Today's Mr. Peabody Award goes to...well, I don't know her name, but she was a customer at the Coffee Paradise restaurant in The Plaza where I worked the fourth (and for me, the last) busy day of the busy holiday week. Let's just call her The Dear Lady (TDL). And let's please do understand that I am actually not picking on any particular person. Her name could be legion, for she is many, and not always female. Rather, TDL is representative of a certain category of person, and the story you are about to read is representative of probably a hundred or more similar incidents I've experienced or observed in nearly 22 years in this location.
That said, let me set the stage...
When TDL arrived, at about 10 PM last night, we were finally making progress getting Coffee Paradise cleaned and stocked up after spending most of the previous 7 hours serving a continuous line of customers. N, at 17, and Coffee Paradise's newest member, was manning the counter and making drinks. J, a newly-minted adult hired just a few months ago, was on the other side of The Plaza picking up some stock. I was cleaning and stocking Coffee Paradise's condiment bar.
Presently N took TDL's order. And forgot to give her her change, $3.24. N called me over, and asked me what to do. I said, "No problem. Just take it out of the tip jar, and write down the amount." And I went back to my stocking.
Next thing I know, TDL is indignant, telling N, "No, you don't have to do that, she was rude to ask you to do that, just keep it." WTF?
Then, before I knew it, she was beside my condiment bar, demanding of me, "Are you the manager?"
"No. Is there something I can help you with?"
"That was just rude the way you asked her to do that. Surely you could show her how to get her drawer open?"
"Since I'm not the manager, I don't have the ability to get her drawer open," I explained.
"Well surely there's someone here who could and you could've gone and gotten them?"
Not wanting to continue the unpleasantness, I pointed out, "I was just trying to expedite things for you, ma'am," whereupon I continued my work, and unbelievably, TDL continued discussing The Heinousness Of Me (standing six feet away from me) with a lady who had ordered before her, and who had also been waiting for her drink.
(Now let it be said that in my private life I would be sorely tempted to scatter the teeth of a biatch of this ilk like so many Chiclets upon the sidewalk, but I digress).
Then, after receiving her drink (and $3 from the tip jar), she walked away in dire haste. After she did, I asked N if she was alright, if she had perceived me to be rude, because if she did, I didn't mean to be. N told me she felt awkward because TDL was so upset and attacking me, and it was uncomfortable because N knew that I had chosen an expedient solution to the problem, and TDL acted like I had punished N in some way.
I replied that I might have tried to explain what was what to TDL, but when some people are angry like that, there's no point. They're not listening. They think they are right and that's all they know. Is it traveler's stress, overblown sense of entitlement, or are they control freaks or classists who look at a 50+ year-old server and see a loser they can abuse? Who knows? We just know that such people make what can be a hard job even more difficult.
Well, TDL, here are some free fun facts for you:
1. When I asked N to give you your change out of the tip jar, it was NOT to punish her in some way. The idea was, the next time a customer paid with cash, she would re-pay the tip jar $3.24 out of her drawer, then both her drawer and the tip jar would be square and correct. (The reason I told her to write down the amount). Which happened approximately 15 minutes after you left. We do this all the time, as managers do not always hear us calling on The Plaza's PA system, and are not always able to come over immediately when called. More than 99% of customers understand this at least to some extent, and are grateful. Also, we don't endear ourselves to those who are above us on the food chain if we call them when they are busy, too, to help us with problems we can easily solve ourselves.
2. I called it "the tip jar" both at The Plaza and in this post because it is just that. Not just N's tip jar. When you were our customer, there were, as I mentioned, three of us working at Coffee Paradise. The tips belonged equally to all three of us, so if I ask N to gyp the jar of $3.24, I get gypped, too, unless of course the intention from the beginning is to re-pay the tip jar.
3. I truly have no power to open N's drawer, or anyone else's. This is company policy, which protects all of us. Otherwise, when anyone leaves Coffee Paradise on a meal or bathroom break, or to carry out a duty, what is to stop me from using my magic card to steal money from their drawer? It was a policy set in place to keep us honest, not to make your visit inconvenient.
4. You thought I should have gotten the manager to open N's drawer to give you your $3.24. Really? We are trained to make things expedient for you. Now if the manager had been in the office, then it would have been relatively expedient for you. But it was a busy holiday Saturday. Likely as not, he wasn't in the office. He might have been in one of three coolers. Or the freezer. Or the electrical room. Or the men's room, checking the porter's work. Or in one of the other two stores, helping out or doing manager work. Or he could have been outside in the shed! He legit could have been anywhere. Did you REALLY want to wait for me to go get him? You know what I think? I think if I had gone to get him, and made you wait, THAT would have been "rude" in your eyes. If I'd given you silver, you'd have wanted gold, and if I'd given you gold, you'd have kvetched because it wasn't platinum.
5. You made an excessive scene when we did our best to help you, and in so doing, put an unhappy cap on an already very stressful day; ostensibly you did this in N's defense. Well, I'm sure N will be thinking of you (and not in a good way, as you made her feel awkward and uncomfortable, in her own words) when we have to do this busyness all over again in a few weeks. Thank you for helping me illustrate to N, however, that it is possible to walk away from an unpleasant encounter, even when the provocateur is determined to carry it on ad nauseam just a few feet away from you. That's something she'd have never believed unless she'd seen it with her own eyes.
The fact that you were (deliberately?) obtuse to the above, and not interested in listening or engaging in any syllogism on the matter, but instead were committed to mouth-ahead-of-brain says a lot about you. Just as the fact that I have gone to the lengths of writing a post like this, when I have worked for almost 22 years at The Plaza, and have been largely silent about my job (in more than 11 years of posting on two blogs!), and the folks like you that I run into there, says a lot about my level of frustration with the amount of excrement consumption I must undertake at my job on a weekly basis.
You are not winning this blog's dubious distinction today because the things you did and said are really so unusual, but exactly because they have become commonplace. Pervasive. The customer is always right, aren't they? Even when they don't know jack.
The fact is, that if you were to, God forbid, suffer a sudden reversal of fortune, and come to my Coffee Paradise to work, chances are you would be trained by me (Wouldn't that be fun?! Could you imagine the certification test I would give you?! I'm rubbing my hands together, thinking of it, lol). And if you were, it would take at least two weeks before you would know enough about my job to be certified as a Big-Time Coffee Drink Maker. That means two, maybe three weeks before you could even be left behind the bar alone. And 4-6 weeks before you'd really be confident that you knew how to do 90% of the job 90% of the time. Not to mention understanding the intricacies of The Plaza's foreign-owned corporation, as well as obeying the laws of four different entities, when most folks have only a rudimentary concept of how restaurants really run, evidenced by my having to explain 1-4, above.
So I'd appreciate it if you and your kind would stop telling me all about my job and how to do it, having drawn conclusions on same during, on average, a five-minute visit, Peabody.
(I thank my regular readers for indulging me by allowing me to go on a bit, as they say, for the purpose of edifying a certain segment of the population, not to mention venting).
