A husband and wife in Portland, Maine, served as anonymous Secret Santas as they paid off $10,000 in layaway orders for other families. WGME-TV reports that the couple is local but that they chose to remain anonymous with regards to their generous payment at the South Portland store.
Store manager Jay Roes says the money will be enough to pay off the balance on about 100 layaway accounts. The kind gift from the anonymous married couple will help make Christmas more affordable for dozens of families in the area. The total layaway balance remains around $25,000.
Store customers placed $35,000 worth of goods on layaway, which allows these customers to pay off a portion of the cost of their purchases every two weeks. A customer using layaway will typically set aside several hundreds of dollars in purchases, Roes said.
How did the generous gift get disbursed? Roes explained that the store applied the donated money toward accounts that had been on layaway for the longest time. Only a couple of customers whose accounts were paid off had learned of the couple’s generosity.
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Despite that cheerful news, there is always the ugly side of the company’s recent dealings. Toys “R” Us has won approval to pay $16 million in bonuses to 17 top executives if the company hits financial targets during the holiday shopping season, according to CNN Money.
Bankruptcy court trustee Judy Robbins who represents the interest of creditors had argued that the proposed bonuses were excessive and were little more than retention bonuses meant to keep the executives from jumping ship due to uncertainty about the company’s future.
What did you think of the Secret Santas’ special gift for Maine customers at a Toys R Us? Have you heard similar stories this holiday season? Let us know in the comments section.
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