Dairy Queen Manager Joey Prusak Becomes Online Sensation After Act Of Kindness To A Blind Man

A Dairy Queen employee in the U.S. is getting global recognition after courageously defending a blind man from an opportunist. Joey Prusak, the 19-year-old manager of the ice cream chain in Minnesota, is gaining Internet fame after his story went viral on Reddit.

Prusak, who has been working at the store since he was 14, was “shocked” and “sickened” on September 10 when he was an elderly woman take advantage of a blind man.

He recounted that when one of the store’s frequent customers, a visually impaired man, took his wallet to pay for his purchases on Tuesday, a $20 bill slipped out of his pocket.

“Right then and there I knew when he dropped that $20 bill, game’s over, he’s not going to know,” he explained to kare11.com. “He just kept walking and that’s when the lady picked it up and I thought, she’s going to give it back ‘cause she picked it up so quickly.”

But the lady did not give the bill back to the blind man. Instead, she put it in her own purse.

When she reached the counter to order, Prusak politely asked her to return the money to the other man, but the woman refused to do so.

“She walked up to the counter and I asked her to please return the $20 bill to the gentleman. She looked at me like ‘what are you talking about,’” he told TheBlaze.com. “I asked her again to return it and she said, ‘”no, it’s mine I just dropped it.’ I told her I’m not going to serve you if you are going to be disrespectful as you are stealing someone’s money like that.”

He continued, “She started getting really angry... started swearing and whatnot. I stayed relatively calm. I deal with customers on a daily basis. She kept swearing, though, and I asked her to leave the store. I told her if you aren’t going to return the money, you need to leave right now.”

The woman then “stormed out.”

It’s what Prusak did next that was out of the ordinary and had earned the respect of the other customers who witnessed the exchange.

One customer who was in the store that day wrote to the owners, commending Prusak for his kind gesture.

“What happened next I would have never expected. Your employee approached the young man and took out his wallet, and said, ‘Sir on behalf of Dairy Queen I would like to give you the $20 that you happened to drop on the ground as you walked away from the counter. I realise that this is not the $20 bill that you dropped because the older woman stole it but it does still have the same face value.’

“The gentleman began to thank your employee for taking his own personal money and giving it to the blind man. I was in shock by the generosity that your employee had, taking his own money out of his own wallet to give to the customer because some other lady decided to steal something that wasn’t hers.”

The email was posted on Reddit, which allowed it to become viral.

Prusak is now being hailed as a hero, and has been contacted by numerous news stations and Web sites for an interview. People also lined up in the store to personally thank him for his actions, and even his boss called him the “type of man I’m proud to know.”

But for the humble employee, he didn’t do anything heroic because he was just doing his job.

“I felt it wasn’t right that he got ripped off by someone like that lady,” he told TheBlaze.com. “It just wasn’t a right situation, you know?”