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Joy

Oldest Home Depot employee in North America shares the key to living a happy life

A beautiful reminder to "treat the world like your family."

There's always a good reason to be kind.

We’ve all seen those videos where an influencer, posing as a regular joe, asks a person for help, and when that person does say yes to helping, the influencer repays that kindness with money, tickets to a game or some other amazing surprise.

This is the content bread and butter for Youtuber Zachery Dereniowski, otherwise known as @mdmotivator, one of the main catalysts of this philanthropic viral trend. Dereniowski has tons of videos capturing the exact moment when unsuspecting strangers had their lives changed forever, all because their generosity was recognized.

This time, our recipient ends up being the giver twice, thanks to the hard earned wisdom they depart.

In the video, Dereniowski appears at a Home Depot, and asks the friendly employee there, David Frank, and asks him for a dollar to purchase a nail since he “left his wallet at home” (this is one of Dereniowski’s signature setups).

After admitting he doesn't have any money from him, Frank asks Dereniowski what he needs the bolt for. When Dereniowski replies that it’s for his son’s desk, Frank not only decides he goes to pay for the bolt on his credit card, he marches back to the bolt aisle to select the right one for the job.

“[Why] are you gonna help me?” Dereniowski asks. To which Frank replies, “well you’re stuck and you have a problem, so we’re gonna try to help you.” Plain and simple.

It’s then we learn that only a week ago, an entire section of the Home Depot was cleared to celebrate Frank’s 100th birthday. He even made headlines as “The oldest Home Depot employee in North America.”

Dereniowski then asks Frank, “what’s the key to living a long, healthy life?”

“Treat the world like your family,” says Frank. “Be nice to them. Be sensible. That’s all.”


Yep, we pretty much just got a Mister Rogers moment IRL. But Franks’s words are more than just platitudes. Research has indeed indicated that kindness can lead to longevity by giving us a sense of purpose, helping us connect to others and (perhaps most science-y of all) keeping inflammation levels down. But honestly, no amount of supporting evidence can really compare to how good we feel when being kind, compassionate and generous.

Clearly sticking to his message, when Dereniowski admits he did actually have his wallet with him and hands over $1000, Frank says that he’ll use the money to help another stranger. After he recovers from being stunned, that is.

Aside from getting a surprise grand, interactions like these are all in a day’s work for Frank. In his interview with Windsor Star, the centenarian shared that he enjoys his job because he gets to meet people and help solve their problems, saying “it keeps me busy and in the loop.” While there are certainly pros and cons to working after retirement age, this certainly shows how keeping busy can be beneficial. Not just busy, but mission oriented.

As for whether or not Frank plans to quit anytime soon, it seems he’s prioritizing “staying active.”

“What would I do? Sit at home and end up getting blisters on my rear end?” he told the Windsor star. “No way. I would never want to (spend) it that way.”

That’s the spirit, Frank. Here’s to another go round the sun.

A Home Depot store in Newington, Connecticut.

One of Home Depot’s core values is "doing the right thing." The company explains it as exercising "good judgment by ‘doing the right thing’ instead of just ‘doing things right.’ We strive to understand the impact of our decisions, and we accept responsibility for our actions.”

The value is so important that it is written on all of its employees' work vests.

There’s no better example of employees following the company’s values than an incident that happened late last month at a Home Depot store in Bellevue, Tennessee. This story was originally reported by WSMV in Nashville, Tennessee, and we thought it was such a good deed that we wanted to share it far and wide through our Upworthy audience.


via Jake Slagle/Flickr

Home Depot employee Adam Adkisson was walking down aisle 22, where you can find insulation and ladders, when he noticed a small envelope. “I didn’t think anything of it at first. I thought it was empty, but I thought I’d go back to make sure and when I picked it up, I could feel that It had stuff in it. It had money,” Adkisson told WSMV.

When he opened the envelope, he realized it was stuffed with $700 cash.

Adkisson did the right thing and turned the envelope in to a manager. At the end of the day, the closing manager, Alissa Rocchi, noticed that no one had come by to claim the missing money. So she took to Facebook and posted about the missing envelope, leaving out key details that would have to be filled in by the owner to prove it was theirs.

She could have just left it in the safe at work and gone on with her life, but she went out of her way to find the person who lost the money. That’s definitely “doing the right thing.”

Luckily, the Facebook post caught the attention of the owner’s partner, who reached out to her via messenger.

“I got a message from a gentleman by the name of Mark who said that’s my partner’s. It’s his money. He lost it. He is panicking,” Rocchi said. He was able to identify the envelope by describing some important details that were scrawled on the back.

“I was stressing over it pretty bad. So, I am glad that he is a social media guy and was able to see that because I would have never seen it,” Johnathon Clayton, the owner of the lost envelope, said. It’s important that he got it back because he was planning on using the money to buy Christmas gifts for his kids.

After getting his money back, Clayton went to the store and personally thanked Adkisson for his good deed and gave him a small reward. Adkisson should sleep well knowing that his good deed meant that Clayton’s children will have a merrier Christmas.

Rocchi says that it’s all part of the company’s core values to “do the right thing.”

“Our core value is on our chest and one of our core values says to do the right thing. That is just us living our core values,” Rocchi said.