The Quiet Power of Doing a Good Thing

A bad shift, a flat tyre and an unexpected refusal to take payment show how kindness, when it isn’t performative, still ripples decades later.

About 20 years ago, while doing my master’s degree, I worked as temporary wait staff at high-end events. It was badly paid, physically demanding, and often grim but perfect for fitting around my unpredictable uni schedule. Temporary workers are invisible until they’re in the way, and management frequently treated us as if a little authority were a personality.

One night, after a long shift at a hotel near Hyde Park, I finished around 2am and discovered my bike had a flat tyre. I wheeled it to a bus stop and flagged down the night bus. The driver told me I couldn’t bring the bike on board. I understood the rule, but explained—politely, I think—that it was late, the bus was quiet, I was in uniform, and I had no other way home.

He was unmoved. Irritated, even. Other passengers chimed in. I was holding things up. It wasn’t his problem. And perhaps, technically, it wasn’t. But it was the coldness that stung. Exhausted, scared, and suddenly made to feel like an inconvenience, I got off the bus and burst into tears. Naturally, it started to rain.

I began walking home, resigned to a long, cold, unsafe trek, when a black cab appeared. I flagged it down and asked if I could put my bike in the back. No problem, the driver said. Relief flooded in.

I must have looked a state, because he asked if I was okay. I told him what had happened, and as I spoke I felt myself calm down. Talking it through gave me perspective. The night had been rubbish, but survivable. The bus driver could have been kinder, but the world hadn’t ended. I’d simply worked a horrible shift and now my wages would evaporate in a taxi fare.

When we arrived, the meter read £35. I handed over £40 and told him to keep the change. He refused. I insisted. At that point I actually began to panic—not because of the money, but because I’d felt so much better just by being heard. I hated the idea that he might think I’d told him my story to wriggle out of paying, or that my vulnerability might be mistaken for manipulation. I tried again to give him the cash.

He refused once more. He explained he was heading home anyway, I lived on his route, and he didn’t want my whole night to be a loss.

I was stunned. There was no performance, no audience, no expectation of thanks. This was long before kindness could be monetised or uploaded for applause. He simply did a good thing, because he could.

I still think about that man. He’ll never know the effect his small, unshowy generosity had, but nearly 20 years later it remains with me. Not because it was dramatic, but because it quietly redirected the emotional trajectory of a bad night. What could have hardened into bitterness softened instead into gratitude.

We don’t know the ripple effects of our actions. But we do know that energy doesn’t vanish—it moves. A little kindness can interrupt a chain of small cruelties before it continues downstream. That matters.

Being a good person isn’t performative. It doesn’t require grand gestures or public recognition. It’s the shopping trolley returned when no one is watching. The mess you clean up because someone else shouldn’t have to. The thank you offered to the bus driver. The decision to be human, even when rules say you don’t have to be.

I try, imperfectly, to be the kind of person I’d like to meet. Not because it makes me virtuous, but because it makes the world—my small corner of it—more bearable. And sometimes, that’s enough.