If you thanked somebody for their kindness and they replied, “It’s my pleasure,” the chances are you’d figure they were a little loopy. I mean, who says anything that dumb? But the fact is that is part of the glow at 1,430 Chik-fil-A locations across the country and last year the fast-food restaurant’s sales were just a few bucks shy of $3 billion.

The reason I bring this up is because I eat lunch at Chik-fil-A at least three times a week and I would eat there every day if I could. The food is good, but that’s not the lure that literally causes me to plan my errands in a way that will put one in my path around lunchtime.

I adore kindness. There is no Chik-fil-A near my office. I have to drive completely across Chattanooga to eat at Gunbarrell Road, out Highway 153 or go to Fort Oglethorpe, but, so help me, I arrange it with startling regularity because I have found Chik-fil-A is so very different from any other restaurant – or business, for that matter – that I study in this paralyzing economy.

For starters, every location has too many employees. In a day where Wal-Mart has 14 cashier lines and only three are open, or any bank you can name has two tellers and six more empty “windows,” Chik-fil-A has so many employees it looks like an ant hill.

There is a reason for that. The customer comes first. Try this – if you’ll stop at the Murfreesboro location off I-24, or get off the I-75 in Dalton, go inside and eat your lunch while reading the newspaper, I’ll buy your lunch if somebody doesn’t ask if they can refill your drink, take away your trash or offer you a piece of candy.

It’s no secret I wear a brace on my arm and I have to constantly beg the kids on the counter to let me carry my own tray to the table. I mean, they fawn over you like you are an important somebody and it’s no wonder you can hardly find a parking place. Every location is always packed. I know that may sound silly, but, brother, you heap kindness on any kind of a meal and people will come back!

As I watch and study the world around me, Chik-fil-A has figured it out. A man named Truett Cathy must have had a hunch in 1946 when he started selling fried-chicken sandwiches in a way nobody but Mr. Cathy himself could envision would result in the most respected fast-food business in the world. Are you kidding me - $2.9 billion in sales last year!

Mr. Cathy has a lot to do with why I eat there. He has college scholarship programs for his young employees and constantly thinks of ways to make the working experience “better” for his army of ants. His Christian principles I adore, which is why not one of his locations is open on Sunday, and his books should be required reading at every college that offers an MBA program.

Better than that, he made headlines across the nation a few years ago when he asked a judge if he could talk to several young girls who had just vandalized his beach house. He talked to them like a grandfather would and then worked a deal where, instead of the courts punishing the children, those kids would send him weekly book reports.

Don’t you get it? These girls wrecked his home – the damage in excess of $30,000 – and he said he’d handle that if the girls would read “good books” and send him proof they had read them. He wasn’t interested in a punishment as much as turning some precious lives around.

Today he is one of the richest men in the country – or the world, for that matter – and Chik-fil-A is still a family-owned, privately-held company. But what he has done for literally thousands of young people is more extraordinary and he alone is a big part of why I drive as far as I do for lunch.

Earlier this week I finally let a guy named Matt carry my tray, gather my ketchup, give me extra crackers for my soup (it’s awesome) and as I sat down he asked me if I would like to fill out a customer comment card. I detest any kind of survey and such, but Matt had almost tripped over himself for me so I said, “I’m going to do it!”

Matt looked at my brace and, being a quick thinker, asked if it would be hard for me to write. I said it would, but I could handle it if I’d take my time. “I’ll do it for you!” he blurted so, as I tried to stifle a laugh, my man Matt knelt down beside the table and filled out my customer-comment card. I told him to put down that “Matt was the greatest!” and – bless his heart – he did just that.

Not three minutes later, as I wrestled with enough ketchup packets to make a pile befitting my waffle fries, an Hispanic lady – wearing her black-ant uniform – came over to ask if she could help since she could see my fingers weren’t as nimble as hers might have been. But, no, I waved her off, thanking her just the same, and she smiled sweetly before saying, “It’s my pleasure.”

As I ate my lunch, thinking how dumb “It’s my pleasure” must sound to a whole lot of people, it dawned on me that “my pleasure” is precisely why I eat at Chik-fil-A at least three times a week. Kindness doesn’t cost Mr. Cathy’s company a dime – not a penny on the spread sheet – yet he and his army have found it sells like nothing else in the world. And Chik-fil-A can prove it.

I just love that kind of thinking.

royexum@aol.com