It was Christmas Eve, and I work at a small café store downtown, not a very busy store by any means. It's winter time in a cold city, anything other than an extra hot drink in the -30⁰C weather is a questionable decision to say the least. So we were opened until 5:30pm Christmas Eve, and the store is absolutely dead, we are working on deep cleaning just myself and two other co-workers. A customer comes in and ordered four Trenta iced coffees, this is a regular customer who is super friendly, I assume they were getting the two extras to have on Christmas Day when we were closed. That order depleted our iced coffee on hand, as we don't tend to sell a lot to begin with and it was around 4pm on Christmas Eve-- not usually a time when having a load of iced coffee on hand is beneficial or necessary. I was the only one on the floor, my shift manager on her break and our other co-worker was cleaning the washrooms. As I mentioned, it was a very slow afternoon. So I take the order of the next customer, and before he orders he puts a dollar in the tip jar. He proceeds to order a Trenta Iced Coffee. I politely inform him that the man directly in front of him had ordered four Trentas, and it would take around 5-10 minutes to make a new batch. I also gave the option of cold brew at a discounted price if he didn't have the time to wait. He declined the offer, and I apologized sincerely. He then proceeded to take the dollar out of the tip jar, and informed me that I had just lost business and it "didn't have to be that way".

I love customers.