A Tip From The Jar

I'm going to try my hardest and bring this blog back to what it once was. I doubt it's possible to do it to the extent that I brought it to when I first started out on MySpace, my life has change substantially since those lonely days in my Swiss apartment, alone and looking for an outlet to voice my thoughts. Those days of countless hours spent stoned in my bright green desk chair are gone, and oddly I miss them. Snow filled streets that allowed me to sit in bed with my instant coffee, haze filled rants, blog nights, blog trips, lies and fiction, have been traded in for copious amounts of tv and, well, I'm not sure. For a while I thought it might have been the deterioration of my old laptop (which I have no replaced with a very expensive update). I also considered that the always present haze might have caused my thought process to dwindle to mire status updates on Facebook, or that maybe I just ran out of things to say. I don't know what happened, and frankly, it has left my heart feeling slightly less whole (although that's actually nothing new). Either way, getting sick last week, writing some nonsense about VH1 and a couple comments from my sis and Skip, have got me feeling that it might be time to at least make an effort. And I'm all about effort.

There is this customer at work that provides a daily dose of material that I can't ignore. As always, the first thing I noticed about her were her shoes, a pair of black peep-toe espadrille wedges. In true form I complimented her on them, which led to an awkward acceptance of the compliment on her part, and then to a series of "good mornings," and brief conversations about nothing substantial. The first red flag came when she asked me to make her an omelet. I'm a pastry chef, and although I might have been standing at a stove, I am in no position to be making anyone an omelet, not even myself. A few interactions later I found out that she was Swiss, and after being greeted by a series of corrections when I attempted to speak to her in Swiss dialect, I decided that this was no longer a customer I wanted to invest in.

You see, one of the best parts of the place that I work at is the fact that I am able to interact with my customers face to face. Most bake shops are hidden in some closed prison of mixers and ovens, and at my current place of employment the only thing separating me from my clients are coffee creamers and sugar packets. For a lot of people I am the first face they see before starting a day of Power Point presentations and conference calls. With this knowledge comes that power to set someones day off right, and I enjoy taking the time to smile and talk about the weather or meaningless tidbits. I love wishing people a nice day at work, and I hope that they walk away with not only their coffee in hand but also the feeling that someone has acknowledged them outside of just wanting to know about this afternoon's monotonous meeting. You get coffee and a pastry to take a break, and I like the thought that I'm a part of that. It's by far one of the biggest perks of my job at the moment, and if the pleasure of interacting with so many people were taken away, I would probably be pushed to find a better job. So after five months of being "the girl behind the coffee creamer" it doesn't make me feel great to have a customer that pushes me to leave my station in avoidance. It's so unnecessary, and causes me to snap out of my superficial smiles and want to walk around the counter and show this bitch who the fuck she is messing with.

Tension has obviously been building, there have been a series of slights on her part: asking me to fetch her change, saying "good morning" in a tone that only implies that she views me as "the help," walking around with an air of superiority, asking customers for money to pay for her coffee, harassing employees in other service positions, and today, stealing money from the tip jar to pay for her coffee. I've had enough and this bitch is asking to be taught a lesson, plain and simple.

I'm not the only one who feels this way towards her. I've brought her name up to a few customers only to be almost constantly greeted with even worse tales of her wrath. For a company of three thousand people, this one woman in extremely well known, and not in a positive way, she isn't much more then a glorified secretary. She has pissed a lot of the wrong people off and oddly doesn't seem to have noticed. It reached the point today that someone actually called her anonymously and told her that they witnessed her stealing from the tip jar. I was asked if it was me, but I am not nearly that ballsy. The bitch had it coming though, and if it is still unclear to her that her behavior is unacceptable and no one likes her then I am really only left to pity her.

It's funny how stuff like this works though. How acting like such an arrogant prick can cause people who you don't even acknowledge as being on your level to want to do horrible things to your cake order, or deny you certain favors. My smiles and friendliness have been greeted with gifts and a raise, and most recently a relationship with an amazing man. This woman, well, I have a hard time believing that she can say the same, and rightly so.

Being a complete asshole to people gets you nowhere, especially with a bitch like me who carries a love for vengeance in her soul. Tomorrow is another day, and at this point, I wouldn't be at all surprised to have a customer tell me that they saw this woman killing kittens in the parking garage.