Mom dining alone on Mother's Day gets celebrated by Ruby Tuesday staff

Mother’s Day got off to a rocky start for a woman who changed her fate by deciding to dine at Ruby Tuesday.

Barbara Foy was down in the dumps when she sat down for lunch at the chain’s Horry County, S.C., location on Sunday. It was Mother’s Day, but she hadn’t heard from her son. She told a local news station that she actually hadn’t spoken to him in quite some time.

Some sympathetic staffers noticed that Foy was dining alone and knew they had to intervene. Employee Kabria Hasty “walked over to the table to greet Foy and wished her a happy Mother’s Day, and she started to tear up,” the franchise’s general manager, Lauren Nave, tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

Foy shared her story with Hasty, who in turn shared it with co-workers Christianna Smith and Mariah Brown. Unwilling to let this mom go without feeling loved on Mother’s Day, the three “put their money together, ran to the store, and put together a thoughtful gift bag,” Nave recalled. She said they went to the nearest place to shop, Dollar Tree, and bought notebooks, perfumes, pens, and anything they thought their customer might appreciate. They also comped her lunch, according to WMBF, and a fellow customer brought her a rose.

“I really felt like I was queen for a day … mother for a day!” Foy said, according WAFB. “I’ve never been made to feel so special.”

And while it sounds like these ladies are pros at cheering customers up, this was a first for them. “All three girls have said that they have not done something like this for a customer before, but have for sure gone above and beyond for family and friends,” Nave explained. “It’s all about doing the right thing, and this was the right thing to do.”

Fast food and chain restaurants may get a bad rap, but their employees are individuals who often make headlines for having empathy.

When a new Chick-fil-A franchise owner found out that a local 6-year-old boy had a rare condition that is triggered by 90 percent of the foods on the entire planet, for example, and that Chick-fil-A’s waffle fries are on the list of permitted items, they invited him to the restaurant as a guest of honor. With his new title, Chris Cataldo was able to take customers’ orders, operate the drive-thru, and even cook an order of fries before having some fun in the store playground and sitting down for his special meal.

And last month at a Colorado Chipotle, where customer Adriana Alvarez unexpectedly gave birth, the chain threw her a baby shower.

It’s chains like these that give the term “comfort food” a whole new meaning.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

• My mother lost custody of me. How becoming a sex worker helped me understand why.

• One mother left me on the steps of an orphanage. The other adopted me. I’m grateful for both.

• My mother was a supermom — but I didn’t get it until having kids of my own

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