Turning a Sows Ear Into a Silk Purse

I was working at a place when a soldier, a lieutenant in the RHLI, walked in. He had two sheets that he wanted me to copy to be a duplex sheet and then laminate.

The sheets described the steps that a platoon would go through to assault an objective. A cheat sheet for mayhem if you will.

The problem with it was that it looked like shit. Cobbled together in PowerPoint, with the lightest colour being 70% black, overlaid with elements in 80%, 90% and 100% black, and luckily a bit of white. It had already been photocopied a bunch of times, was barely discernible, and would only get worse if I copied it again. I expressed my reservations, but he said that was fine, do the best you can.

There were about 18 of these little boxes, each describing the steps required.

I decided to take it home and redraw it. I like the idea of practicing random acts of kindness, I appreciate the military, and he had a tulip stomper last name, so I figured I’d do something nice for him.

When he came in, I kept the old one atop the new one, and pulled it aside to reveal it. 
“Yeah I managed to the adjust the colour a little in the copier.”
The look on his face was priceless. I apologized for the fact that his target had changed from a radar station to a SCUD launcher. (I didn’t want to spend too much time on it, so I just culled an image from clip art. It was all I could find.) I only charged him the cost of two colour copies. In the end he came in with lots of business, and sent others my way, all due to me taking an hour of my time to do something nice.