Small acts of kindness

Michelle Held helps others with inspirational words

As part of the reconfiguration of Park 48 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the “Runway Café” was set up for non-production employees in the hallway that connects the main cafeteria to Building D. The intent was to limit interactions between production and non-production employees, further decreasing the chance that production workers would be exposed to the virus. You can swing through the line, grab some food, and take it back to your workstation or to an outside area to eat.

But with most non-production employees still working remotely, Michelle Held and the other Cafeteria employees who work the hot bar and payment station in the Runway Café were finding themselves with a lot of downtime where people weren’t coming through the line, but they couldn’t leave their station unattended to help out in the kitchen.

Finally, one day Michelle couldn’t take it any longer and she went rogue. To fill the lulls in action, she began writing inspirational quotes on the to-go boxes.

“I’m not going to lie, I started doing this out of boredom,” said Michelle, who has worked at Cook for a year and a half. “And then I started watching how people reacted to it—so I just kept going.”

But why, of all things, did she decide to do quotes?

“I’m a people watcher and a people person—I tend to sit and watch people,” Michelle explained. “As they come through the line, you can kind of see it with some people that they just needed some kind of lift.”

The positive reaction to her small acts of kindness caught her a bit off-guard—but it also caused her a little bit of stress. She hadn’t cleared the activity with her boss, Randy Teague. It wasn’t until he received an email telling him how much the quotes were appreciated that he was made aware of what Michelle had been doing.

“At first, I was concerned that I was going to get in trouble,” she explained. “But after he got the email, he came out here and said, ‘So you’re writing quotes on the boxes?’ I said, ‘Yeahhhh?’ He told me, ‘I got an email from someone who said they liked them, so you’re going to have to keep going.’”

Michelle finds most of her content the way most of us find everything nowadays—Google. She searches for “inspirational quotes” and adds them to boxes throughout the day. Her goal is to not repeat the same quote twice in one shift.

And even though her focus has been to lift the spirits of her fellow Cook employees, Michelle’s efforts have often left her feeling inspired.

“I love watching people’s faces light up and hearing how much they appreciate the quotes,” Michelle said.

I wrap up our interview by asking Michelle if, while doing all this, she has stumbled upon any quotes that make her face light up.

She smiles, walks over to the stack of to-go boxes, and flips through a few before stopping and raises up a lid so I can clearly read the words she had earlier written on it.

“In case no one has told you today: you are loved.”

For more stories