Humiliated By Other Customers At Tim Hortons, Michigan Woman Buys Their Order
By Christy Strawser
FORT GRATIOT (CBS DETROIT) Her first reaction was hot tears of shame, but her second reaction, the one that matters, has resonated with people around the world.
Dianne Hoffmeyer, humiliated at Tim Hortons, turned the other cheek.
Hoffmeyer was choosing from a selection of timbits doughnut holes earlier this week for her fussy 22-month-old daughter Liliana when she said the two women in line behind her hit her with verbal fire.
First, one made fun of her hair, then they started poking fun at her weight, saying she was a lard a**, and more. Hoffmeyer, a Fort Gratiot resident who had been up all night with her crying, teething baby, grabbed her much-needed coffee and turned to leave.
Then she turned back and told the employee she wanted to buy coffee for the women behind her, whom she later described on Facebook as "mean and bitter ladies."
"None of my employees witnessed it, paying for the order behind you is kind of a regular thing here at Tim Hortons so they didn't think anything of it," said manager Brittany Sanders at the Tim Hortons in Port Huron. "I definitely think that she set a real example of killing it with kindness and not reacting and taking the high road about it."
Hoffmeyer recounted the incident on Facebook, where it quickly garnered 166,000 likes and thousands of messages of support. Hoffmeyer has received at least 94,000 friend requests and hundreds of messages, some from as far away as New Zealand, according to the Port Huron Times Herald. Her page has so many messages and new fans that it won't display.
Tim Hortons gift cards and offers for free salon visits and more are pouring in from those who admire her ability to rise above an ugly situation.
