Starbucks and Real People

I work in the customer service/sales business. I deal with customers by listening to their problems and trying to find solutions, or listening to what they want and giving it to them in exchange from currency. There are a lot of crappy things about that business, not the least of which is being a big phony all the time.

It is my job to be polite and nice. That means that customers who are rude and mean are very difficult to deal with. The majority of being polite is reflexive. Someone does something nice for you, so you say, "Thank you." Someone says, "Thank you," so you say, "You're Welcome." Reflexes, pushing each other's buttons, etc. When someone is being rude and you have to be polite, the reflexes are working against you. You have to quash every instinct and replace it with actions that don't seem to fit. You don't say, "Thank you," when someone says, "Fuck you," normally.

There are, then, two kinds of customers who make the job easy, rather than hard. There are those who are polite themselves, since them being polite is reflexive and easy. There are also those who walk in, tell me what they want to buy, produce money, and leave with the item in question.

Because I don't think anyone likes it when other people make their job harder, I try to make the jobs of those in the service industry easy. I choose to do so in the second way, rather than the first.

In fact, I really don't like polite and friendly exchanges with people who are selling me things. I find them to be dehumanizing. It's all the button pushing. Of course, I'm sure there are people out there who really mean all of those polite things they say, but I'm not one of them, so participating is just faking it, whether I am behind the counter or in front of it. I don't like it when people get to know me as a customer. I order the same kind of tea from Starbucks every morning, but if they ask me if that's what I want before I order it, I will order something else instead, just so that they won't do that again.

The other day, however, I walked into the same starbucks I always go into, and the woman behind the counter said, "Venti Chai Tea?" I said, "No," and ordered something else, prompting the person working the bar to say, "This guy orders different drinks sometimes just to throw us off."

Ever since then I have had a friendly relationship with the people at that Starbucks. Somehow that exchange made me feel like they have gotten to know me, at least a little bit, as a person rather than as a customer. It's very encouraging to experience real interaction coming out of a commerce based relationship.