It was bound to happen.
Management at the sometimes-popular fast food restaurant put a large Encouragement Bell near the door for satisfied customers to ring. Supposedly, when customers rang it, the employees were encouraged to keep up the good work. The fact that very few customers rang the bell had little to do with how the employees were doing or how good the food was.
Those bells were never subtle – by design. Many customers didn’t ring it because they weren’t in the habit of annoying other patrons even if they themselves were on their way out the door.
Little Theo came into the restaurant with his parents and his older brother and sister. Theo held a ten-inch stick in his hand. Not sure why it was there or if it was wise for Theo to have such a stick, but the parents didn’t mind him poking and rapping things along the way.
Then Theo saw it, that shiny object called The Encouragement Bell. He now had a focus in his life: to ring the bell not once, but as many times as he could before someone stopped him.
He couldn’t reach high enough to pull the string so he made effective use of his stick. After he rang it once, he was ready to go for a record number of times nonstop, pounding and tapping, all the while looking around at who was getting annoyed. Theo probably set the record before his older sister yanked him away and scolded him.
But Theo was not done, nor would he be until the family left the restaurant even without ordering any food, which is what his father decided to do. They were almost out the door when another family entered with a 3-year-old in tow.
The lad headed straight for the Encouragement Bell and tried to jump up and hit it while Theo was still smacking it. Even though the new boy hadn’t hit it once, he kept jumping and squealing with delight at getting closer and closer.
Together, Theo and his new playmate were now encouraging customers to leave. After cooks in the back realized two kids were ringing the bell, they no longer shouted “Thanks!” to those who rang it.
The two boys solely responsible for management uninstalling the bell the next day. It seems the staff had all the encouragement they could stand.
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