NEO for Customers Part Three: Give Respect Get Respect

by Tracey Flower

Thank you for joining me back this week for my last post in my New Employee Orientation for Customers series. Last week I discussed three basic rules to abide by when visiting, say, your local coffee shop. This week I’d like to offer three basic suggestions for more even more peace and harmony when frequenting said coffee shop.

Listen. Think. And then respond. Allow me to describe a scenario that happens on a daily basis in Starbucks. Customer A orders, pays for, and steps aside to wait for his grande nonfat latte. Customer B orders, pays for, and steps aside to wait for her iced venti unsweetened green tea. After making Customer A’s drink, the barista places the beverage on the counter and says “grande nonfat latte” but Customer A is in the restroom so he doesn’t pick up the drink right away. The barista moves on to make the next drink in line, assuming Customer A will retrieve his drink when he exits the bathroom. However Customer B, who is standing next to the counter, picks up the latte, takes a sip, makes a face, and says to the barista “this isn’t what I ordered.” By this time Customer A has returned from the restroom and is looking for his coffee. The barista says, “no ma’am it isn’t, it’s what he ordered.” This sort of scene happens ALL THE TIME. ‘Nuff said.

(Oh and I’m sorry but yes I do think that half-caf triple venti two pump sugar free vanilla nonfat with whip caramel macchiato does make you less of a man).

Please stop complaining about the price. Please. I’ve spent some time filling in as a cashier at various dining venues on Vail Mountain. It’s a tedious job to begin with but nothing drains the moral of a cashier faster than customers complaining about the price of their meal. I’ve been yelled at, cursed at, and laughed at for telling folks the grand total of their lunch. It’s expensive to eat on Vail Mountain. Period. A cheeseburger will cost you eight to ten dollars and that doesn’t even include fries. And, yes, the Starbucks in Vail Village is pricier than the one in your hometown (it will even run you a dollar or so more than another Starbucks just ten miles down the road from here). I acknowledge and agree with you that Vail’s frickin’ expensive. Believe me it’s no cheaper to live here than it is to visit, I feel your pain people. But I live here because I love it here. It doesn’t get much better aesthetically and the lifestyle can’t be beat so I’m OK with paying a little extra for things. Don’t you agree? If you can’t see my point of view on that, at least consider this: the cashier is most likely just a cashier and therefore didn’t set the price of that five-dollar Gatorade. In fact she probably has absolutely no control over the price and doesn’t see any of the profit made off it. And she certainly has no authority to change it. So please consider that before you rip into her about it. And by the way if she, by chance, does have the authority to offer you a discount, you stand a way better chance of receiving that discount if you resist the urge to complain.

Which brings me to my final point.

Give respect get respect. Have you seen the movie Waiting? There’s a scene where the wait staff and the kitchen staff join forces to seek revenge on an unpleasant customer by doing ungodly things to her meal. The moral of the story is don’t screw with the people who have control over your food. While I’ve never taken things to that extreme (nor have I ever witnessed anything on that level) it’s a good idea to keep this story in the back of your mind. I realize sometimes we mess up and something isn’t how you expected it to be. My message isn’t that you don’t say something it’s that you speak up in a manner that is considerate and respectful. Chances are you’ll get the same attitude in return.

NEO for Customers Part Two: The Basics

by Tracey Flower

Hello and welcome back to New Employee Orientation for Customers. In my last post I discussed the notion that some of the folks I have come in contact with over my years of serving coffee have forgotten (or perhaps never learned) how to behave in public places. So I decided after a New Employee Orientation class I recently attended for my current job that perhaps the general public could benefit from hearing the some of the same tips and reminders I was given in that course. Let’s get started.

Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot. While bartending at a restaurant on top of the mountain last winter a woman asked me if we served lattes. Before I had a chance to respond, she said something along the lines of “lattes are, you know, the ones with all the milk.” Her tone of voice suggested she thought she was talking to a toddler. Now of course this woman had no idea that I’ve worked in coffee shops since college and have made (and drank) about a bazillion lattes in that time. I didn’t expect her to know that. But the presumption in her tone that I was either an infant or an idiot offended me.

