My coworker brought me coffee every Monday for a month. I thought she was just being nice. When she quit, I found a note on her PC screen. It said: “Things to do: make someone happy on Monday. Make someone feel seen.” After some time it turned out that simple gesture had started something I never expected.

Her name was Lidia. She wasn’t the loudest in the office, nor the one who stood out in meetings. But she smiled often, especially on Mondays, which always struck me as odd. Everyone else dragged themselves in like zombies, while Lidia waltzed in with two coffees—one for herself, one for me.

I never asked why. I just thanked her each time. Sometimes I offered to return the favor, but she’d wave me off and say, “Maybe one day.”

Then one Monday she didn’t show up. Her desk was empty. Later that morning, the manager announced she had quit suddenly over the weekend. No explanation, no farewell email, nothing.

As people murmured in surprise, I sat back in my chair and looked toward her desk. Her coffee mug still sat there, clean. Her chair was neatly pushed in. I wandered over, thinking maybe she left something behind. That’s when I saw it—the note stuck to her monitor.

“Things to do: make someone happy on Monday. Make someone feel seen.”

I stared at those words for a long time. They weren’t dramatic. Just… real. Human. Honest.

That night, I kept thinking about it. What kind of person writes that on a Post-it? And more importantly, why did she choose me?

I wasn’t particularly cheerful at work. I came in, did my job, left. I was polite, but kept to myself. Mondays were always the worst. I’d lost my brother two years prior, on a Monday. Since then, I dreaded them like clockwork. I never told anyone.

Yet somehow, Lidia saw something.

Weeks passed. I missed those small moments—the warm cup of coffee already on my desk, the tiny smile she’d give as she walked away. The silence she left behind felt louder than anything else.

Then one Monday, I did something I never usually did. I brought two coffees to work. One I placed on my desk. The other, I set down at the new intern’s cubicle. His name was Sam. He looked about 22, always hunched over his laptop, headphones in, barely speaking.

He glanced up, confused. “This for me?”

“Yeah,” I said, offering a smile. “Mondays suck less with coffee.”

He smiled faintly, nodded, and took a sip. We didn’t talk much. But I kept doing it.

Every Monday.

Sometimes we chatted for a few minutes. He told me about his long commute, about how he wasn’t sure he was cut out for corporate life. I didn’t push. Just listened.

Then, one Monday, Sam didn’t show up. My heart sank. Not again, I thought.

But around 10 AM, he walked in, holding two coffees. He placed one on my desk.

“I figured,” he said with a half-smile, “maybe it’s my turn.”

We both laughed.

What started as a small thing became something more. Others in the office noticed. Someone brought cookies the next Monday. Someone else left sticky notes with jokes on desks. It wasn’t planned. It just… happened.

A ripple effect.

I never told anyone about Lidia’s note. It felt like our secret. But what she started didn’t stop with her.

Months passed. Sam got promoted. He told me one day over lunch that those Monday coffees helped him through a really dark time. He’d just lost his dad before starting the job. Didn’t think he’d last a month.

I nodded quietly, swallowing the lump in my throat.

He asked why I started giving him coffee.

I told him about Lidia. About the note.

He didn’t say anything for a while. Just looked out the window and said, “Funny how one small thing can echo like that.”

It was.

But the story doesn’t end there.

One afternoon, I was in a bookstore near my apartment. I stopped by a shelf on mindfulness and saw a familiar name on a book spine: “You Are Seen” by Lidia N. Marcovici.

I froze.

I picked it up and flipped to the back cover. It was her. Lidia. Her photo was right there, smiling that same calm smile she always had.

The book was about small acts of kindness. About how she’d challenged herself for a year to do one small thing every Monday for someone else. Some weeks it was leaving change taped to a vending machine. Other times, it was a compliment, a ride, or a coffee.

She called it “Monday Miracles.”

And she wrote that her favorite experience was with a coworker who didn’t say much, but always said thank you. She never asked for anything back. Just accepted the coffee like it was part of their routine.

She wrote, “He never knew, but I chose him because he looked like he carried something heavy. I didn’t want to fix it. I just wanted him to know someone saw him.”

I sat down right there in the aisle and cried.

I bought ten copies.

The next Monday, I left one on the desk of every person who had ever joined in the Monday kindness chain at work. I taped a note to each: “You are seen.”

No one asked where the books came from. But they were read.

Years passed. I moved on to another company eventually. Started in management. Mondays were still hard sometimes, but I had a ritual. Coffee. A kind word. A reminder.

Then one day, I got an email. Subject: You Changed My Life.

It was from a woman named Ana, a former intern. She had worked in the same building as my old company. She wrote that someone once left a coffee on her desk when she was crying in the breakroom after a call from her mom, who was sick.

She never knew who did it. But the Post-it on the cup said: “You are not invisible.”

That moment changed her. She stayed. She fought through the hard days. She took care of her mom, then came back stronger. She was now starting her own company—with a Monday kindness ritual built into her onboarding process.

She signed off with: “Whoever you are, thank you. You saw me.”

I replied simply: “I didn’t start it. But I’ll never stop it.”

A few weeks later, I was invited to speak at her company’s launch event. She wanted me to share the story. At first, I hesitated. I wasn’t a speaker. I didn’t like being in the spotlight.

But I owed it to Lidia.

I stood in front of about fifty people and told them about a quiet woman who brought me coffee on Mondays. Who never asked for anything. Who left a note that changed everything.

I ended the talk with the same line that’s stayed with me ever since:

“You don’t have to save someone’s life. Just remind them they have one.”

The room was silent. Then someone clapped. Then everyone.

After the event, a woman approached me in tears. She said her son had recently tried to take his life. He told her what helped him hold on was a co-worker who always greeted him on Mondays with a coffee and a “We made it.”

Turns out… her son was Sam.

I hadn’t seen him in years.

I left the event with a full heart.

In the taxi ride home, I stared out the window, thinking how this all started with a note on a screen. Fourteen words.

“Things to do: make someone happy on Monday. Make someone feel seen.”

People chase legacies. But Lidia… she created one with coffee and care.

One Monday at a time.

If there’s something I’ve learned from all this, it’s that we don’t always see the ripple we start. We don’t know who we lift just by being kind. And sometimes, the simplest gestures are the ones that echo the longest.

So now, wherever I work, I bring two coffees every Monday. One for me. One for someone who might need it. No questions asked. No expectations.

Just a quiet gesture. Like Lidia did for me.

If this story touched you, do something small for someone today. You never know the storm they’re hiding behind their smile.

And if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of unexpected kindness—pass it on.

It might just be the beginning of someone’s new chapter.

Like & Share this story if it reminded you that even the smallest actions can carry the greatest impact.