Birthday cake decorated by autistic employee goes viral

GAINES TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- Kindness is important.

That's the moral of the story, Lisa Aldrich wrote on Facebook after she ordered a cake from a local grocery store and learned the employee who decorated the cake was autistic.  Her heartwarming Facebook post has gone viral, and has been shared almost 90,000 times on Facebook.

The cake reads "Happy Birthday Mandy," and was purchased at Meijer in Gaines Township. Aldrich posted a photo of the treat on Saturday and wrote that she asked an employee whom she thought worked in the bakery department to write on the cake.

The woman said "yes."

"... After a long time, she came and presented me with this cake. I looked her In the eye and said, 'Thank you," before I even looked at the cake," Aldrich wrote in the Nov. 29 post. "After looking, I nervously laughed and headed to check out. It didn't really matter to me that it looked so bad. I thought people would think it was funny."

While checking out, Aldrich was approached by several cashiers and a manager wanting to have a look at the cake.

"To my surprise, after they discussed it, one cashier put her arm on my shoulder and said, 'The girl who wrote that has Autism. Thank you for smiling and thanking her. Even though she's not supposed to write on cakes, you probably made her day,'" Aldrich wrote.

Follow @akrietz on Twitter.