Homeless Man Leaves Touching Sign Thanking Kind Strangers After Getting a Job

Most of us are so lucky that we’ll never know how hard it is to have to stand in the street and ask strangers for help. But there are so many people who have to do just that, for so many different reasons. They’ve fallen on hard times or lost their job or even their homes, and now they have to rely on the kindness of people they don’t even know.

Talia Schlanger, the host of “World Cafe” on NPR, shared a tweet about a man she’d see asking for help on the street who one day wasn’t at the spot where she usually saw him. She tweeted the circumstances: “For the past year, a very nice man has been standing on the bridge that’s on my way to work with a sign saying he was having a hard time and could use a hand. Today, this is what it read.” And she included a picture of a cardboard sign written in marker that said, “My last week out here I got a job thank you to everyone who has helped during this hard time.”

How nice is it that the man left a thank you note? The sign served not only as a way to show appreciation but also as an explanation to anyone who might have gotten used to seeing him and possibly chatting with him and would be worried that he just suddenly disappeared.

Schlanger followed up the tweet with more information. She wrote that he got hired by a man in New Jersey to build cabinets and was given a place to stay during the job by the same man.

People on Twitter responded to Schlanger’s tweet because they were so moved.

One person asked if she knew the name of the company that hired him, saying they deserved extra customers.

Schlanger’s post was retweeted by the Kale Salad account, and it was also posted on their Instagram, where it received almost 250,000 likes.

And a whole lot of comments!

It’s nice to see some good news to counter all the bad.

h/t: TanksGoodNews

Dean Altman

Dean Altman is a writer living in NYC.