Today was a busy day, but I was in a pretty cheerful mood. Although sometimes I really don't feel like dealing with waves of customers, I don't mind it most days - it makes work go by more quickly. All of my customers were nice enough, and there was this middle aged woman that came in that I felt like I was having a very good interaction with. She asked for a drink for herself, then a tall (small) coffee for her mother, with cream and sugar.
At my store, we don't usually dress people's coffee for them. We have a condiment bar with sugar and sweeteners, cream, nonfat and whole milk, and all of those fun little sprinkle toppings. Given that I had a line behind her, I was really hoping she wouldn't mind putting in her own cream and sugar - we don't even HAVE normal sugar behind the line.
"Is it alright if I leave you a little room on top and you can add the cream and sugar? We don't have sugar back here."
That's my normal speech when people ask me to put stuff in their coffee, then I point them to the condiment bar and they go merrily on their way. Before I could point out where the cream and sugar were, some sort of switch flipped in this woman and she went into bitch mode.
"I don't understand why you would charge me for something and sell me something you don't have."
I was so shocked that she abruptly hated me that I'm sure I looked like a deer in the headlights. Maybe she misunderstood. I clarified that we weren't out of coffee and I would just leave her some room, but before I could even finish my sentence, she snapped that she wasn't going to pay for a coffee if we didn't have it the way she wanted it. (Mind, she'd already paid at this point and I assume she was looking for a refund.)
Baffled and thinking that she was not wanting to be charged the same price as someone who'd get their coffee with cream and sugar already in it, I calmly offered to put the cream and sugar in. I had to call to someone to go and grab me sugar because, again, we don't keep it behind the line.
As I was finishing the woman's coffee, she started apologizing profusely and telling me she'd misunderstood. She didn't realize our cream and sugar were at the condiment bar, just a couple of feet away from where she'd paid. Like a good barista, I smiled and assured her it was okay, but... are you kidding me? You didn't realize that because you didn't let me finish two sentences.
She explained herself by telling me her mother was in the hospital and I did my best to sympathize, but it just stuck with me all day. I unfortunately lost my own mother a couple of years ago and thinking back to when she was in the hospital and when she passed away, I have to say that I never, ever took out my anger and frustrations on a stranger. Sure, my friends and even my coworkers might have gotten some misplaced anger thrust on them, but NEVER a stranger.
Because my mother taught me better than that.
I feel bad for being angry with this woman. She was clearly distraught and in a bad situation, but how is that an excuse to flip out over cream and sugar?
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