Costco shopping on a Saturday makes me grumpy, but today a brief encounter lightened my mood.

Cars packed the parking lot and crowds of people poured in and out of the store. Walking toward the entrance, I watched a man pushing his shopping cart at a good clip. He flung it into the cart corral just to my left, turned on his heel, and headed back to his car. Two jars of spaghetti sauce remained in his abandoned cart.

“Sir,” I called, “Excuse me, Sir?”

I caught up to him before he turned around. “You left your spaghetti sauce in your cart,” I said.

His eyebrows raised above his mask, then with a nod and a word of gratitude he ran back to retrieve them.

I continued into the store, my foul mood replaced by the joy of improving someone else’s day.