- Courtney Crawford showed up for an early morning shift at her second job at Starbucks when she encountered a struggling customer.
- The barista made an extra effort to make the woman smile and was later rewarded with a message from the woman
- Crawford shared her story in hopes of inspiring more kindness and connecting with her mystery customer
An unsuspecting Starbucks barista had a life-changing encounter with a customer.
Courtney Crawford is a barista at Starbucks in Little Rock, Arkansas. At 5:00 in the morning, she decided to make an effort while serving a customer who had a rough morning.
“I would say the morning was pretty normal, nothing out of the ordinary to be honest,” Crawford tells PEOPLE exclusively. “Another great day at work! She came in early in the morning and must have needed a coffee and to pick me up.”
Crawford, nicknamed CeCe, went out of his way to be extra nice to the woman, only to learn later from her manager that a customer had left her a note before she left the store.
The woman’s message to Crawford read: “I travel a lot for work, which usually means late at night and very early in the morning. I haven’t had to travel to Little Rock in six months until this week. I’ve been here two days and so far you’re the only person I’ve met that was genuinely kind. You were the first person I saw this morning and you really made my day.”
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The note included $200 with instructions for Crawford to “treat herself to something nice,” with the writer adding, “I can tell you deserve it.” She signed her message “groggy woman at 5:00 am”
By the end of her shift that day, Crawford knew she wanted to share her story on TikTok.
“I decided that the amount of peace I got from that woman’s act of kindness was not something I should keep to myself,” she says. “I had to find her and thank her and let her know that I may have made her laugh that day, but she gave me something that changed my life.”
What the mystery shopper couldn’t have known was that Crawford was preparing for her first Mother’s Day without her mom, who died last June.
“I have a job at Starbucks on top of my full-time job because I have a lot of bills to pay and a lot of inherited debt to keep under control, and I’d be lying if I told you she wasn’t dreading Mother’s Day,” she admitted candidly, tearing up in a video on TikTok where she shared her story.
Crawford explained in her TikTok that she plans to use the money to buy a beautiful urn for her mother’s ashes.
“With the $200 you put in that bill today, it allows me to spend Mother’s Day with my mom,” she said through tears. “I appreciate you so much, so if you’re out there and if you’re on TikTok, thank you for the impact you’ve had on my life. I hope you see this and know that you did something that I’ll never forget. So, thank you.”
“It immediately made me cry,” Crawford tells PEOPLE of the message.
“I made the decision to bring my mom home just the night before. I even talked to my husband about it. Reading that message in itself was like a metaphorical hug, and then when the private message was revealed, I couldn’t hold back the tears! But I remembered that I’m at work and have more people to laugh at, so I dried up pretty quickly.”
Crawford never expected her TikTok to garner more than 3 million views and open up her story to an audience that wanted to help in more ways than one.
“Seeing the reaction he got on TikTok shocked me and I honestly didn’t want the attention to be on me. However, I had the opportunity to connect with so many others who have lost loved ones,” she shares.
“Complete strangers messaged me and told me beautiful vulnerable things about these people they loved. So if by posting my video I encouraged others to be kind and showed some people that they are not alone in their grief, even if I never find my 5:00 I’m a giddy Starbucks lady, it paid off for me.”
Starbucks also took note, sharing a statement from the company’s North American president, Sarah Trilling, with PEOPLE.
“Our partners are the best of us. CeCe truly embodies the Starbucks values of belonging and joy—treating everyone with respect and care. This act of kindness shows how limitless the possibilities of human connection truly are,” she says.
Going viral proved to Crawford that “our world right now is really craving authenticity and vulnerability and kindness and permission to be all of those things, without judgment.”
“I think we get so caught up in the rat race of life and what everyone expects us to be that we forget our own humanity and what makes us who we are in the first place. When people get a dose of someone being unapologetic, it’s refreshing. I think my post gave permission that some may have been looking for to feel what they feel or share kindness with someone else.”
Crawford’s kindness sparked something in others, with “several people reaching out to me and asking if there were others that I knew were in need.”
“I posted a GoFundMe on my bio for a local family that lost both parents. After posting that GoFundMe, donations have already increased by almost $4,000,” shares Crawford.
As for her dazed customer at 5:00 a.m., “the search continues.”
“I want her to know that on the hard days, on the days when she feels defeated and discouraged and wonders why she’s even here, that she has not only a purpose, but such a huge impact on the world around her,” Crawford says of the woman, with whom still hoping to connect.
A Starbucks Coffee sign in a store window in New York.
Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty
Starbucks is also helping with the search, sharing Crawford’s call for that person to come forward.
“If she hadn’t blessed me with her act of kindness, I would never have posted that video that inspired so many people around the world to just be kind and show that there are still great people in the world and all we have to do to get more is just be them” , she notes.
“She started this big movement with something I’m sure she thought was small. My life was forever changed by the simple fact that my mom could come home with me. But who knows whose lives she touched through my search for her.”
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education