Re-posted from another forum. Sorry if you’ve already read it; go on to All Your Snakes Are Belong To Us or Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager, Part One or Part Two.
Never come between addicts and their caffeine. Working seven years at *$, I learned this well. They really do believe in the happy, smiley customer service, and it runs deep in that company, but sometimes you just have to say no. Even though it could cost you your job.
One day some eedjut was making fun of us behind the counter.
“I bet your moms are proud of you, pouring coffee for a living, har har!” etc etc, AT LENGTH. He’s treating the whole weekday morning lineup to his hilarious routines, oh god, he is a real Jim Carrey of the Latte, this one. On and on he goes.
Until he gets up to the front, and he says, “Just gimme a big, strong coffee. You aught to be good at that, since that’s all you do with your life.”
At that point I poured the coffee and, without approaching the counter, spun around.
“No,” I said. “You don’t understand. You don’t get this coffee unless I give it to you.”
Pause.
You could have heard a quark drop in that place.
The staff couldn’t believe I’d pull this, and neither could Eedjut here. The customers in line new better than to interfere when a drama was unfolding right before their eyes, so they were silent, too.
“Naw, seriously. You gotta give me the coffee.”
“No, seriously, I don’t.” Pause, during which a dawning realization lit up his face. Would I give up this sale? Yep.
“Who’s in charge? Who’s the manager?”
“I am,” I lied, smoothly.
Pause.
“Oh, okay. I guess I look like a jerk, eh? Sorry, can I please have my coffee?”
Honest to god, he tipped, too.
Once in a lifetime, boys and girls.
Is it relevant to note that during a job review, when it came to the “Interpersonal Communications” section, the manager giving me my review said,
“Given the difference between what you could say and what you do say, I’m giving you ‘outstanding’?”
From the Archive: 
of the gene pool. Mount Pleasant runs south along Main from Dysfunction Junction at Broadway right up to the peak of the Mount itself, which up around King Ed, in Queen E Park. Broadway is actually Ninth avenue and King Ed is twenty-fifth, but nobody calls them that; it would be like calling John Wayne “Marion.” It’s a nice, working-class place with neat little old houses, maybe in need of a coat of paint or two, and big, rambling Victorians with truly elaborate gardens and lowrise apartment buildings full of Filipino immigrants and poor families who all gather on the patio at the cocktail hour for a little ballroom dancing. It’s quite a sight, I tell you; looks like a really, really casual wedding every single night. Jeans and sweats are good enough for most, and some of the youngest have been known to waltz in Speedos, at least when the sprinkler is going on the lawn. The middle-agers are the best dancers, but the expression on their faces makes them look like radio-controlled evil clones or something; lighten up people!
They say if you stand at the door of the Ritz-Carleton long enough you will see everyone on earth pass by. Well I say if you sit at an outside table at the Mount Pleasant Starbucks long enough you will see everyone in the neighborhood at least once, and probably at least one person you haven’t seen in twenty years, no matter where you’re from. It is the centre of the cosmos, at least on a very microcosmetic scale. There I learned all about how Pugs aren’t the snotty little wretches they seem to be; a woman tied her tiny FooFoo to one of the tables and the little critter was so game and friendly that it dragged the table thirty feet around the corner so it could say hi to everyone. Remember, this thing is the size of an ankle boot.
