Christmas gift for the homeless

Yesterday while driving back from office I got stuck at a signal, I had barely missed the signal because the car in front of me had slowed down a lot to make the left turn. 

While I was silently cursing that car/driver and was in the process of accepting what happened, I noticed another car on my left which had a green but had stopped conspicuously. I started to wonder what was wrong with that car and then the car slowly made a right turn and stopped.  The lady sitting in the car was waving towards the homeless guy begging at the signal. My small mind was saying, "why is she waving towards the homeless?," and "doesn't she know that she is blocking the traffic?" and so on. To be fair, the traffic was fairly light and she wasn't really bothering the traffic movement. 

Once the homeless guy reached the car, it was my turn to be awed. Out of the car came a big nicely packed gift box and after asking the guys size a jacket too, I am sure she wished him merry Christmas.

I was amazed at the lady and her organization for doing this charity. 

Now I know why I was stuck at that signal for an extra 2 minutes.

Our Art of Living volunteers also took part in a similar endeavor few days before Christmas. 

2 cents donation fund

Other day I was at the dentist for a routine checkup, they were running late due to some emergency that had come up in the clinic. So, by the time they called me in it was ~40mins after my scheduled time. The receptionist wanted to make up for the delay and gave me a Starbucks card.

The card did not specify the value it held or I did not notice it, I went to Starbucks and ordered the usual, after swiping the gift card the cafe owner told me that I am left with 2 cents on the card. The card supposedly can be recharged and can be used as a cash card at Starbucks, but there is no additional discounts for doing so. Since I am not a regular to expensive coffee, I shredded the card.    

After couple of weeks after this event, it occurred to me that the card is an open account which the company has to keep active and it won’t be long before the maintenance cost of the card will go beyond the balance left on the card. The fact that I have already shredded the card there is no possibility of future additions to the card.

Here is a solution I would like to propose to these companies that prefer to sell the gift cards, why not ask the customer if he/she would like to donate the left over couple of cents to a charity. Initially the cents might be small but over time I am sure it can grow to a decent fund. The potential savings on maintenance of these almost delinquent cards alone should be an incentive to take this approach.