Hello, Fam!!!!!
It’s been a while, no?
Once again I learned a little about myself and decided to post about it 5 years after my last post. Disclaimer: this is a dumb story. Read at the
peril of your brain cells.
I don’t love coffee.
I wouldn’t choose it over other items in a café typically. I’ve been known
to occasionally take a coffee with honey and milk if I know a tea is going to
disappoint me. Generally the world doesn’t end, no big deal.
This is going to sound like a story about coffee. As usual, it’s not about the coffee J
Sunday morning I was going into work. I needed to do some
confidential stuff in a room off of the sales floor, so I decided to use a gift
card given to me very thoughtfully by a coworker for my birthday that had been
sitting in my bag unused ever since. Logically,
since I hate coffee, I order tea or pink drinks or oatmeal at Starbucks (did
you know Starbucks has oatmeal? It’s
steel cut…mmmmm).
Anywho, in this time of my life where budget is king,
treating yourself is usually something from a gas station or getting ice at a
fountain machine for your boring water, you know how it is. This particular day I planned on a London fog latte (if you don’t know what that is, it’s Earl Grey tea with steamed milk and
syrup, in my case oatmilk and brown sugar syrup or honey) and an oatmeal with
agave syrup and fresh blueberries (so decadent, don’t you think?).
I ordered, I paid, I went to work. I sat down for my task and took my first sip
and it was...coffee. A Coffee latte with
regular dairy milk and 2 earl grey teabags.
I’m sure I’ve been more disappointed and appalled in my life, but I can’t
think of an experience similar to the disgust that encroached on my
morning. Instantly I thought of baristas
getting yelled at by patrons for not getting extremely specific orders perfect
or taking too long and thought, “what’s the point? Maybe the tea will flavor
the coffee (it didn’t). I should drink
this out of spite, since it is paid for (I didn’t even pay for it). I’ve already left, there’s no point in going
back…” on and on it went for over 3 hours where I took a sip, cringed, waited
10 minutes and repeated. I complained, loudly, to anyone who would listen, about
my terrible luck. People told me to go
back, even after I got home, get a refund, get a credit, they will make it right. Sorry, I work in customer service and…it wasn’t
happening that day. If you are unaware,
this is a textbook first world problem, and also a Midwestern rule where you
take your lumps and move on without inconveniencing anyone other than yourself
and a few unlucky listeners with no intention of a solution.
I got home, agitated and jittery, never tasting the tea
(perhaps you are aware of how aggressive Starbucks’ coffee is? I haven’t had it in years). The rest of the day I spent annoyed, tapping my
fingers, trying to drink water and stay busy.
In short it was a loss. A loss of
time, joy, money (sorta), and trust in my favorite drink. A total loss.
And 100% mine. My spite resulted
in a day I was forced to try and salvage (thanks to a generally pleasant
disposition, given to me by...I dunno, Jane Austen?). A LITERAL DAY.
Today (Tuesday) I went back to redeem my love of the London fog
(it’s been 2 days. I figured I needed to do this sooner than later). I still had $14 on my gift card, why not? I
saddled up to the SAME Starbucks, even though there are 3 in the same ½ mile. I ordered the latte. I begged for it not to have coffee in it. The intercom voice said, “there’s no coffee
in a London Fog” and it was enough to undo all the gratitude I had previously conjured
to talk myself into functioning for the whole day. I said, somewhat snappily (there is a
different scale of snappiness that all service people use, ask my niece), “Well
there WAS on SUNDAY!” Now why did I do that? That voice wasn’t there on Sunday.
It’s 6am on a Tuesday. Does she need this
energy? I pulled myself together and
pulled up to the window to pay. My gift
card had 0 balance. The poor girl of
maybe 16 had to tell me so. How is this
possible? It’s not even Wednesday! I argued; after all, I knew it was $25 and I
only spent 11. She offered to show me the screen, but I had to believe her. I huffily said, “that’s 2 screw ups on Sunday
then” like she had any idea what I was talking about. I asked for the gift card
back so I could reload it and paid, I went to work (it should be noted that for
ME, this is a real explosion, but for her, it wasn’t really that bad on the
service worker scale). This does fall
under Minnesota Nice, by the way.
Passive aggressive comments regarding a previous experience that has
nothing to do with the current experience but not attacking someone outright. Just quiet (sorta) judgment and displeasure
because you couldn’t just move on.
The drink was well made. It had oatmilk and brown sugar
syrup. The tea bag tags were even tucked
under the cardboard cozy. All that stress over nothing. Well not nothing, I had the gift card to deal
with, but I had imagined a scenario where I was let down again when it was just
a normal Tuesday at 6am. Does this make
sense? What’s that saying? Fear sees a threat, anxiety imagines
one? All anger comes from frustrated
expectations, that kind of thing.
This story does continue, but it gets VERY Midwestern, so if
you just want the lesson I learned it is this: Doing something out of spite
only poisons YOU. Nobody cares (remember
that gem from old blogs?). Nobody is
affected but YOU, and you spend the rest of your time trying to climb out of
the hole you made because you decided to “settle” for lack of a better word,
and not waste something that was trash anyway.