The woman running the orientation class spent a good portion of it discussing how we should talk to guests, she even gave us a list of everyday lingo we should avoid using (words and phrases such as “hello” and “how’s it going”). Apparently we are to assume our guests are well-educated and we must talk up to their level. Similarly I would like to ask our guests to assume that I too have half a brain and would appreciate it if you spoke to me accordingly.

Your mother (or maid or husband or wife or personal servant) doesn’t work here so please clean up after yourself. It was stressed in orientation that as employees of Vail Resorts and the Arrabelle we’re expected to dress and present ourselves a certain way; neat and tidy uniform, no visible piercings or tattoos, no unnatural hair color, and we must always appear clean and smell freshly scrubbed. It seems like a no-brainer that one should not come to work un-showered but I suppose there is some idiot out there who made a habit of it and out of fear of encountering more such idiots, they decided to take action.

The same goes for cleaning up after yourself in public places; it should be a no-brainer. Yes it is part of my job to keep my workspace clean, to buss tables and sweep the floor but it’s just rude and sloppy to create a mess and make no effort to clean it up. If you drop a napkin or a straw wrapper on the floor (right next to a trash bin) please pick it up. If your kid spills an entire hot chocolate on the floor please apologize and let me know and I’ll clean it up (see, there’s that symbiotic relationship respect thing). And for the love of God people I don’t know what is happening in public restrooms across America but after a summer spent cleaning up you-don’t-even-want-to-know off the toilets in Starbucks I am baffled. The only two conclusions I can draw here are that either your bathroom at home is disgusting or there is someone waiting outside to clean it after every time you use it. Whatever the case, please have a little respect, if not for me who has to clean up after you, then at least for the person who enters the stall next.

No cell phones while ordering. In orientation it was made clear that the use of cell phones by employees is strictly forbidden in guest areas. I get this. It’s common manners and easy enough to abide by (just because you can talk to anyone anywhere doesn’t mean you should). So I ask you, dear customer, to please please pretty please extend the same courtesy when you’re ordering your coffee.

While this list is certainly not exhaustive I consider these three points to be at the very top of the list and I think if we all took the time to consider them in restaurants, coffee shops, or even the supermarket we would all be on our way to more pleasant customer service experiences. Check back next week for my third and final post in this series.


Do you have a funny/horrible/heartwarming customer service (as either the one serving or the one being waited on) story to share? Is there anything you would add to this list?

New Employee Orientation for Customers Part One

by Tracey Flower

There was a very impatient woman in Starbucks the other day. It was a slow Sunday and there was only one customer ahead of her, I was busy listening to the requests of customer number one when Impatient Woman interrupted to suggest I make her drink first. I told her that here at Starbucks we try to operate on a first-come first-served basis and since there was no denying that customer one was, indeed, first, I was going to make her drink first. She retaliated with something along the lines of, “ok but I’ve got a cranky two-year-old outside.”

This is coffee not brain surgery, no need for impatience. (Photo credit).

That wasn’t the first time Impatient Woman had been in Starbucks in the last few weeks. The first time she marched up to the cashier stand to order, oblivious to the line of people waiting who were there before her. She used her two-year-old as an excuse that time too. Personally I’ve never seen the kid and I’m not totally convinced he exists, if he does I’m not sure why she’s parking him outside alone (which is what I assume she’d done given her frantic state). Either way I, quite frankly, don’t care. If Starbucks was an emergency room and her two-year-old was bleeding or dying her behavior would be appropriate. But it’s not. Starbucks is a coffee shop and there’s just no need for that kind of urgency there, especially when it involves a phantom child. This woman is just one example of what us Starbucks employees deal with on a daily basis. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps some people just haven’t been taught how to behave in public places.

