Tasha Gilley didn’t want to drive home after her staff Christmas party at Lanes at Membertou, a bowling alley on the Membertou First Nation in Cape Breton.

She’d had a few drinks and left her vehicle in the parking lot.

Gilley had to work the following day and wasn’t able to return to the business to retrieve her vehicle until about 24 hours later.

She was expecting her car would either have been ticketed or towed.

Neither happened. Instead, Gilley found a note on her windshield.

She expected the worst.

“Did somebody hit my car and leave me a note? Did Membertou, the Lanes, leave me a bill for leaving my car there all night, or a warning or whatnot?”
    
However, a note from the bowling alley, signed by the customer services manager, thanked her for leaving her car.

“I’m not sure if you had consumed alcohol while enjoying our establishment or not,” wrote Marcella Marshall. “But we wanted to thank you for not drinking and driving.”

The note offered Gilley a $5 discount for her next visit.

“I thought it was the most pleasant surprise,” she said.

Kelsea MacNeil, Membertou’s director of communications, said notes are a recent initiative at the business, which is open late most nights and serves liquor.

“It’s a really small thing — whatever we can do to support people getting home safely, and not to drink and drive.”

MacNeil said Membertou has received lots of “positive feedback” about the notes, especially since Gilley posted about her experience on Facebook.

Post widely shared

Her post has been shared more than 1,600 times.

Gilley said businesses are frequently criticized online for things they do wrong and it’s nice to acknowledge a business that does something positive.

“I just thought people should know. It was awesome.”

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