The Ripple Effect of Everyday Kindness

If I had any doubt about the extraordinary potential of the ordinary act, it was erased last week as I opened my mail.

On Tuesday, I wrote about Anthony Williams, a guard at the Torrance Social Security office. His good humor and professional demeanor had brightened the life of at least one visitor, and she had called to tell me so.

“I just think you ought to write about this guy,” she said. “He does [his job] like he really cares about people.”

So I met Williams, watched him and had to agree: He brought dignity to a job some might consider mundane. And I wrote a column saying so . . . solace, I thought, to other “ordinary” folks struggling to find meaning in a life of routine.

But I never expected the mail the column would generate from readers who had met Williams on the job and told me those encounters had left imprints on their souls.

There was the elderly man who will be ever grateful because Williams helped ease his dying wife’s last days.

“I hated having to take her over to the [Social Security office], but she left that place with a smile on her face,” the reader wrote. “I never knew his name, but I will never forget how nice he was to her.”

And the woman who had to haul her newborn out into the rain to sign him up for a Social Security card. Williams opened the door, held her umbrella, ushered her through the process so nimbly, her baby slept all the way.

“He turned what could have been a really bad day into something tolerable. . . . He made me feel that maybe I could handle being a mother, after all.”

Little gestures that Williams cannot even recall . . . a joke shared with an elderly lady, a hand extended to a new mom. But such little things can loom so large amid the frustration and impatience of our busy lives.

And I think of Williams’ reply when I asked what made him work so hard:

“What if you knew,” he said with a smile, “you could lighten somebody’s burden just by doing the best job you can?”

And now I know the answer: You would.

*

“Last year, I was living in a small apartment in old downtown Torrance,” reader Carrie Cunningham e-mailed. “Every morning, I struggled to motivate myself for the hour-plus commute to my job in Pasadena. When I finally made it out the door, I could usually count on being cheered in the parking lot by a greeting from the guard who worked at the Social Security office next door.

“Some days he was still dressing . . . tucking in his shirt, adjusting his cuffs, cinching his belt. Then I’d watch him saunter over into position at the head of the line of early birds beginning to gather outside the still-closed office, greeting everybody and answering their questions.

“One day it struck me that he was early--not just that day but every day. Early. . . . The stark contrast between the way he was approaching his job and the way that I was avoiding mine smacked me in the face.

“What a marvelous thing--someone coming to work early not because he had to, but because he wanted to--and exuding such contagious enthusiasm for life while doing it. . . . He started my every day out with a smile.”

Margaret Endo Shimada said her encounter with Williams was so refreshing, it changed the way she views her own job.

“I was so impressed with his kindness, as well as his knowledge of what each of us needed to get our business taken care of in a timely manner,” she wrote. “When I got home, I told my husband about this extraordinary man, who breathes so much life and joy into a place which most people want to avoid like the plague.

“And meeting him has made me look at what I bring to my workplace, and the impression I leave when folks walk in and out of the door. Thank you for writing about a true workplace hero.”

*

When I relayed to Williams the notes I had received, he was both honored and dismayed.

“I never expected anything like that,” he said. “It’s really not a big thing. . . . I’m just doing my job.”

And I thought for a moment about all the people I see in the course of the day, who lift my spirits just doing their jobs.

The fellow in the cafeteria who always greets me with a smile and never fails to ask how my day is going. The switchboard operator who tracks me down when my children call. The mailman who always inquires after my family and makes the time to pet my dogs.

I should tell them, I suppose, how much I appreciate the kindness they show.

Or maybe I’ll just try to go them one better and, through my own attitude, pass their blessings along.

Sandy Banks can be reached at socalliving@latimes.com.