124 - Don't Let the Selfishness of Others Steal Your Generous Spirit
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Sometimes when we're generous, we'll get taken advantage of. Host Travis Shelton recently posted a $100 Starbucks gift card on our podcast Facebook group to bless some of our listeners. In addition to hopefully bringing a few smiles to people's faces, we expected two things to happen. The first: people would abuse the gift. Wow they didn't disappoint!!! In today's episode, we talk about how this all played out (you won't even believe it), why it can be so demoralizing when we get taken advantage of, and why it's so important we don't let the selfishness of others rob us of our generous spirit. We think this is such an important concept to embrace along our giving journey. It's inevitable we'll be hurt, taken advantage of, and our gifts abused......however, it shouldn't cloud the bigger picture or prevent us from growing in our generosity. If nothing else, it helps us get better, more impactful, more creative, and even more generous along the way.
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After buying a bunch of drink and food items, this person came back 6 minutes later and purchased a pound of beans.
This person bought a few drinks….then purchased a $10 gift card with my gift card…then purchased a second $10 gift card with my gift card.
Someone must have been bummed when the gift card ran out of money, so they decided to just redeem my points for a free coffee.
Full Transcript:
Recently, I woke up on a Monday morning. As you know, Cole and I, we love Mondays. It's our favorite day of the week. As I was coming into the office, I had an idea: I wanted to buy coffee for some of our listeners. So I bought a Starbucks gift card. I bought a hundred dollar Starbucks gift card, I screenshotted the barcode, and posted it in our Facebook community.
Now, if you're not part of our community, you should be. You should hop over to Facebook. There's a link in the show notes, but we have a private group on Facebook where you can come discuss the content, suggest ideas, provide feedback, and engage with other listeners. We would love to have you here, but anyway, that particular morning, I bought a hundred dollar Starbucks gift card and posted it in the community.
I essentially just said, I hope y'all have a great Monday. Please buy yourself a coffee on me. And that was it. I was excited to do that because, well, as you know, I love generosity and giving is my favorite thing in the world. So it filled my tank to be able to surprise a handful of people with free coffee for the day.
I was excited to do it, but I also did it for another reason. It was a bit of a social experiment because I wanted to do podcasts on two particular topics. I knew both of them would shine right through this little exercise. And when I gave the gift, there were two things I knew were going to happen.
Today's episode is about one of them and I'm gonna save the other one for a follow up episode. But here's one thing I knew was gonna happen. There would be a handful of selfish people that abuse the gift. I knew that going in. I knew it was going to happen, but I still wanted to give the gift. I wanted to see what would happen, how would this play out? I'm gonna share how this actually played out.
I posted a barcode to the gift card and said, “Hey, please buy yourself a coffee on us.” So let's see how this actually played out.
The very first person who redeemed was at a Starbucks in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They bought two drinks and four food items. Okay. Not really the spirit of what I was offering, but okay.
But here's the kicker, six minutes later, maybe surprised that it actually worked, they ended up buying themselves one pound of whole beans. So they could have coffee all week, presumably. I thought, “Wow, that was really interesting that somebody would read that message. Go buy themselves two drinks, four food items, and then six minutes later buy a pound of whole beans at the same store.” So that was number one.
Shortly thereafter, somebody in Sacramento bought themselves two drinks. Okay. I mean, that's pretty consistent with what I had asked and what I had offered, so awesome. Except for one minute later they bought a $10 gift card with my gift card. And then one minute after that, they bought another $10 gift card with my gift card. Ouch. Ouch. Buying a gift with a gift. Buying a gift card with the cash that I had provided on my gift card. Ouch. That one stung a little bit.
Then this was my favorite. After a little while longer, the gift card I think was coming to an end. I think somebody tried to use it and it didn't provide a gift for them. So they actually went in and redeemed all of the points on my account for a free drink. They went in and there wasn't money on my card, but there were points and they redeemed the points for a drink for themselves. That was a crazy one!. That was one I didn't even expect.
That was my experience. That's not all that happened, but those are three pretty significant things that really raised my eyebrows. I'll just summarize again, somebody bought two drinks, four food items, then six minutes later they bought a pound of whole beans for themselves. That somebody was in Tulsa.
Somebody in Sacramento bought themselves two drinks. Then they bought themselves a $10 gift card, and then they bought themselves another $10 gift card. Awesome.
Then somebody redeemed my points for a free drink. So I shared this story with several people. I do a lot of my client work out of a co-work space that has a coffee shop and co-work. I reserve a conference room for all my clients. The office, the podcast studio where we record, it's not that nice. So right down the street is where I do all of my client meetings. And I was there that morning for a meeting after I had given this gift card. I was sharing with several of my friends, some of the baristas there, the story with them. The thing that I kept hearing, every time I shared the story, they said, “Wow, that sucks. I bet you'll never do that again.”
