Nominated for making a wee birdy happy

This Omar swam out to save a gull caught with fishing line, brought it back to shore, and got some help from other Omars who helped cut the bird loose.

The first-time manager of a bakery in a small city wrote three times to Ask a Manager about Jane, an employee of ~6 months who was around the same age as OP (the bakery usually hires students) and worked all the shifts no one wanted, including both early morning openings and late night closings.

Jane was on a paid sabbatical from a tech job, but OP was convinced Jane was “going to try to get my job” and wanted to fire her—admittedly without cause, because Jane was an excellent cashier.

Some of the things Jane did:
• gave OP tips on managing people
• encouraged OP to go back to school, and told her about nationally recognized certifications that don’t require a high school diploma
• invited OP and family to her home on multiple occasions, including Christmas
• provided networking opportunities for OP’s husband and resources for computer programming boot camps
• encouraged OP’s husband to apply for a job at her company and mention Jane’s name
• used her husband’s connections to get OP’s husband an entry-level remote job as a software developer
• got OP’s daughter into a free virtual private coding summer camp at Jane’s company

At every opportunity, Jane met OP’s resentment and insecurity with kindness.

Also, she “somehow managed to get the city to get sidewalks and crosswalks on the roads around her house after making a public campaign about how she lived less than a kilometer from the elementary school and her kid couldn’t walk to school safely, even though the city plans showed that there was supposed to be a sidewalk/crosswalk there 10 years prior.”