I somehow managed to get myself into a situation and it’s the kind of situation where there needs to be complete transparency because money is involved. Except for the math, the money part is easy. The stress and worry that came up was both surprising and much less easy. In the spirit of transparency, let’s just air it all out, shall we?
Ms. Emmet is a fixture on our campus. Back before the days of an on-campus Starbucks, there was a Java City coffee kiosk thing in the Library and I’m pretty sure it was there when I was hired. I had my coffee at home and rarely needed an extra cup at school so I wasn’t a regular customer. I did, however, notice the very kind lady serving the coffee. It was Ms. Emmet.
When Starbucks arrived, Ms. Emmet took over her coffee duties there and that’s when I really started to notice her kindness. Every coffee she serves is served with a smile, a greeting by name, and a wish for you to have a wonderful day. I’ve gotten to know her better over the years and like everyone else, I’ve grown to love her more and more.
Last semester I found out Ms. Emmet was having some health concerns and when I tried to ask how she was without seeming nosey, she shared that she had been diagnosed with cancer and was starting chemotherapy. She was positive and optimistic and every morning she continued to share her love and kindness with every single customer on campus.
A few students and I were talking about what we could do to help Ms. Emmet a few days ago. We wanted to sort of take up a donation to help assist with expenses because we all know what a financial burden medical bills can be. We tossed around a lot of ideas hoping to provide the best possible outcome for donations while also being totally transparent with where the money went. After a lot of debate it was decided that it should be an informal offer amongst friends on Instagram. I would post the offer to collect donations and we would pass along whatever we got to Ms. Emmet.
I knew we were mostly dealing with college students and I figured we’d get a few small donations. Maybe we’d get a couple hundred bucks and it would be a nice gesture to Ms. Emmet. I posted the offer on Saturday evening and 24 hours later we had collected about what I expected, a couple hundred bucks. As it got later on Sunday, I noticed that the post kept getting likes by people I didn’t know. It was being reposted and reaching new circles of friends apparently. When I woke up Monday morning to run, I had a lot of notifications on Venmo. I glanced and saw a lot of new contributions. It wasn’t until I got to school and got out my calculator that I started to get excited. We were getting close to $1,000. I figured that given the Wednesday deadline, we’d make it to at least that mark.
By Monday evening the notifications were still pouring in. On Tuesday morning as I scrolled through the notifications, my excitement turned to a more stressful feeling. This was going to be a lot of money. Why was I in charge of it? How do you handle large sums of money? How do I even get this money off of Venmo and into my account? How was I going to give this money to Ms. Emmet? This was way more than a few twenty dollar bills now. I was still thrilled that this was going so well, so I repressed all the stress and anxiety and walked into the sculpture studio where I was greeted by a student who had handed me a twenty the day before. The student smiled and said that her parents heard what we were doing and wanted to donate. She handed me some bills and I saw that one of them was a $100. I said to thank the parents and I stuffed the money in my pocket for safe keeping until I could get back to my office. Meanwhile, the notifications kept coming.
A couple of people handed me some cash that also went into the pocket and when I made it back to my office to put the money away, it felt like a lot, but I just stuffed it and kept moving. I hadn’t added anything up since the first calculator incident but I knew that with the notifications piling up from Venmo this was going to be a real thing to deal with now. I needed to start thinking about how this was going to work in reality. I had some funds sitting in the Venmo account and I went ahead and transferred $900 to my bank because it takes up to three days for the transfer to complete. (I didn’t want to pay any fees for an instant transfer because I wanted all the money to go to Ms. Emmet.) I mostly tried not to think about it for the rest of the school day. When I got home I actually looked at the cash handed to me and there was about $700 in there. Wow.
Tuesday evening I got out the calculator. We were around $1,900. Holy crap. I’m a teacher in South Carolina so that’s a lot of money to me. I felt the pressure increase. The $900 I transferred might be complete in time to put the money on a Visa card or to get cash, but what about that other $1,000? Teachers don’t just have piles of money lying about.
This is when I should confess that around 2005 I handed the household finances over to my wife. I was pretty decent with handling the money but it was a constant source of concern and I was thrilled to pass that task off to her. I honestly haven’t looked at our account since. I know we can buy gas and groceries and we seem to be able to vacation each summer so that’s the extent of my financial thoughts. A thousand dollars is a LOT of money to me. Do we have a thousand dollars? I have no freakin’ idea.
That’s about the time some dude commented on my post about what we were doing. Mr. Johnny Come Lately decided to chime in about 12 hours before the deadline for donating and asked if I could move the donation over to GoFundMe so that “we can see the funds”. Dude. This thing has been going on for days and it’s almost done and NOW you want to make a suggestion? Was he questioning my integrity? Did he think I was going to take money from Ms. Emmet? Who even was this guy? Mind you, it was late and this likely innocent comment just dredged up all the worry I was trying to repress. I was keeping a log of all the donations and making a record of the kind donator. I was already planning to post the totals and the “receipts” for anyone interested, but this just stirred me up.
But I’m REALLY good at repressing things so after I packed all that worry down a little more, I went to bed and slept like a baby.