That was the theme. I bet you'll never do that again. I bet you regret it. I bet you wish… And the list goes on. That's the thing I want to focus on today. Every time we're generous, we open ourselves up to be taken advantage of. Every time we do something kind, there is somebody out there that wants to abuse it.
Every time we offer a gift, there's somebody that wants to take your inch and make it their mile. That's a theme. There's something to that. It always has happened and it always will happen. And even though I knew this was going to happen, it's one of the reasons I did this. I knew this was going to happen.
Now the results were even more spectacular than I could have imagined. Even knowing this was what was going to happen. A part of me was hurt and a part of me says, “Screw this, I'm not gonna do this.” But the whole point of doing this was to make the argument that we cannot let the selfishness of a few rob us of our generous spirit.
And it won't for me. It won't because I knew this was going to happen. I really wanted to make this argument and I'm going to make this argument and I hope that you agree. You don't have to, but I hope you do.
The more you give, the more opportunities people have to take advantage of you, to abuse you, to do something that is insincere or incongruent with your intent in your heart.
It's happened so many times to us. Every time it does, there's like a little piece of you that wants to say “I'm not doing that again. I'll just keep this for me. I'm not gonna do that again. I don't wanna risk having somebody take advantage of me again.”
Every time a gift is abused or misused, it can make us want to be a little bit less generous. I've seen a lot of generous people fizzle out in their generosity because of frustration, regret, and tension. And I think that's a tragedy. I think it's a tragedy when we let the selfishness of a few rob us of our generous spirit.
One gift that my wife and I gave, one in particular hurt us more than anything. I don't want to go into details. As I've mentioned, a lot of our giving is anonymous and if I give too many particulars, it might out the gift. But we gave a gift. It was a larger gift. It was several thousand dollars for a specific purpose to a specific person.
And because it was anonymous, which is one of the beautiful things about being anonymous, that you kind of get a front row seat and nobody knows you have a front row seat. So we gave this gift, and then we kinda saw how things played out. We were able to watch, because nobody knew it was our gift to begin with.
So we are right there. It was right in the open for us, and my wife and I witnessed the person who received the gift do something that was totally dishonoring to the gift. They turned a gift into a curse. They did something that took this thing that could have been a blessing in their life anonymously and tried to manipulate it into something totally different.
It really grossed me out and it was one of the few times I could say to myself, “I wish I could get a do-over.” I wish I could get that back. I wish I could reassess that gift and maybe use it in a way that would be a better blessing to somebody else. I really wished that then.
Obviously, I can't hop into a DeLorean and go back in time. But something that one of my mentors said to me at some point in my journey is they said, “Travis, your role is to give the gift. Your role is to give the gift, do the right thing for the right reasons, and trust that it will be a blessing. And what happens after that is not in your hands. That is not on you. That's not your fault. That's not your abuse.” They said, “You need to honor God with your generosity….period.”
That has helped. It doesn't fully help. There are times where I still have that feeling like, oh man, I wish I could get that one back. But then I realized it's not really about me.
I did the right thing for the right reasons and that's all I can do. I've also acknowledged over the years, the more times I'm generous, the more I'm opening myself up to being taken advantage of, and I've had to just live with that. I've had to concede that it will happen and I have to be okay with that because I cannot let the selfishness of a few rob me of my generous spirit.
Now, one thing is it might not happen every time. For example, this Starbucks gift card, maybe next time I give the gift, I'll do it differently. Or I'll frame it up differently. Or I will do something else differently. As I'm talking about it, my mind's going blank. I don't know what, but something.
I may not give the same gift in the same way next time, because I've learned from this experience. Partly I knew how it was gonna go, but I may not do the same thing exactly the same way next time. But I can promise you, there will be a next time. I can promise you there will be generosity to come.
There's been several generous things. And I don't mean to be flippant about the word generous. We have given gifts since that incident. That incident will not rob us of our generous spirit. It won't, but a lot of you, if you're practicing generosity and you're trying to explore and expand what it means to be generous in your own life, you are going to get burned.
You are going to be taken advantage of. And this is me asking you, maybe pleading with you, don't let the selfishness of a few rob you of your generous spirit.
Despite being taken advantage of once in a while, I can tell you with 100% certainty that generosity is still the best thing in our life, and nothing else comes close.
If that's true, I will gladly be taken advantage of from time to time because I know the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is so much more powerful and beautiful than a couple bad apples taking advantage of me.
So I hope that helps. I hope you continue to exercise generosity. I hope that when, not if, when somebody takes advantage of you, it doesn't rob you of your generous spirit.