I’ll preface this post by saying my Username checks out. Especially at work. I’ll load up with a cold brew and be wired and energetic for an entire shift. 9 times out of 10 I’m placed on Drive Thru (cause I’m charming and talking to people is my shit). I’ll play around in drive thru and have some fun with customers. I’ll sometimes do voices or some other form of stupid joke (“your total comes out to... woah that’s a big number... I can’t count that high.... I dunno just guess when you get to the window”) and it’s led us to getting tons of new regulars and it’s even made me some friends outside of work. In short, I’m a goofball of love at work and practically everyone loves it.

Smash cut to a couple of days ago. I help an older gentleman and his younger female companion and I give them the same level of friendliness and enthusiasm as I give everyone.

“Yeah! Absolutely, buddy! We can get ya that Iced White Mocha! Anything else today?”

“That’ll be all.”

Guy eventually gets to the window and I cash him out, ask him how his day is going and comment on how the rain has at least made things cooler in our area (it’s been a little hot lately where I am). Everything seems normal-ish (the guy and the woman don’t seem too chipper, but hey, some people really don’t fiction without coffee so I get it, doesn’t mean I stop being chipper though) until the guy looks over and asks me “a favor”. I say sure and lean out to make eye contact and show him I’m listening to him and not the people on my headset.

“A little professionalism goes a long way. ‘Bud’, ‘pal’ things like that just [censored] me the [censored] off.”

Naturally I’ve had rude people in my drive thru before, it’s Starbucks, it’s 2020, people are being jerks left and right. So I tell the man to give me a second while I fetch the manager. My shift supervisor goes over and talks to the man for about 2-3 minutes. The entire time this is going on, I’m in the back just losing my mind with laughter. Eventually my shift comes back to me with eyes glazed over and a look of genuine shock on his face.

“He said you were too friendly.”

It was almost like several years of confusion about people and general anger with having to deal with it all just vanished. All the rude interactions I ever experienced in any job ever, all of the negative emotions tied to those memories died because I realized that **happy people aren’t jerks**. Happy people don’t freak out over a $0.60 charge or a lack of product. Happy people don’t yell at cashiers because a coupon doesn’t work. Happy people don’t call customer service and scream at the person on the other end. Happy people don’t do things like that because they’re happy.

So the next time a Karen just loses it because your store is out of cheese danishes, or a guy screams at you because you can’t break a $100, just remember that in all honesty you’re probably happier than they are, don’t let their negativity destroy the positivity that you have.