It was late on a Friday night and Nicholas Tate, a Walmart cashier from Newcastle, Oklahoma, was looking forward to the end of his shift.
But in the meantime, the line for his cash was growing, and customers were beginning to get upset about the holdup. The cause of the delay was a woman with three young kids at the front of the line.
She apologized to Tate for backing everything up, and the cashier simply asked her, "Is it one of those days?" Neither of them realized at the time how important that question would be.
The customer - who wants to remain anonymous - explained that she was a foster mother, and was looking after a young baby. To buy groceries for the infant, she had to use WIC, a low-income assistance program she had only set up earlier that day.
Of course programs like WIC have all kinds of restrictions, and the woman was totally unfamiliar with them, which made everything take much longer.
"She had a good amount of items and most of them went through," Tate explained, "but she apparently didn't have the right formula and it wouldn't go through," and of course she needed that baby formula most of all.
Tate stayed calm and tried to help the woman through her transaction, but when things didn't work out he took matters into his own hands.
And the cashier says a voice from God inspired him to do it.
Even after running a separate transaction for the baby formula, the purchase just wasn't going through.
"[There were] more customers, more grumbling and dirty looks as they moved to the other lane and I'm frustrated and trying not to cry," the customer wrote on Facebook.
"At this point, a lady we know came up and asked why I was causing so many problems. I told her I was just failing as a foster mom because I can't figure out WIC and almost burst into tears right there."
When the payment wouldn't go through, Tate didn't hesitate to cover the $60 formula himself.
"I already had my card out at that point," he remembered. "I felt like God was telling me to pay for it. The second it didn't work I swiped my card."
That conviction to follow what he feels is important to Tate, who's studying to be a missionary at the Austin Bible Insittute.
In the heat of the moment, the woman didn't catch Tate's name, but she shared her story on Facebook and the two were reunited so she could thank him.
Tate has received a lot of positive attention too, since his story went viral, but says he's just glad things worked out.
"It made my heart really happy," he said. "It confirmed that I'm doing what God wants me to do."
Bless this young man for his act of kindness!
