Story Of Supermarket Charity Unfolds With Layer After Layer Of Oh-Stop-That's-So-Nice

Do you live in or near Knightdale, North Carolina? If so, please consider venturing to A'Nets Katch. While confusingly punctuated, it would seem that the fine people of that seafood market and restaurant are pretty great, and since we are based in Chicago, we need someone to go smile very broadly at these charmers. The reason is a fateful trip to a local Food Lion, during which co-owner Annette Brown (Get it? Annette/a net/A'Net?) helped her employees to make somebody's day.

WRAL.com reports that Brown asked her employees to meet her at the store, and gave them a simple mission. They were to each take her credit card, pick a customer, and buy their groceries, whether it was 10 items or less or a heaping cartful.

The employees stood behind their chosen customers in the checkout lane, and when it was time to pay, they swooped in to foot the bill...

Some customers cried. One was pregnant and felt overwhelmed. One, with a home destroyed by two hurricanes this year, was living in a hotel.

"A lot of times we want to give, but we don't have the means to give," Brown told WRAL. "It was awesome... It really, really was awesome."

Sometimes, people are wonderful. The staff of A'Nets seem to be such, as they then took it upon themselves to assist their chosen customers with loading their groceries into their cars. Nice, right?

If that were the end of the story, it would still be great. But here's the twist: After the loading and smiling and being kind to people was done, she wrote each employee a check matching the amount their chosen customer spent. All told, it was a $2,100 afternoon.

"It was such a cool experience," Brown said, "and it turned out way better than I ever imagined."

She also gives each of them a turkey every year. Way to go, Annette Brown! We respect your generosity, your enthusiasm, and your pun game.