It was supposed to be an ordinary grocery run. A few things for the week. In and out.
But the night before Roze Mulen went back to work, a Trader Joe’s cashier noticed something nobody else had.
And what he did next has been watched by tens of thousands of strangers.
The Night Before Going Back
Roze Mulen is a nurse in Minnesota.
She had taken a couple of months away from her job to look after her mental health.
The next day, she was going back. For the first time in two months.
So she did what a lot of us do the night before something big. She went grocery shopping and tried not to think about it.
She was at the Trader Joe’s in Bloomington, Minnesota, getting ready for the morning.
“I was at Trader Joe’s in Bloomington, just mindlessly shopping, getting ready to go to work the next day,” she later told Minnesota Now.
“…for the first time in a couple months because I took some time off for my mental health.”
A Simple Question
At the register, the cashier asked her the question every cashier asks.
How are you?
It’s a question most of us answer without thinking. Good, thanks. You?
But that night, the answer didn’t come easily.
“My brain was just thinking,” Mulen said. “And I was like, why is this hard to answer? And I just said, good, and hesitated.”
Then she told him the truth. She was going back to work tomorrow, and she was nervous.
He asked what she did for a living. She told him she was a nurse.
“And he could see that there was just things on my mind,” she said.
She kept bagging her groceries and chatting with him. Nothing unusual. Just two people talking at a checkout.
Then the cashier said something she didn’t expect.
“I’ll be right back.”
Flowers and Chocolates
Mulen was confused. Her groceries were already done. Where was he going?
A moment later, he walked back to the register.
“And he came back with these little flowers and some chocolates,” she said.
She knew right away what was about to happen. And she tried to stop it.
“I looked at him and I was like, no, no, no. Don’t do that. You can’t do that because I didn’t want to cry,” she said, laughing.
It didn’t work.
“And he just gave me a big hug. He started crying too.”
Two strangers, hugging and crying at a grocery store register, over a bunch of little flowers.
In a TikTok video she posted afterward, she put it simply.
“I started bawling my eyes out because he didn’t have to,” she said, as quoted by InspireMore.
The Name on His Badge
In the middle of that hug, Mulen realized something. She didn’t even know his name.
“I was like, what is your name? Because I didn’t even know his name at that time. And I saw it said, Tim, on his badge.”
Tim. That was all she knew. A cashier named Tim at the Trader Joe’s in Bloomington.
She took her groceries out to her car. And she just sat there for a while.
“I just kind of, like, sat there for a second and was absorbing it. And I was still bawling my eyes out,” she said.
Usually, she said, she’s the one who does things like that for other people.
“And for somebody else to notice it and give it to me was kind of like an unexpected surprise that I didn’t know I needed in the day.”
One Take, Straight From the Car
Sitting in that parking lot, still crying, Mulen decided to say exactly how she felt.
She recorded a video. One take. And she posted it right away.
“I wanted to say just thank you to Tim at the Trader Joe’s in Bloomington. Thank you so much,” she said.
“When I go to work tomorrow, I’ll think of these flowers, and I’ll bring some chocolates, and just think about how I’m going to be OK.”
The video spread far beyond Bloomington. It got more than 50,000 views on TikTok, MPR News reported.
Her story was shared by InspireMore. Then Minnesota Now, on MPR News, featured her in its series “Thank You, Stranger,” about small acts of kindness that make a big difference.
A Community of Strangers
Mulen said the response caught her completely off guard.
People she had never met reached out. They messaged her. They left comments.
“There’s a community behind me of strangers who don’t even know anything that I’m going through, that has been, like, super unexpected,” she told Minnesota Now.
She admitted she can’t read all the comments. They make her too emotional.
“It’s touching that people can actually care about a stranger as much as they have,” she said.
“Be a Tim”
Mulen believes Tim has seen the video by now. And she has a message for him.
“I hope that makes him know what he’s doing is perfect,” she said.
“Whatever he’s doing, the way he’s behaving, the way he’s treating others, is exactly how humans should be.”
“I know he made an impact on me, just that one moment.”
And she has a message for the rest of us too.
“You can always continue to be kind and be a Tim.”
Tim didn’t fix anything that night. He didn’t solve her worries about going back.
He just asked a question, and actually listened to the answer.
Sometimes that’s all it takes. A little bunch of flowers, a few chocolates, and someone who noticed.
Has a stranger ever done something small that changed your whole day? Tell us about it in the comments.