I recently attended New Employee Orientation for the Arrabelle resort. (There are two Starbucks in Vail; both require you to be an employee of the Arrabelle, which is owned by Rock Resorts, which is owned by Vail Resorts). The seminar included a tour of the extravagant Arrabelle hotel and residences, a catered lunch, and a laundry list of dos and, mostly, don’ts for Arrabelle employees. I left feeling like I had left a little of my soul under the table in that conference room and wondering why such presentations aren’t given to those who don’t work in the service industry but enjoy visiting such establishments. You know, a sort of New Employee Orientation for guests.

In orientation we were asked to share stories about ourselves as guests and give specific examples of both good and bad customer service we’ve experienced. I would like to ask the guests out there to do the same, except consider how the customer treated the employee in those situations. Respect, patience, and common courtesy go both ways and, just as everyone has experienced poor customer service, I think everyone has also witnessed the reverse. The relationship between barista and coffee-drinker, front desk agent and guest, lift operator and skier is a symbiotic one, we need one another and we couldn’t exist without one another in these situations. And just as sometimes I need to remind myself of that fact and shape up my attitude when I’m at work, I think folks on the other side of the counter should do the same from time to time.

It’s my personal belief, and one widely shared among those in service and hospitality jobs, that everyone should have to work a customer service job at least once. Since I really don’t see that happening, I’d like to take it upon myself to offer a few suggestions for making folks’ experience as a customer a more pleasant experience for all of us. I’m going to make this a three-part series so stay tuned as I intend to share my little nuggets of wisdom with you in my next two posts. In the meantime, read about two eccentric yet well-behaved customers I waited on in the past in One-way Ticket to Denver and Romanian Mami.

Grandpa Flower

I’m 27 years old and all four of my grandparents are alive and well. This is, I believe, rare. It’s a treat, a privilege, bestowed on few. I’ve been able to get to know my grandparents, to hear their life’s stories and adventures in their own words. They are amazing multi-faceted people and their lives intrigue me. And while they have all led extraordinary lives, I can see each of my grandparents as just plain human beings in a very real, very palpable way I don’t think would be possible if I hadn’t been able to spend my life so far getting to know them.

Here are a few of my favorite memories, my favorite stories, about my Grandpa Flower.

Grandpa Flower used to call my sister, Susan, and myself Penelope and Maryann. This is something I hadn’t thought about in years but recently remembered during a trip home for Christmas. I believe Susan was Penelope and I was Maryann and I can’t remember when he stopped calling us that. Oh, and to be clear, he called us those names as a joke, not as a result of a fading memory or out of old-person confusion. That was Grandpa when we were kids, always teasing us, always joking around with us.

Whenever it was time to leave Grandpa and Grandma’s house we would hug Grandma good-bye, then giggle in anticipation of Grandpa’s bear hug and big sloppy noisy kiss on the cheek. The last few times I’ve been home a much older, slightly more serious, Grandpa has hugged me in a way he never used to, in a way you hug someone when you realize you will not always be able to hug him.

In middle school and high school, studies about World War 2 always made me think of him and always made me realize how little I know about the large man with a crew cut who likes to sit in his big arm chair and watch the game. I know his family background is complicated with divorce and alcoholism, I know he used to teach chemistry and coach basketball, I know he was shot once in the war, and I know he won’t talk about most of that stuff.

Possibly my favorite memory of my Grandpa Flower was at his and my Grandma’s 50th wedding anniversary party. There were photos everywhere of their younger selves. Grandma was an absolute knockout when she was younger, stunning in a classic way, in a creamy white skin and cherry lipstick kind of way. A party guest approached Grandpa at one point and said to him Nell was beautiful when she was younger. Without missing a beat, without a smirk or a silly smile, Grandpa said, “still is.” His response gave me goose bumps and I knew then that I want what they have someday.

Journal Entry 02/09/05

This blog is not a personal diary for me. My journal, however, is. I use my journal as a place to rant, to document events, and to help me sort through my thoughts. The entries aren’t always well written and sometimes don’t even make much sense to me when I read them later. Some of the entries are deeply personal and I hope no one will ever read them. And some of them, like the one posted here, I think are worth sharing.

