This Ain't France
The customer is always right. We hear this all of the time. But is it true? Is the customer always right? After spending time on both sides of the counter, I can tell you the answer is definitely no, and nowhere is that more true than in the restaurant business.
Before I was part of the exciting world (okay it’s not always exciting) of film production, I had a series of restaurant jobs that were, somewhat less (okay, a lot, lot, less) exciting. These were not the higher-end, black pants, white shirt kinds of eateries but rather the lower end, jeans and t-shirt type of places.
One of those places was called the Edible Complex. The Edible, as it was known (although I always thought “Complex” would have been a more appropriate name), served coffee drinks, deserts, sandwiches and salads.
It was a great place for people to meet to have coffee, share a meal, or for college students to consume gallons of caffeine while studying.
And it was a magnet for customers who were not only wrong but sometimes awful human beings. These are people who seemingly venture out only to abuse the hapless guy behind the counter of the local coffee shop. Not that I was the hapless guy, I had plenty of haps back then. And as it turned out, so did Glenn. It was Glenn who uttered the words, “You are the rudest woman I’ve ever waited on” after being generally harangued by the newly crowned rudest woman over something world changing like the amount of cream cheese on her bagel. She was dissatisfied and apparently felt that being extra nasty to someone she didn’t know was a terrific solution to her problem. Glenn had stood and taken the abuse at first, but eventually he let loose with what has become my all-time favorite customer rebuke. Too much or too little cream cheese simply does not give one a license to be an asshole.
Glenn, who I should point out was one of the managers, also coined my second favorite line to a customer. He’d just set a beautifully made cappuccino on the counter, only to watch the customer screw up her face in disgust. It was as though he’d handed her a cup of Ebola (although this was the eighties and Ebola was not so much in the news back then). Glenn waited. She looked at the cup, back at Glenn, and then back to the cup, still with her face in obvious dismay. Finally, Glenn asked, “Is something wrong?” “This is not”, sniffed the woman, “how they make it in France.” To be fair, it may not have been how they made it in France so technically this customer may have been right. But the look on her face combined with the snootiness in her tone pushed Glenn over the edge enough to say, “Well this ain’t France lady.” And in fairness to Glenn, it wasn’t.
Lest you think Glenn was the common denominator here, I assure you he was not. I was not immune to customers who were not necessarily wrong but certainly not right either. For example, during the morning hours, the Edible Complex served steamed eggs.
One of the steamers normally used to make coffee drinks was dedicated to steaming eggs for the morning. A steamed egg looks like a scrambled egg. It is not a scrambled egg. Nor is it a fried egg, a poached egg, eggs benedict, eggs over easy or an egg McMuffin, and it is definitely not, a hard-boiled egg. Nevertheless, I cannot tell you how many times, after staring up at the menu board, a customer would shrug and say something like, “I’ll just have the mushroom omelet.” Of course, there was a great temptation for me to turn and stare up at the board pretending to search for the word omelet, which of course wasn’t there, and I will admit to doing it more than once. I suppose that is definitely not “right” but somehow not so wrong either.
Most of the time I explained that we didn’t do omelets but we’d be happy to steam up an egg or two. And that’s when the customer, definitely wrong in this case, would often insist, “Well, I’ve had it here before”, when he most certainly had not. Fortunately for me, when customers like that demanded (and they always “demanded”) to see the manager, I’d introduce them to Glenn and you can imagine how that went.
Now that I’m only on the customer side of the counter, you’d think I’d adopt the majority method of right and wrong, which is of course, I’m right and you’re wrong. But once you been on the other side, it’s just not possible to not empathize with whoever is waiting on you.
On the other hand, it might be great fun to pop into a Starbucks and order a Grande latte along with a scotch on the rocks. After the inevitable we don’t serve scotch, I could announce with an air of certainty, “Well, I’ve had it here before.”
Actually, now that I think about it, I really want to go to Paris to see for myself what a French cappuccino looks like.
Naturally, I’ll make a horrific face when it is served, and with the disdain I normally reserve for Republican members of Congress, I’ll say, “That is not, how they make it in Oakland, California.” I just wonder what is French for “This ain’t Oakland buddy.”
