When Rachel Nicholson visited Morrisons at the Gyle for some shopping she was only there to buy food and essentials. But when she turned back to her trolley she was amazed to find a couple of sledges in there with a note attached.
The sledges were a gift from Morrisons which their Community Champion, Nadia Ahmed, had slipped into the trolley when Rachel wasn’t looking.
The note said: “Please accept this token as a random act of kindness. I hope it has brightened up your day! from Nadia, Morrisons Gyle Community Champion.”
Rachel had her two daughters Niamh (4) and Saoirse (2) with her, and knew they would get a lot of fun with the sledges.
She said: “We were finishing up at the checkout and were surprised and delighted to be given a sledge from Nadia. We didn’t have any sledges at home and the girls were so excited to get out and try them.
“After a difficult year for everyone it was so touching to get a random treat, especially on a usually stressful supermarket trip with young kids! I’m really grateful to Morrisons Gyle and Nadia for thinking of ways to show kindness to young children and hope we can pay it forward soon too.”
Nadia said that some customers are flabbergasted when they see what is in their trolleys or baskets, and often people have been reduced to tears of joy. She said: “Morrisons is proud to offer all this during Covid. My job as a Community Champion is to spread community kindness. If random acts of kindness can just brighten someone’s day then we should all be doing it.”
It was Nadia who came up with the idea of Coats4Kids and in the Gyle store they collected around 500 coats to give to children through schools and community groups. At the in-store branch of Timpsons there is a dry cleaners, and the manager there, Christine Hunter, offered to clean and wrap all the coats before they were handed out to their new owners. In total over 1,000 coats have been collected during this winter by both the Gyle and the Ferry Road stores.
So when Sir John Timpson made a surprise visit to the store in December Nadia took the chance of getting a photo with him.
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