than 70,000 times — with a reminder that “kindness is important.”