TL;DR:
- Despite its average appearance, the convenience store chain Wawa in Southeastern PA has a unique ability to leave customers feeling happier after their visit.
- Intentional acts of kindness, such as holding the door for someone, have a positive impact on both the giver and the recipient, triggering the release of dopamine in the brain.
- Wawa intentionally keeps its doors manual instead of automatic to foster a sense of community and encourage conscious acts of kindness, setting the conditions for positive experiences and customer satisfaction.
- Students recognized the difference in the experience and expressed a desire to perform acts of kindness like holding the door for others.
In Southeastern PA, we are blessed with the convenience store Wawa. It’s a completely average store, right down to the tan and red color scheme. If you look up pictures, I can’t imagine you’d be impressed. But, just about every time I go to Wawa to grab a coffee, I leave feeling just a smidge happier than I did when I walked in, and I never really understood why.
A convenience store doesn’t typically include the conditions to make one happy; 9 out of 10 times, the parking lot is packed and it’s like an endless game of Frogger meets Tetris driving in, finding a parking spot, and then exiting safely. On a Sunday during football season, I’ll get the side-eye wearing my blue Buffalo Bills attire in a sea of Eagles green. There are Wawas everywhere in my area, and there are about 800 stores along the East Coast.
What an empowering feeling to know that a seemingly random 3-second act of kindness like simply holding the door can increase the happiness levels of ourselves and those around us. Click To TweetIntentional Acts of Kindness
Before we unpack a little piece of Wawa magic, let’s remind ourselves about the power of performing intentional acts of kindness. You may recall this is one of those 2-degree shifts in language positive psychologists would invite us to consider. They wouldn’t want us to view acts of kindness as random but rather understand that we have the impact and influence to put positivity into the world by doing something kind for someone else.
Neuroscience explains that we get flooded with dopamine when we perform a conscious/deliberate/intentional act of kindness. When we think about these acts of kindness as intentional, we start training our brains to anticipate putting goodness out into the world and expecting positive things to happen in our lives.
When I present the idea of conscious acts of kindness in workshops, I often ask the audience to share an example of an act of kindness, and almost always someone will say, “Holding the door for someone else.” Our follow-up conversation to that example allows us to better understand that ultimately, we are choosing to hold the door open for someone in a very deliberate, intentional way. And that act of putting positivity into the universe just feels good. The person we hold the door open for is happier, we are happy we helped, and anyone who witnessed that intentional act of door-holding kindness feels good too.
The Magic of Wawa
Now back to Wawa. If you watch The Goldbergs, you’ve seen the store in many episodes. If you’re a Tina Fey fan, you hear her talk about Wawa when she is in the zone as a Northeastern Philly character. Guess what Wawa doesn’t have in all of their 800 stores? None of them have automatic doors! Nope. Not a single one. A new Wawa just opened near me two weeks ago, and those doors are on hinges that need to be opened by a real live human being. I just learned this earlier in May when teaching a group of high schoolers. I had no idea! After the lesson and conversation, their teacher, Mrs. Mary McDonald (a loyal member of the Teach Happier community) sent me some articles to dig into.
In an interview with founder Dick Wood he says, “We’ve changed a lot over the years…but a few things stayed the same. One of the things are our doors. They aren’t automatic. We want to encourage a community feel and when people hold doors for each other, it provides a sense of community, no matter where the store is located.” Later Ronald Dufrense, a management professor from St. Joseph’s University reflects, “Nowhere else in my daily life does anyone hold open the door for me, except in a Wawa. In a Wawa store, people are nice to each other.”
It’s so wild to think that this $10 billion convenience chain has intentionally decided to simplify the way you enter and exit the store. They want to set the conditions for conscious acts of kindness to occur during their quick visit. Much of Wawa’s success relies on the fact that people feel good when they arrive and leave.
[scroll down to keep reading]
Students Respond
When Mrs. McDonald and I asked high school juniors and seniors to react to this fact, they agreed that the experience they have when entering or exiting Wawa is completely different than running into a CVS or Rite Aid with automatic doors. The automatic doors can create a more isolated experience. Having someone hold the door for you or holding it for someone else just feels different. This was a wonderful opportunity for students to set a quick goal of a conscious act of kindness to perform by the end of the day, which many of them said, “I’ll hold the door for someone.”
What an empowering feeling to know that a seemingly random 3-second act of kindness like simply holding the door can increase the happiness levels of ourselves and those around us.
What a delightful and deliberate way to encourage happiness. One door at a time.
Small Shifts, BIG Gifts!
Try to see if you can experience the Wawa magic (even if you don’t live near one!) Perform an intentional act of kindness by holding the door for someone and see what that does for your happiness. This is something worth sharing with our students and own children too!
About Suzanne Dailey
Suzanne Dailey is a proud member of the Teach Better Family! She is an instructional coach in the Central Bucks School District where she has the honor and joy of working with elementary teachers and students in 15 buildings. Suzanne is Nationally Board Certified, a Fellow of the National Writing Project, and has a master’s degree in Reading. She is dedicated to nurturing and developing the whole child and teacher. Suzanne lives in Doylestown, Pennsylvania with her husband and two children.
Check out the Teach Happier Podcast here!
