For all the bad customers we have, there are some great ones too. Today our printer kept printing duplicate stickers, so by the time we realized it, we had already made extra drinks. We gave them out to customers in DT.

A couple people were like “cool thanks.” -__-
But one guy, who didn’t come off as particularly friendly when ordering, ended up just being a dude going through a hard time. He paid with a gift card and only ordered food, and after I handed him his items I asked, “hey do you want a free pink drink? We made an extra one on accident.” His face lights up and he says yeah, and then proceeds to tell me, “I really needed this today, this made my day. My bank account got hacked and when I woke up this morning all my money was gone.” He proceeded to share with me what a terrible feeling it was that he felt when he saw his empty account, and how happy the free drink made him. He had just gotten back from the bank and probably stopped by Starbucks with his gift card as a way to lighten up his day. I was so happy that I asked him if he wanted a free drink. It cost me nothing, but for him, it probably made his week.

I am not perfect, but I try to remember people like this come through our stores all the time. It’s unfair that a stupid customer should cause us to become jaded against all customers. On a different day, if the guy in front of him was a jerk, maybe I wouldn’t have been so friendly to this dude. Maybe his experience at our store would have made an already bad day a little bit worse. Not because I’d be an outright jerk, but you know, maybe I would have still been seething from the previous customer. I try to live by “every customer gets a clean slate.” Hard to do when we are treated like robots by the company and don’t get enough time to recharge the ol’ social battery, but it’s still something I strive to do. (Again, not perfect, I definitely have my bad/sad days.)

But I just thought I’d share this positive customer story… while we are wearing the green apron at this time in our lives, being underpaid and overworked, there’s still a few little ways we can make our time here count. <3

Feel free to comment with your positive customer stories (: