I was gifted a Swiss Army knife by a co-worker nearly 20 years ago; I had saved him from an embarrassing situation when he had developed a project and it was going to be launched at a weekend (overtime) session where a large group of employees were to use his app to to complete a time-sensitive, high profile assignment; somehow, he managed to make an error in the execution of the password protection on his app and could not get into it to start it, meaning there was an office full of people who had given up their Saturday to work on something that was now, for all intents and purposes, inert; I as not part of the project and had come in that Saturday, on my own, to do a little experimenting with some of my own ideas; another one of the employees, who had been part of the other guy's project, came into my server room and told me, "Did you hear? Ben (not his real name) just screwed up big time", and gave me the details; Ben had taken a real deep dislike to me when I had first started at the office and had not changed his opinion in the few years since, something I really didn't care about since that sort of thing, unless it gets real personal or disruptive, is something I choose to ignore; when I was told about the problem, I asked the employee to please ask Ben to come to the server room, since I tend to find it impossible to not try to help when anyone is in trouble, no matter what they may think of me; Ben showed up, more annoyed that I had asked to see him than anything, but his attitude changed when I told him I might have a solution to his problem, but it would involve a hack and that might pose a problem given we were working in a county government office and the hack may be deemed illegal, but he was a bit desperate and agreed to do it on my provision that I would deny any involvement if there were any repercussions; I fixed the problem with a bit of devious art and also made a change to his app when I noted a problem he might not have considered; he was grateful and his demeanor towards me thereafter was a bit more cordial...
About a year later, he went off on his longtime dream vacation to a skiing trip in Switzerland and he asked the other employees if there was anything they wanted him to bring back from his trip for them; the bulk of the requests were for the usual Swiss chocolate, etc., and when he asked me what I wanted, I said I really didn't want anything (since I'm not really a big fan of chocolate), but he persisted and I jokingly said, "OK, bring me back a Swiss Army Knife"; he wrote that down and went off on his vacation; when he came back, he was bearing the chocolates he had been requested to bring and he also gave each employee one of those little key-chain-sized SAKs in addition to the chocolates; when he got to me, I was expecting to also get one of those mini-SAKs, but he gave me a rather nice box with this inside:
https://www.swissarmy.com/us/en/Prod...l-L/p/1.7775.T
This SAK is a mini-IT toolkit and was, at that time, unavailable in the US; when I told him the gift seemed a bit much, he replied he remembered how I had unexpectedly helped him back when he had his app problem, and had not been able to find, until then, a way to say "thanks"...
I still have that knife and have used it many, many times over the years and it has served as a reminder that sometimes doing something for others can be rewarding even when you don't expect anything in return and that, even if someone doesn't immediately express thanks, it doesn't mean they don't feel gratitude all the same; the knife is one of my most prized possessions...
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