I mean who puts tea in coffee (don’t come at me with a dirty chai,
because that’s not tea, that’s just concentrate. This whole thing has put me in a pedantic
mood. Side note for another blog, I can’t
only do 1 space after periods; it’s wrong and my muscle memory won’t allow it,
so I’m going to stop trying to be in this century, K?)????? What gain could you get from putting tea bags
in coffee?
I got to work and the first person I saw was the coworker
who gave me the gift card. Stupidly (knowing this could lead to Midwestern etiquette
problems) I asked him how much was on the card when he gave it to me, and he
said $25. Ok, I thought so, but I could
only check the balance, not see the transactions (fail, Starbucks). His had flew to his mouth and he said, “I
know what happened.” Then he didn’t speak again for…I dunno, seconds. Long enough that a Midwesterner would be
tortured by the suspense, but wouldn’t ask what is wrong. It gives no closure to the situation or the
feelings, but doesn’t release one from the conversation. He pulled out a $20,
and said, “I need you to take this.”
Well now I’ve got another problem, because I already spent $11 out of
$25, and now I would be “netting” $31 when that’s not fair. I told him I was grateful for the gift and I
used it, I couldn’t take more.
This is what is called a Midwestern Standoff. No one has done anything wrong, but all action
taken now rests on who is more embarrassed and is more convincing that the
other deserves satisfaction.
He said, “I really need you to take this” and was beating himself
up so much that I told him I could see this was really eating at him so I would
take it, under duress, but I really didn’t want to (both of us doing something
just to make the other one feel better is about as Midwestern as it gets around
here). This part took a good 6 minutes
also. Turns out he didn’t buy the gift card at a store, but he put money on it
with his app. When I used the card, he
got a notification that someone had used it, assumed it was fraud (didn’t think
a gift card he gave away would be in his account because why would it) and
reported it and got all of his money back, then promptly removed it to a safer
card. Additionally, he had shared his
rewards info with one of his team members for a coffee run (you fly, I’ll buy scenario)
and thought maybe they had helped themselves, so he asked them about it on Sunday,
which is also a big deal to a Midwesterner.
They of course denied any wrongdoing and said they would have ordered a
pink drink (which I almost had, funnily enough) and NEVER oatmeal. Who gets oatmeal at Starbucks??? Me. I do.
That me. How ironic that had their
conversation escalated to an HR issue, that also would have been me? But again, Midwesterners; no good way to
bring this to HR.
When my boss came in later (still today, Tuesday), he was complaining
that he ruined his coffee at home with too much creamer and didn’t want to make
more. I filled him in on part 2 of this
story, since he was there Sunday for part 1.
Before I could even finish, he crossed his arms and said, “Are you the
great oatmeal thief from Sunday?” My
mouth gaped open. He had been the sole
witness to all sides of this story on Sunday in real time. Isn’t that fun? This story is so stupid, but I did realize
that I punished myself for no reason just because I was not wanting to be
wasteful. What did I want the Tuesday team to do? Just give me free stuff and a
new gift card? I think I did. That’s a
10/10 on the ridiculous scale in the service industry. This is the entitlement that I don’t want to
serve; why did I decide a 16 year old who is only the face of the place on a
completely different day needed to go above and beyond for me when I didn’t
even ask nicely or expect a good result? I know that niceness gets me more than
the bare minimum and entitlement gets me exactly the lowest of what they can
even offer, that’s how I treat service as well.
Come on, Elle, a little self preservation, please.
I don’t know what happened with the other TM. Perhaps he gave them $20 as well J Poor guy always celebrates the team out of his
own pocket, is amazingly generous, and still gets stuck paying more for (probably)
the same reason I got stuck with a coffee tea latte. I’ll have to figure out something to get him
with it; he doesn’t like sweets much, but that’s what Midwesterners do best ;)
theirs (my other favorites are TUNES with Steve Martin, but I digress), and they sang it as an encore when they were at the Dakota Jazz Club last October, but I couldn't sing along because they adlibbed the words. The storm had just swung through Asheville, where they are from, and they were still out on the road raising money for their community and supporting their families. One of them has a B&B and a Minnesota family had rented it and stayed in it while they rode out the storm and they thought that was pretty cool. Both the band and the family, apparently :) Here's a little clip of the ad lib about staying at the B&B.
Here's a photo of that night also (Totally unrelated to this post, except finding sweet spots). You may note, as I did, the Markham Bricks on the wall, made and shipped from Traverse City, MI.
If you wanna go down a Steep Canyon/hurricane Helene rabbit hole, they were workshopping a new song about the flood and they shared with with us. Don't know if they ever published it, but at the time of this show, our friend, Reed, was down there cleaning up and replacing the electrical poles and such for a grueling 18 day run. That storm affected an awful lot of people in an awful lot of places, but Asheville was really hurting at the time.