On my Wednesday morning run, it was time for a plan. I spent my three miles working through the possibilities. Is cash better? What about Visa gift cards? Where do you get them? I had recently seen some in a store but the highest amount was listed as $200 and there were activation fees. If I had to buy lots of them, that would eat up so much money in fees. By the end of my run it was decided that I’d find the highest Visa gift card amount possible and get two. Then I’d try to get the rest in cash. I still had no idea where I’d get the cash but the run was done. Time to repress and get to school.
On the way to school I stopped at the local Walmart and did some searching. I found Visa gift cards that went to $500. Perfect. I grabbed two and tried to scan the fine print. The activation fees were low so for two cards it was only going to be $10 in fees. I would pay the fees out of pocket so that all the donated money went to Ms. Emmet.
As I walked to the register, the worries bubbled to the surface. How was I paying for this? Venmo money isn’t really real until it transfers. The transfer still had a day or so to complete. Did I have $1,000? I remembered I had a credit card and decided that was the way to go. I swiped the credit card and it was refused. Bummer. I tried again. Same thing. What I didn’t know is that my card is smarter than me and when it was swiped it triggered all the super high tech bank things about potential fraud. Instead of texting me, the bank texted my wife to see if she was trying to make a purchase. This didn’t help me standing at the register. Now I was back to using the debit card. I hoped it would work. Sweat built up on my bald head as I waited what felt like years to see the word “approved”.
I counted up the cash donations and figured out how much I was going to have to cover from my account in cash and developed a plan to get that cash. I picked up a greeting card to let Ms. Emmet know how many people took the time to help her and how much she was loved. I decided to list the names of all the people who donated inside the card so Ms. Emmet could see the large number of people who cared about her. I did not list any donation amounts so as to protect everyone’s privacy. I miraculously gathered enough cash and then placed the cash and the two Visa gift cards inside a plastic bag. I also placed the receipt for the Visa gift cards in the bag in case Ms. Emmet needed it for any reason. This bag was placed inside the envelope with the card. I was feeling more confident about this plan and yet somehow even more worried and anxious.
The last thing I wanted to do was to embarrass Ms. Emmet. I wanted her to feel loved and appreciated but I know she’s not one to seek a spotlight. I made the decision to not invite anyone to go with me to give Ms. Emmet the donations. I planned to go to Starbucks before the rush so I could talk with Ms. Emmet without disrupting business. A good plan but how was this really going to go? Would she cry? I don’t deal well with crying. Would she be angry for any reason? Was I overlooking something by only seeing it from my perspective? And, oh my goodness, what if I managed to lose all this money? Georgie suggested that that I also take flowers with the money so I drove into town and grabbed some flowers and arranged them in a glass jar. I was ready but I was worried.
Thursday morning I arrived on time with the flowers and the envelope and felt relieved when I made it to my office. I walked to Starbucks and found Ms. Emmet working hard at cleaning behind the counter. She shouted a “good morning” to me and I motioned for her to come over to the pick up area. I gave her the flowers and then gave her the Cliff’s Notes version of what was going on. I told her that some students and I wanted to do something for her to help out and that we told a few friends and that turned into a lot of people from school and beyond who wanted to help out because they knew how wonderful she was. I told her that so many people loved her. Then I handed her the envelope and told her there was a little over $2,000 in it.
Ms. Emmet put her hands on the counter, shouted “OH!” and then dropped her head to the counter as well. I instantly knew she was going to cry and I freaked out. She said “thank you” so many times. She also said that y’all were “angels” and that she had so many bills and that she didn’t know how she was going to pay them. She said this was such a blessing and that she needed it so much. She said that everyone was so nice to her and then she said “thank you” several more times. I told her again that so many people loved her and that I had listed their names in the card. I hugged her, told her I loved her and then I got in line to order my coffee.
Ms. Emmet was over the moon. She continued to say how grateful she was and what a blessing this was to her. She asked me to thank everyone who helped. So y’all, Ms. Emmet says “thank you”.
I also want to thank you. As I said, I thought we’d get about 200 bucks. Y’all did this. You responded to the call and gave. You reposted the request and got it to a larger audience. You talked about it and told friends. They reposted it and you all gave so generously. You took a nice idea and you turned it into something that is a true help to someone we all love. Thank you.
Was it worth the stress and worry? Absolutely. I’d do it again.
If you care about the details and numbers, here they are:
74 people donated through Venmo and by giving cash. Some have never met Ms. Emmet. Some were current students. Some were former students. Some were faculty and staff, both current and former. Some were parents of students who had heard about the nice lady from Starbucks. One was an anonymous $20 slipped under my office door. Some gave a few dollars and some gave hundreds. Every single donation was important. We gave Ms. Emmet two $500 Visa gift cards. The activation fees were not paid from donated money. Every single penny given to Ms. Emmet is now in her possession. We gave Ms. Emmet $1,408.00 in cash. That’s a total of $2,408.00 donated to Ms. Emmet. Oh, we also gave her a bouquet of flowers and a nice card. Everything is documented and everything was triple checked. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
