Thanks for the coffee, Stanley Tucci. The next one's on me.

In the first episode of Stanley Tucci's new show Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy on CNN, the actor traveled to Naples. He and his crew somehow managed to find a time to film during the pandemic when a lockdown wasn't in place throughout the country. 

During the show, Tucci visited restaurants and the farms that supply them, explored how food sustained people in an impoverished area of the city, sampled food, and talked - most frequently in Italian - to people. One of the people Tucci spoke with was the local head of police. As they were talking, they approached a coffee stand where the policeman ordered "due caffe e un caffe sospeso" which translates to "two coffees and a suspended coffee."

The tradition of the suspended coffee, where a customer pays for one more coffee than he or she plans to consume reportedly began in Naples ages ago. It was seen as a charitable act by those who could afford to pay for a coffee now that could be claimed later by someone who couldn't afford a cup. The person simply approaches the coffee seller and asks if he or she has any sospeso available. If it is, it's poured without charge.

Why can't caffe sospeso or anything else "sospeso" become a local tradition in our own neighborhoods whether we live in a big city,  a small town or a village?

Occasionally, local news stories in the United States pick up random acts of similar kindness after someone in a drive-through coffee line pays ahead for the next person in line. But that's a bit different, of course. Those people presumably could have afforded to pay for their own coffee or they wouldn't have queued up in the first place. It's an act of kindness, to be sure. But the Neapolitan tradition, which has spread to other countries, has as its core mission the effort to provide a bit of support for those who might be in need.

I've written before about efforts like the Boston Community Fridge where neighbors donate food to various refrigerators and pantries open round the clock in various parts of the city. Anyone who needs food can pick from whatever's available whenever they arrive. There are also restaurants that have begun to provide meals at deep discounts to customers if food is left over at closing time. Customers call ahead or use an app to see what's available and the restaurant avoids wasting any food while providing good food well below the typical price. Other similar efforts exist.

But the caffe sospeso tradition seems something different. It seems like more of a mindset. It's the idea that if I'm doing OK, wouldn't it be nice to do something for someone who might not be quite as OK?

Granted, we would need to trust the merchants to keep track of the sospeso availability, but that hardly seems too much to ask. If my local hardware store can track the loyalty points it gives me for every purchase, I'm hopeful it could track me buying one hammer and one "hammer sospeso" for someone who might need it. Perhaps there's an app waiting to be built for that.

Whether it's coffee, groceries, fuel, clothing, hardware or whatever you choose, if every once in a while we embraced our good fortune by spreading it around, that would seem a good and right thing to do. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin. 

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