A heartbroken woman was brought to tears after a waiter gifted her with an uplifting surprise.
Hannah Hastings was overcome with emotion earlier this year as she sat with a friend in a hotel restaurant, who consoled her over a pot of tea after her long-term relationship ended.
An empathetic waiter in the hotel restaurant delivered Hannah a heartwarming act of kindness after overhearing her teary conversation.
The inspiring act went viral on TikTok, gaining over 102,900 likes on the app. It encouraged hundreds of people to share similar heartfelt experiences where strangers have helped them through testing times.
Hastings (hastings_hannah) shared on TikTok: “The small act of kindness I was shown that I will never forget.
@hastings_hannah
“When I had just gone through a long-term breakup, I sat in a hotel with a friend and cried about it for two hours straight,” she said.
“Just before we were about to leave, the waiter asked us to hang on because he ‘had something for me.'”
Hastings, who lives in London, then revealed the waiter gifted her a cake on a rectangular plate, which was iced with the words “things will get better.”
“It’s safe to say I cried even more when I saw the dessert,” she said.
Embarking on her healing journey in January, Hannah shared in the comments how the kind-hearted waiter told her he had been through a similar experience.
She says he then told her: “I’ve been through something similar and it does get better, I promise.”
The dessert touched the hearts of hundreds of TikTok scrollers, who shared moments when people they did not know extended beautiful gestures in their times of need.
TikToker Lauren Coffey commented: “One time I was crying in a cafe because I was so stressed and down with my toxic job at the time…a man came over, bought me a coffee and pastry, he told me he has daughters my age and hates seeing me so sad.”
@hastings_hannah
Another woman shared that she was crying alone on a beach when a girl dropped shells by her side and told her she didn’t know what she was going through but wanted to give her pretty shells.
A man named Jordyn commented, “I was stranded in New York at 2am and the doorman at the apartment building I was supposed to stay at offered to take me to his home for the night.”
A different woman who was processing her grief after losing her fiancé says a stranger noticed her sadness during a flight: “I was trying not to cry but doing a terrible job. A kind woman bought me a drink and listened to me cry about losing her. I’ll never forget her.”
Has a stranger ever lifted your spirits with a random act of kindness? We want to hear about it! Send your stories to [email protected] and they could appear on our site.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.