Not so mean after all

The common perception of NYers are that they're mean, or abrupt, or uncaring.
This weekend E and I had the opportunity to see how wrong that perception can be.

After visiting E's grandmother in Queens, we stopped at Starbucks to buy time (and something hot to drink) while waiting for the train. When we got to the train station, E realized his messenger bag wasn't with him. If he had realized this two minutes later, we'd have gotten on the train, and that would not have been a fun evening. We rushed back to Starbucks where we found that a fellow patron had spotted the bag and had given it to the employees. One of the employees looked for and found a business card and tried to call the number just as E was returning for it. We were so relieved (that bag has his Kindle in it, which we would be very sad to loose). We had been gone for long enough that if someone had wanted to take the bag and its contents, they could have.

It ended up being quite a long trek home, but at least we had his bag. We took the subway rather than the Long Island Rail Road (since the next train would be quite some time in coming) and then walked a few blocks before catching a cab home (if it had been a touch warmer we might have walked the whole way). It's not the first time we've had to go back to a store for a forgotten item, and we're always relieved and somewhat surprised to find our item saved for us. Once I dropped a glove and someone picked it up from the sidewalk and put it in a spot where I would see it, out of the way of foot traffic. This weekend I dropped my (empty) camera case and immediately someone was handing it to me, with a polite, "ma'am, you dropped this."

So, as it turns out, NYers can be nice too.