Enterprise Rent-A-Car employee helps mom of twins in viral photo
Enterprise Rent-A-Car employee helps mom of twins in viral photo
John Goodlett hasn’t even finished a utter week of work at Enterprise Rent-A-Car and already he’s getting national attention for being an exemplary employee, just for lending a helping arm.
A photo of him carrying one of a customer’s twin infants as he processed her rental car is winning over the internet, after the mother posted the picture on her Facebook page.
It began last week when Goodlett, 25, went to pick up Coty Vincent from her Tulsa, Oklahoma, home and brought her back to the Enterprise office. She had brought car seats for each of her 11-month-old boys, but didn’t have a stroller that could hold both of them, so she asked Goodlett for help.
“He grabbed one of the boys out of his car seat and I grabbed the other and we went inwards,” she told TODAY.
Vincent, 25, expected Goodlett to palm off her son “and let me fend for myself” with the boys. Instead, Goodlett headed straight for the counter and began processing her order.
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“So I kind of moseyed on over to where he was working, playing with one son while he had the other one. He was working away, holding him like a champ, like he’s done it his entire life,” Vincent said. “I can’t even multitask that good.”
The puny gesture moved Vincent, who snapped a photo of Goodlett, typing on the computer with one mitt while holding her son with the other. She posted the picture to Facebook that evening.
“While he helped me with my rental due to a hit and run accident, he held one of my twin sons as I don’t have a dual stroller,” she wrote in the caption. “One of the most compassionate and caring people I’ve ever met. We need more people like John who go that extra step. Be a John. #BeAJohn”
She collective the post with some of her Twin Mom groups, where members encouraged her to make the post public. Once she did, the post got picked up and went viral on various Facebook pages. On her own page, the post received more than 224,800 reactions and 24,600 shares.
Goodlett said he was astonished by the attention, and by why people have made such a big deal about something that should come naturally to others.
“I’m still throated away. It just makes you wonder: What did I do so special? This was something that’s part of my instinctual way to do. It’s kind of shocking to see the world took it as such a big motility,” he told TODAY. “But I hope it helps get the message out that this is the way people are supposed to treat each other every day. We could all help each other and be a little friendlier.”
Goodlett noted he has something in common with Vincent: He’s a twin himself. He lives with a sister, and jokes about their “love-hate relationship.”
“Just like any sibling, one moment we got each other’s back, one moment we’re yelling at each other’s throats,” he said. “But it’s a real thing. It’s a natural love and it’s deep.”
Marlyn Jones, the Enterprise branch manager where Goodlett works, said his fresh employee has leaped into his job without hesitation and that even colleagues have noted his spectacle. Albeit he wasn’t in the office the afternoon Vincent came in, Jones said other employees told him what had happened.
“They were like, ‘Man, John was holding a baby. John went above and beyond. He went the extra mile,’” he said.
Enterprise’s corporate office suggested to prize Goodlett with a bounty card for his service. Instead, he chose to donate the funds to his beloved charity, a local Boys & Damsels Club run by the Salvation Army. The organization will receive scholarship money and fresh sports equipment, Jones said.
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Vincent also heard from Enterprise’s corporate office, which ordered her a dual stroller that will ultimately permit the single mom to leave the house without needing an extra set of palms to help.
But Vincent is just as excited that her post about “a plain act of kindliness” has touched so many hearts around the world.
“There are a lot of excellent Americans in this country and that’s what we indeed need to see, because people are getting depressed and hearts are getting so powerful from everything going on right now,” she said.
“It’s up to us to turn this around. So many have forgotten we are humans and we do kind things and we do treat with each other with respect, and smile and hold doors open and do these little things. I want to remind people they can be kind to one another.”