Blog # 4: My pet peeve

Everyone has something that just irritates them to no end. Whether it is sloppiness, rudeness, carelessness, or even bumper stickers, not following the driving rules, using the same word over and over again, or double dipping. Whatever your specific “pet peeve” is, everyone has something that annoys them to no end.
My all time high pet peeve is rudeness; especially at a public place where someone is trying to give you great customer service. I work at Starbucks Coffee as a barista and attempt to create the best possible customer service to everyone. I have been employed in customer service jobs for the past four years of my life. Being rude to paying customers is not in my vocabulary. However, when a customer is being rude to an employee it is extremely difficult to maintain that customer satisfaction. There is no excuse for being rude and thousands of people live their life as being disrespectful everyday to whom they come into contact with.
It all started around 9:00 am on an average busy day at Starbucks. I recently got back to work from my thirty minute lunch break and had to immediately snap into action. I was forced to do the drive-thru window which consisted of taking orders over the headset, taking money at the window, and handing out all scrumptious beverages and tasty pastries to our awaiting customers inside their warm and cozy vehicle. As I was carefully passing out the grande size coffee with cream to this woman I have never seen before she immediately gave it back to me and assured me there wasn’t enough cream in her coffee. Trying to make this customer feel extra special I nicely put in some extra cream for this lady who wore square black glasses and had dark brown dread locks as her hair style. She was an interesting woman and at first she seemed like an average impolite customer we see each and every day. As I was returning the newly handcrafted beverage to the lady holding up our drive thru line, she gave me a look of discomfort. She immediately started getting more offensive with me stating that her coffee tasted and had a distinct odor like perfume. She obviously saw me add the extra cream to her coffee because I did it right in front of her plain looking face. She handed the beverage back to me once again and I dumped out the coffee. I grabbed a brand new cup of joe from a completely different coffee pot, added some cream from a different container, and even put the coffee with cream in a new cup. I handed her drink out thinking this was the last time I was going to have to deal with this vulgar woman. To my surprise she didn’t drive off! She gave me this look like she wanted to kill me, but secretly the feeling was mutual. I then opened the window again receiving very offensive language from this devil woman. She commented very rudely how she did not want me to serve her coffee and to have someone else give her the coffee. She kept saying her coffee smelt and tasted like perfume. I wondered how because I obviously wasn’t wearing any. The only way she could smell an odor of perfume was if she was receiving the smell off of my wrist from my hand lotion I put on while on my lunch break. This woman was a poor excuse of a human being. She had no right to treat me like a child. I was trying my hardest to give her the best experience here at Starbucks, but she ruined that when she accused me of wearing perfume making her drink taste like I purposely added perfume into her grande cup of joe.
I was extremely sick of dealing with this insulting woman so I grabbed another coworker of mine and informed her of this ridiculous situation with the barbarian waiting at the window to receive her new cup of coffee from a different barista. My coworker nicely accepted the challenge and gave this woman a cup of coffee. While the monster was still holding up our drive thru line she slowly smelled every inch of that grande cup to make sure it didn’t have a perfume odor. She tasted the coffee and gurgled it in her dirty mouth. After holding up our drive thru for approximately 5 minutes she sped off like she was on a mission.
Our drive thru line was out to the street of Central. The next lady that pulled to our window had an angry look on her round face. I quickly explained the situation to her and she was nice enough to accept my apology.
After the rush finally came to a hault I went to the back to relieve some tension in my head. The dread locked lady had seriously ruined my entire day. I wanted to let out a long scream of relief. There is no reason to be rude to someone! Some people are just naturally snobby and that makes me so angry. I am even very polite to people at Mcdolands because they deserve politeness just as much as the customer does.
Like I said before, everyone has something that really grinds their gears, mine is unfortunately something I have to deal with on a daily basis, rudeness. What is your pet peeve? If you can’t possibly figure out what your pet peeve is, I am sure you can look one up at http://www.thesocialcentre.com/101-pet-peeves/