I was reading an old journal the other day, looking for ideas and inspiration and this entry made me smile. It made me think about who I was then and where I was at that point in my life. I wrote it after my first visit to Colorado before I decided to move to Vail.


February 9, 2005

I feel a bit like I’m cheating by writing in this at the moment. See I have another journal going right now that still has blank pages. One entry left of bank pages to be exact. When I fill those pages it will be the last entry in a book that has chronicled the past few years of my life. It’s a book full of rambling notes, stories and thoughts about life. Not much of a page-turner, but it’s my life nonetheless and it deserves a good ending.

It doesn’t feel right to start the next book without finishing the last. It’s tough, though, because my life is in limbo right now. I can see where I’m going and where I’ve been but I’m finding myself somewhere in the middle of it all. I’ve yet to close that last chapter, to experience the ending there, or perhaps I have but I haven’t realized it. In any case I’m not ready to write it.

As for the beginning of this next chapter, I suppose I’m writing it right now. I’m not quite sure why the beginning is easier to write than the ending. Perhaps it’s because the beginning is more exciting than the ending. Perhaps it’s because I’m scared of the ending. Perhaps it’s because I’ve already experienced this chapter’s first adventure. Because I’ve already learned from it, already grown from it and already changed from it. This volume begins after a six-day trip to Colorado with stops in Vail, Glenwood Springs, and Aspen.

I learned on that trip that people who vacation in Vail or Aspen have considerably more money than people who vacation in Florida (most of my vacations until recently were family road trips to Florida). The people I observed vacationing in high-end Colorado resort towns do not seem the type to pack up the minivan, throw on some Bermuda shorts and join the caravan of families trekking down to Orlando or Tampa for spring break. They wear fur coats, shop in stores like Prada, drink expensive wine, and spend vacation days skiing. People who vacation in Florida wear tacky floral shirts, shop in discount souvenir shops, sip brightly colored drinks, and spend vacation days getting sunburned at Sea World. This is not to say that those who spend time in Vail or Aspen do not like to spend a day at Sea World, shop for souvenirs, or wear Bermuda shorts. They just seem to go about it in a more expensive, classier way.

That observation is one of many from my recent trip, more stories to come later. Colorado was definitely different, though. Good different. The trip has left me thinking a lot about that place as a potential new home. We will see what happens in the months to come.

One-Way Ticket to Denver

I worked at Starbucks the first summer I lived in Vail. It wasn’t much fun and it didn’t pay well and that’s why I don’t work there anymore. It was, however, a good introduction to the kind of people who visit Vail. I’d always worked food and beverage jobs but until that summer every position had been in South Haven, Michigan. South Haven is a small town on the southeast coast of Lake Michigan and is to Chicago what the Hamptons are to New York City. I felt pretty confident in my ability to handle loud, impatient, ornery, rich tourists when I moved to Vail. I discovered while working at Starbucks, though, that Vail attracts a different breed of ornery rich tourists than my hometown and spent that summer learning how to handle them.

During my time working in Vail coffee shops I’ve seen grown men nearly cry over too much whip cream, been yelled at repeatedly for not offering Splenda, and dealt with 13-year-olds with credit cards and iPhones. My co-worker at Bailey’s Coffee House, which is located in a pavilion on the top of Vail Mountain, was once told she should do something about the poor cell service in the building. The man was very serious and held her personally responsible for the situation.

These people blend together in my head and it takes a unique individual to make an impression, to shine through a crowd of crying children, antsy fanny-pack wearing parents, and frantic foreign nannies. One fellow, a customer who came into Starbucks one day, was the type to make such an impression. He was so fascinating that I still think about him from time to time. He was a giant man, almost too tall to fit through the door. The overstuffed backpack he carried, his tattered clothing, wild dreaded hair, and offensive body odor immediately set him apart from the standard upper class Blackberry-toting Vail Starbucks customer.

He came into Starbucks three times that day. The first time he asked for a taster cup of coffee and he ordered it as if it was just that, a beverage rather than a shot-glass worth of coffee. He accepted the free sample and carefully added a calculated amount of cream and sugar to the small amount of brew. "Peace and love dudes," he said before he exited.

