The Charlotte Observer reported Monday that 22-year-old Ashley Johnson felt slighted after waiting on the couple at Brixx Pizza.

So she blasted the couple on Facebook, calling them cheap and mentioning the restaurant by name.

Brixx officials told Johnson a couple of days later that she was being fired because she violated a company policy banning workers from speaking disparagingly about customers and casting the restaurant in a bad light on a social network.

Johnson says she has apologized to Brixx and is looking for a new job.

Sharon Dierking got a taste of the movement when she pulled up to the window at a Starbucks on U.S. 280 and the barista told her the driver in the car ahead of her had paid for her order. “I was completely dumbfounded, but I was thrilled,” she said. Dierking was last in line that day, but was able to return the kindness to another at a Starbucks in Inverness a few days later. “It makes you feel good and it brightens your day,” she said.

A Starbucks spokeswoman said the Seattle-based company promoted a Cheer Pass program in 2007 to remind customers to spread kindness, but the recent phenomenon is “consumer-driven.” Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of the book “Pay It Forward,” launched the movement in 2000. Hyde wrote the book after two strangers helped her when she was stranded on a California road and her car caught fire. Stacie Elm, a barista at an Alabaster Starbucks, said a line of five cars recently paid it forward. Customers are usually surprised to find out their order is already paid for, she said.

“Most are like, ‘You’re kidding,’” she said.

“There’s no way she should be alive other than a miracle from God,” said Sheriff Mike Byrd of Jackson County, Miss.

Byrd said deputies were looking for Sexton’s husband, Donald Ray Sexton, earlier in the week to give him a document ordering him to stay away from his wife. Court records show he was put on probation for six months on April 9 for domestic violence.

He showed up at their home in rural Jackson County in Southeast Mississippi about 12:10 a.m. Tuesday and confronted his wife as a relative ran next door to call police, the sheriff said.

“She was at her bed, and he shot her right in the head,” Byrd said. “Then he went out on the back porch and shot himself.”

A deputy was greeted by the woman when he arrived minutes after she was shot with the slug from a .380-caliber handgun.

“When the officer got there she said, `What’s going on?’ She was holding a rag on her head and talking. She was conscious, but she was confused about what had happened,” he said. “She had made herself some tea and offered the officer something to drink.”

Byrd said the bullet apparently passed through the lobes of the woman’s brain without causing major damage. She was rushed to a Mobile hospital by a helicopter.

While such cases may be rare, a neurosurgeon who wasn’t involved in Sexton’s case said such an outcome is possible. Medical journals also confirm people have been shot in the head with little or no lasting injury.

“There is a space in the brain where a missile could pass without doing any major damage. Is it possible? Yes. It would be rare,” said Dr. Patrick Pritchard, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Alabama-Birmingham.

The sheriff called the case bizarre.

“You just don’t hear of something like this. Somebody gets shot in the head and they’re dead,” Byrd said.

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By JAY REEVES, Associated Press Writer, Associated Press writer Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this report.

Chadwick said the brother was treated at a medical center for stab wounds in his left arm and shoulder blade. Chadwick quoted Deputy Jairo Rivera as saying the two brothers had been drinking. Rivera said the suspect picked up a kitchen knife after his brother threw a punch at him but missed.

Borisch said an employee of a business that collects and recycles grease under contract with area restaurants had blocked the two with his truck. He told police 1,000 pounds of grease worth about $160 had been drained from a nearby eatery’s grease tank.

The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press said Kind and Tallent are free on bond.

Borisch didn’t immediately return a message asking if the suspects had attorneys.

She showed up on time at 10 a.m. Friday, but during a routine check for weapons at the door, Bailiff George Gordon detected a whiff of alcohol.

Police charged her with DUI Sept. 12 when officers found her parked in the middle of the road and she couldn’t figure how to open her car door. Her blood-alcohol level was .34, well above the legal limit for driving of .08.

Her DUI case was continued to a court date in June.