But in the end, the most important lesson his father taught him came from that waitress.
Not from a college.
Not from a corporate office.
Not from a business conference.
From a woman carrying a coffee pot in a small-town diner.
I used to think Mom should have confronted Michael that Tuesday.
Part of me still does.
I wanted to see her stand up for herself.
I wanted him embarrassed.
I wanted someone to tell him exactly what kind of person leaves no tip and writes something cruel on a receipt after another human being has spent twenty minutes trying to make his breakfast right.
But Mom understood something I didn’t.
She wasn’t interested in winning an argument with a rude customer.
She was interested in making sure he understood what he’d done.
And the person who could reach him was the ninety-one-year-old father who still remembered a waitress paying for breakfast when his little boy was hungry.
