Yes, absolutely. The other day I was trying to be super friendly and make small talk with one lady that everyone literally runs and hides from, and she ended up talking about her autistic son. It just made her seem more human and someone close to my heart has autism, so we kind of bonded over that, and now I have a different opinion on her. Some difficult people will never get there, but this makes me dislike some of those customers less. Except our residential Karen. She is satan.

yes, we have a regular who comes in every day and orders a 5 pump mocha frap double blended. a couple of days ago i handed her her drink, she asked if it was double blended, i told her it was, she said it “looked wrong” so i started to put it back in the blender to blend it again. she told me to just make it from scratch (note that the whole time she kept calling me “honey” in a condescending tone, mmmmMMMM). we were getting a little busy at this point and she ended up having us (one of my partners had to take over bc i was too busy) remake it FOUR TIMES(!!!!!)
then she came in today, said the drink she mobile ordered “wasn’t dark enough” (????) and stopped me in the middle of making her frappucino because “she could tell it was wrong too” (she hadn’t been watching me or anything, and i definitely hadn’t done anything wrong, but ok)
every time she comes in it puts a bummer on my day, it shouldn’t be this hard to make a satisfying frappucino lmao, if you can “see that i’m doing it wrong” please come make it yourself!!

I came up with the term "Grumpy Santa" to describe that particular type of guy who is sorta brusque and hard of hearing. They just want hot black coffee. They don't like small talk. They have a lot of bad days. I love Grumpy Santa.

I see a regular at the gym and we avoid each other at all cost lol it’s so awkward

I have a regular that will not allow new baristas to make her drink, and is so picky about it. Customers can't demand who makes their drink, what if there was an entire floor of new baristas, and a shift from another store covering? There has to be equal opportunity for baristas to grow, and a customer doesn't have the right to pick and choose who make's their drink. I have never personally had an issue with her, because I have accepted my role in the service industry (and I make bomb ass drinks), but that doesn't give her the right to verbally abuse and dehumanize the baristas I have personally trained. They are like my children, and one day a shift stood up to her. This resulted in her getting a drink remake from that shift, a refund, and a 'next one's on us' when she called the DM. I am the opposite of most; I am a shift now, and I will stand to the plate, and make hee drink because I refuse to let her treat my baristas like that. I would rather make her drink personally, and take any shit she has to deal out rather than to have her deface my baristas, and get my DM involved.

one customer in particular is such an A-hole. Once he made me remake a java chip frappuccino entirely bc i forgot to put chocolate drizzle on top of the whip cream. last christmas when we gave away the “red cups” he called corporate three, yes THREE, times bc there was only a select amount to give away and
he didn’t come into to the store until the afternoon.

This woman comes through drive every morning and she never responds when you ask her anything at window, like if she wants a receipt or straw, etc. It was so cold the other morning, so I turned off the fan and proceeded to ask her again if she wanted a straw with her drink. She responded immediately. I then said,
“ this thing is so loud I can never hear anything anyone says, that and I’m hard of hearing in one ear”. She said, “ I’m partially deaf in one ear too!” And it made total sense that she wouldn’t respond when people asked her things-the fan, the traffic outside, etc- all mixed together made it hard for her to hear us. After that, she and I talk every time she comes in, and the people I work with can’t seem to understand why I’m so nice to her, still.
You don’t know what’s going on with people unless you ask. We bonded over our shared hearing issues. I’m literally the only barista on my store that bothered to get to know her, instead of calling her a “bitch” like everyone else in my store does.

A lot of my coworkers don’t like this one old guy, but I found out he’s part of the Boy Scouts and I am one on my way to Eagle, so that’s a thing we share and he wants to be on my Eagle Board of Review

Thats so crazy I was just thinking about that today.

