Last week I went to the Kanawha County Courthouse to take care of my personal property taxes and renew the license on my car. In case you didn’t know it, the sheriff’s tax office can process your car license for you. This is a great service as far as I’m concerned and definitely worth the extra dollar to not have to go to the DMV and stand in line.
Many years ago when I was in college I worked a couple summers for the tax office. One of the nicest humans on the planet, Sharon, worked there and used to look after the college kids. We were her kids. I hadn’t seen Sharon in 20 years before last year when I went in to get my car licensed after moving back to West Virginia. She remembered me, took me by the hand and got me straightened out. This year, I walked into the office and there she was again. Once again she took care of me.
The only thing, the tax office doesn’t take cards to process licenses. Only cash or checks. As my wife will tell you, I never carry cash or at least not very much. I just happened to have exactly enough cash in my pocket. That didn’t leave me any cash to get out of the parking garage, though. Sharon immediately went to her purse and grabbed a couple dollars to save me the hassle of finding an ATM.
The older I get the more amazed I am at the way people come back around in my life after long absences. It only reinforces to me over and over how important it is to treat people well. I have often said I really don’t have regrets in my life, except that there are people I didn’t treat as well as they deserved.
With everything we have gone through in the last couple weeks, this lesson is more important to me now than ever. Please continue to remember your servers and throw a little extra their way. Most people don’t realize the minimum wage for “tipped employees” is $5.80 an hour in West Virginia. Servers make most of their money from your tips and the water crisis deprived a lot of people who typically function on a paycheck to paycheck basis of their income. Let’s do what we can to make it up to them.
Thank you Sharon for your help and generosity. And I promise I will pay you back. And I will do my best to remember to pay it forward to someone else at the same time..