The man returned later with a Starbucks card, a gift a stranger had bestowed on him. He ordered a Venti Italian Roast and told a story about Ethiopians and Italians mixing bloodlines. He said something about there being Italian Ethiopians out there due to a promiscuous Caesar. His eyes were wild as he spoke, wandering in different directions, pausing on me for a moment then flying off in another direction. It was a bit confusing but he held the attention of most of the Starbucks staff and patrons for quite awhile.

I was a bit nervous the third time he came back because I found him to be both intriguing and intimidating. This time he got a slice of carrot cake on my recommendation. He talked about the places he'd been, from Africa to Denmark to Los Angeles. He talked about music and said he'd heard Coldplay once in Denmark and thought Chris Martin was a great guy. He said it as if he knew him and I thought for a split second that perhaps he did. He talked a lot about Starbucks too and said this location was one of the best he'd been too, although he'd been to some nice ones back in LA.

When he was on his way out a woman stopped him and gave him some money. He tried to refuse it, telling her that she had helped him. She said that he had helped her too and that people are just supposed to help each other out like that. He took the money, but it seemed like he really didn't want to, like he just took it as a way to thank the woman.

I saw him later sleeping on a bench in the Vail Transportation Center. As I sat there waiting for my bus I wondered about him. I wondered where he was coming from and where he was going. I wondered where he'd been and how he'd gotten here. I wondered where he'd grown up and how old he was.

A month or so later one of my coworkers and a customer were talking about homeless people and their place, or lack of place, in Vail. My coworker told the customer that a few weeks ago the Greyhound deposited a homeless fellow in Vail. The guy wandered around for a few weeks, came in and out of Starbucks, and slept in the transportation center. One day he came into the shop and said, "The police here are so nice, they just gave me a free one-way ticket to Denver."

Romanian Mami

I met Mami four years ago during my first winter season in Vail. She visits for several weeks at a time, usually over Christmas, and stays at the Marriott. She spends a couple hours every day in Bailey’s Coffee House where I work. Her name is Elena but she insists we call her Mami.

Mami is from Romania but lives in New York City. Her face is jolly and she wears tiny glasses with round frames that rest near the tip of her Cabbage Patch-doll nose. I imagine that with a bit of rouge on her round cheeks she would look like a cartoon. She is short, sturdy, and plump. She is grandmotherly in a wise and endearing way and has a teenage son, Roberto. Mami doesn’t ski she just reads, talks on her cell phone, and drinks her favorite white chocolate mocha, decaf and skinny with lots of syrup, while Roberto skis.

She told me once that I should visit Romania with her. It is a beautiful country, she said, where people drink bottles of wine on the ski slopes and the men are very handsome. She said she will translate for me when I find a good Romanian boy. I should not, however, get married too young; 24, she said, once I told her my age, is too young. She told me she married very well, and by well she means her husband is wealthy (her frequent use of his American Express card proves it), but much too young. She said she is sure I will find a nice boy one day because I’m skinny like she once was.

Mami has lived in Manhattan for about 15 years in an apartment near the World Trade Center site. When she talks about her neighborhood I think of her there on September 11, 2001. I imagine her close to the site of so much tragedy, praying in Romanian, crying, and hugging her son.

Mami never showed up around Christmas this year and I assumed it was due to the economy then she turned up one day in February. When I told her I had been wondering when I would see her this year or if she was coming at all, she started crying. She said she hadn't come over Christmas because her mother passed away and she had to go back to Romania. Then she pulled some photos out of her pocket; one was of her mother as a young woman, another of her mother about a year ago, and the last one was a picture of her mother's body in a casket. The casket was in a house, in what looked like a dining room, and Mami’s father stood next to it, his eyes puffy and red, she said he had wept for days. I was both moved and disturbed and I admired her for being so open with her grief. I didn’t know what to say so as she continued to cry and describe her pain I made her a white chocolate mocha, decaf, skinny, with lots of syrup.