Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Rude customer of the month award

Customer comes in. I was actually in a pretty light-hearted mood for my first day back from holiday. I greeted her with a smile, as I always do, and said, "Hi, there! What can I get for you?" Not smiling or greeting me she says, "I want a coffee." Still smiling I say, "Ok, what size?" Rolling her eyes, shaking her head, and flailing her arms about (clearly this is a tough question) she says, "I don't know! Small!" STILL smiling I say, "Ok, a small drip?" (No, I wasn't calling her that) She says, "Yeah, an americano." For those of you who are not coffee drinkers or those of you who only have YOUR drink and don't know what else exists, an americano is espresso with hot water. So I say, "Oh, you would like an americano?" This is appearantly too much for the customer because she begins convulsing and saying, "Whatever, whatever! I just want coffee! What is it you are talking about!? Just give me coffee!" Uh-oh, I have one more question for her and I am not sure she can handle it. "Are you sitting in or taking away?" She screams at me, "Taking away!" So I give a look to the girl on till and proceed to take a tall cup over to the columbia shuttle (drip coffee).

I start to get the coffee. I hear a customer come in and she greets the rude customer by name. I recognise her voice as tall-single-shot-black-americano-in-a-grande-cup-and-skinny-blueberr-muffin (Yes, that is how we know our customers). After a moment I hear Maria say, "Which kind of muffin?" And she stares Maria down and litterally screams, "I SAID A SKIIIIINNY ONNNNE!" So I stop what I am doing and stare her down. Maria very politely says, "Which kind of skinny one?" and actually starts to list them. She said blueberry so Maria goes to get it. I am still staring at her and she looks at me, then quickly looks down. I am tired of being treated like crap and I am trying to think of what to say to her. Maria is flustered and grabs a plate to put the muffin on. Rude customer is about to pull her hair out and hisses "I SAID I am TAKING AWAY!" Regular customer and I make eye contact and she looks a bit bewildered. She talks to rude customer. Rude customer says she is having a bad morning. This is my cue. I bring her coffee over to her (not including the addition of saliva that I wanted to make) and say, "You ought not to take it out on us. We are just trying to get you what it is you are wanting." She shouts at me saying that she just wanted a skinny muffin. I say that we have several skinny muffins. And she declares herself the winner of this battle by wobbling her head around and shouts, "WELL, I didn't know THAT!!" and turns to regular customer.

1 comment:

ErinOrtlund said...

Wow--sounds like a person who is mentally unstable. I can't believe someone could be that rude!