I'm a green bean and I just had my first really awful customer, he exploded cause I clicked the wrong button on the POS. (he got a full refund)

He demanded 50 stars to be put on his card for me wasting his time. 0-0

He's a regular, I wanna hide :l

It's not really because they're unpleasant, but this one guy is deaf. I've learned his drink now, but as a green bean it was super hard to understand him and he'd get agitated. It wasn't intentional obviously, I've just never had to deal with a deaf person before. Sometimes if he changes it up it's hard to deal with but I don't really dread him anymore

There is one man who’s banned from our store and he tries to come in every once in a while... I never know what to do

We have one who mobile orders but has the drink rang in wrong and won’t change it on her app. She makes you remake it every time she comes in because it isn’t “hot enough” at extra hot if it’s been sitting them for 5 seconds. During the summer she orders a white tea with light ice, all of the berries, strawberry purée, no water and if you put more than 5 ice cubes in it she calls you stupid and makes you remake the drink and causes a scene in the lobby. We have had other customers tell us they’re sorry for having to deal with her. She gets free drinks constantly because it’s never right

“THIS IS RHONDA, I’M HERE FOR MY MOBILE ORDER” 😪

I’m in a different retail environment but yeah, we have a few ornery men who are just going through the ringer health-wise and we’ve seen them upset to the point where they berate us.

One is dying from cancer, the other just has a ton of health issues and we’ve heard it all. They always come back to apologize but I’m going to miss them when I leave, I’ve seen them on their better days and they are just as happy as can be but on those bad days, man.

We have someone who comes in pretty much daily, she calls us her hunnies and would hit on the other guys working and often would hit on others in the lobby, very weird and kinda inappropriate with how far it’s gotten....just smile and wave

If we are slow enough, we have baristas who actually do hide. Or get off the window for the transaction. I work extremely part time now so its not an every day aggravation for me so I don't mind. I feel for my teammates who deal with these monsters every day. I don't understand how people wake up and go out into the world to spread hate and anger. They are the real life internet trolls

We have a regular who has a slightly complicated drink (intimidating for a new barista but not really that hard) and she will only let one particular barista make it. If that barista isn’t there, the customer whines and generally ends up returning the drink and bitching for a refund.

We have another regular who gets a caramel frap no topping. Super simple and easy right? She ALWAYS comes around and asks for it to be remade by someone else. I hate it.

Yes! We are servers not slaves. I have some one who orders a venti iced tea and a trenta iced tea. The venti must have 7 Equals and the trenta 8 Equals. She bosses mercilessly. Put another 4 ice-cubes in. Its too strong. Its too weak. Then she will say in a stage whisper 'I don't want her making my tea.' I bend over backwards to make her happy but never can. I even give her little sample cups so she can taste test her tea. This is abuse.

WTF.

Yeah we had this racist transphobic guy who came in several times a day and it stressed me out more and more as I got further into my transition. Luckily he never noticed I'm trans. But yeah apparently he spat at one of my trans coworkers before I started, and he would always loudly mispronounce my coworker's name on purpose to be Abdul (his name ain't fuckin' Abdul).

Yessss omg this is the worst bc it’ll always happen when I’ve been having an especially great shift. This woman comes in and orders her beverage and drinks like 80% of it and then says it tastes wrong and demands a remake and like we can’t say no bc we gotta make the moment right, right? Anyway I saw her coming in the other night with two young children in tow and then another woman who I can only assume was the mother of the children. Lemme tell you. This mother. Was. The. Worst. She had a complicated drink which I didn’t mind at all bc she ordered it the way she wanted it at POS. That’s fine with me but then she complained bc there was “froth” on her kid’s vanilla steamer. I brought up how we steam the milk to lead up to her possibly asking for no foam next time just so we can all get what we want but she was not having it. She stopped listening after I explained milk steaming and just assumed I was being a jerk and squawked “I nEvEr HaD tHiS pRoBlEm BeFoRe”. Well lady, you’re creating a problem in the moment. Anyway I just said okay to avoid further rudeness and ignorance but did that diffuse the situation? No. She just kept trying to argue with me and all I said to her was okay bc I love working at my store and would much rather not let loose a torrent of how people should be treated when it’ll fall on deaf ears. She said a number of other things that I don’t care to type out due to her ignorance and sheer lack of common decency, but essentially it was the second worst interaction I’ve had while working there. And yes, I will remember this so I can hold back the foam next time. Someday her kids are gonna talk to her with that kinda disrespect and she’s gonna be flabbergasted asking where the heck they got it from.