Dear Major Coffee Chain Customers:

Hi.

I am your friendly neighborhood barista.

I hate you.

Like Hezbollah hates the Jews
Like OJ hates Nicole
Like Child Molesters hate Dateline
Like Sarah Palin hates endin’ words with 'g'
I hate you. 

• If you’re one of the rude peeps who places his/her order with a cell phone to your ear, I give you decaf (unless you actually want decaf).  And I give you whole milk if you ask for nonfat. 


• Sure I can turn the music down so you can hear your cell phone better!  Now all the other customers can hear what an asshat you are.


• ME: “Your total is $4.73.
  BRIGHT-O: “I have the 73 cents, if that helps?
  How the hell is that supposed to help me?  I count change all friggin day! (And I am quite good at it given my college education.) This may surprise your ignorant ass, but waiting for you to dig through an oversized bag to get to your overstuffed wallet to count out the dimes and pennies that I then have to recount, thus preventing me from serving other customers or filling your order does not help.  It would help everyone if you just gave me a 5-spot or a 20-spot and left the change counting to the professionals.  Unlike your disaster of a money-carrying system, our change is pre-sorted in a computerized register to make giving change easy!


• We know the bathroom is dirty and out of toilet paper, and we don’t care.  Animals from all over the city come to public restrooms to do drugs, piss on the floor, steal toilet paper, and have sex.  Maintaining that bathroom gets old quick; I don’t earn enough to give a flip whether or not you had a pleasant urinary experience at our store. 
  
  (Although, I must give you credit for actually attempting to use the toilet.  I’ve witnessed one customer – an eccentric homeless dude who patronized us for our free water – in plain view of the baristas and the customers pull down his pants and drop a deuce on the café floor.  I’ll save other examples of our café’s misplaced bodily fluids – like the "Honey Man" and his masturbatory habits - for another post.)


• Don’t bitch to me about the chain’s “outrageous” prices.  If you don’t like being overcharged by a dollar for a shitty croissant, buy your pastries elsewhere.  I’m not the guy in charge of pricing the pastries, I’m the guy in charge of quoting you the price and processing the sales transaction. 


• Also, I am not in charge of naming the cup sizes.  If you are too “confused” to remember [rhymes with small], [middle sized] and [fancy word for 20 oz], just say small, medium, and large and stop making a big deal out of it.  I’ll understand what you are looking for; I speak English in addition to my fluency in stupid cup-size lingo.


• When you vow to never give this company your business again, KEEEP YOUR PROMISE! We don’t want geniuses like you in our store.


• Here is a message to all the people that get bitchy about having to be asked a second or third time about the type of drink they ordered: it is not, as some of you suggest, that we are incompetent.  It’s that we just don’t give a flying leap about your “large, half-caf, non-fat, 2 ½ pumps of vanilla, mocha”.  “But it’s simple customer service.  It’s your job to remember drinks”, some say.  True enough, but serving coffee isn’t my life.  We have much more important things on our minds than anything that has to do with your self-absorbed bozo ass. For instance: paying rent, sick children at home, finals, where the next meal is coming from, bills, whether or not I caught VD on my recent date night.
  
  I am sure some will reply saying that the customers are not the problem, the problem is the attitude of employees like me.  Wrong: you guys made me this way!  I was nice at first and enthusiastic in the beginning, but there is only so much customer abuse one can take.  It is not hard to walk into a place, politely place your order, pick up YOUR drink** at the counter, smile and say thank you.  Try it sometime and see how much better your service becomes.


• You’re all welcome and have a great rest of the day! :)

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**By “your” drink I mean the one that you ordered.  Don’t pick up a 12oz hot chocolate and say condescendingly, “Uhm, actually, I like ordered a large vanilla latte…?”  If you ordered a vanilla latte, wait for the damn large vanilla latte! I had hoped that it would be obvious that the hot chocolate is not yours…as indicated by the fact that it is a hot chocolate and not a vanilla latte.