CBSDairy Queen has officially crowned a King of Kindness.
Joey Prusak, the 19-year-old manager of a D.Q. in Hopkins, Minn., became an inspiration when he proved that people are willing to do the right thing...even if they think no one is watching.
Last week, Prusak was working the counter at the ice cream shop during lunch when a blind man dropped $20. He told Minnesota's local CBS 4, "The lady behind him picked it up really quickly. I had no time to say, ‘Sir, you dropped that.'"
He said that he expected the woman, who was in her 50s or 60s, would "be like ‘Oh, sir, here you go.' But she just stood there and watched him walk by and she then put it in her purse."
When she approached the counter, Joey told her that she needed to return the money to the blind man or leave the store, because he was "not going to serve someone as disrespectful as [her]."
"She made a big scene, started swearing," he recalls. She even claimed that she had dropped the money. Eventually, she chose to leave.
A customer standing behind the older woman witnessed this all, as well as what happened next, and was inspired to write to Dairy Queen's headquarters. In the letter, she writes:
"What happened next I would have never expected. Your employee approached the young man and took out his wallet, and said ‘Sir, on behalf of Dairy Queen I would like to give you the $20 bill that you happened to drop on the ground as you walked away from the counter. I realize that this is not the $20 bill you dropped, because the older woman stole it but it does still have the same face value.'"
The customer "was in shock" at Joey's willingness to use his own money to reimburse the blind man "because some other lady decided to steal something that wasn't hers." The owner of the D.Q. hung the letter in the store, where another employee took a picture of it and posted it on Facebook. It then went viral.
International Dairy Queen has called Joey to thank him for being such an inspiration and told him they will be mailing "something" his way. According to his Twitter, he also received a call from Warren Buffett.
"I felt like the right thing to do was to give him the money," Joey said.