Humanity isn’t 100% terrible, sometimes.
Sure, it was awful when a woman eating at McDonald’s snapped a photo of a man sleeping in one of the booths and uploaded the picture to Facebook, publicly shaming him.
However, the beauty of that is because of her not minding her own business, Simon Childs, the man in question, received an outpouring of support from the community.
The woman snapped the photo, according to WSBTV at a Fayette County, Georgia, McDonald’s.
“Just another reason for me to leave Fayetteville,” she wrote. “I was in the McDonald’s in the middle of town and I saw this guy sleeping in the booth. I go and tell an employee that someone is asleep in their booth and her response was ‘oh yeah, we know hee hee, it’s ok’ and I said ‘not really but whatever.'”
Turns out that man was 21-year-old Simon Childs, a homeless father who was resting in between his shifts at the restaurant.
“I’ve been going through a hard time with my mom passing,” Childs told WSBTV.
When he heard about the photo posted he was upset, he acknowledged.
“Everything I do, I want to work for it,” he said. “It kind of hurt to see my picture up there, you know? I thought it was something negative and nobody would care about it.”
But he was wrong. A lot of people did care about it and stood by him. Those who saw the woman’s post and learned about Childs offered to help by donating hotel rooms for him and his son, whom he is raising. He came back to work only to see piles of diapers, supplies and clothes.
“They changed my life in a couple of days,” he said.
Chefs Xavier and Theo Thomas who own the Fusion Chefs Eatery nearby heard about Childs’ story and offered to let him borrow a car for job interviews.
“I didn’t think the community would even care enough to do that, but they care,” Childs’ said.
He even got a free, fresh haircut to help him on job interviews after WSBTV’s story went live.
Not that interviews may be necessary, as Childs said he has also received job offers throughout all of this.
And just like that, he has no ill will toward the woman who posted his image to Facebook.
“I’m not homeless, not now, thanks to her,” he said.
