I originally posted this on the Caribou Coffee message board on Myspace but I felt the need to post this in my blog too. It's something that's been upsetting me all week.


I don't believe that the customer is always right. As someone who has worked in retail for a long time I've come across quite a few bad customers. They're the people that seem like they're out to make your job difficult. It's sad because there's not a thing you can do about it but smile and pretend like everything is hunky dory when inside you know they're wrong and you wish so much there was something you could do about it.

When I'm a customer in a store or restaurant I treat whoever is at the register or serving me with respect. I say please and thank you and am kind even if it's not the world's best service. I know how it feels to be having an off day and have someone treat me like I'm not even a human being because of it.

Here's the deal. I came back from a GREAT vacation and was all pumped to come back to work. My first night back I had a customer that pretty much brought my week down. My first day I got a raise AND found out one of my co-workers and I had scored 100% on a secret shop. I was flying high.

There's this woman in the store that has been there all day. She ordered a cappucino and I made her a perfect one. She then came back for a "refill" and I explained we don't give free refills on capps. She had a little bit of an attitude with me but eventually relented and bought a coffee instead. She sat there the whole night. My shift was 3 to close. During the night she came up to my co-worker and I were chatting as we worked. I was telling her how I'd been schedule 11 days in a row. I wasn't complaining about it, just stating a fact. Also that night I made a comment about how our mop felt heavier than usual. It was one of those things where I hadn't been there in awhile and stuff was just DIFFERENT. Anyway, the woman at one point came up to us and told us to be quiet. She was not polite about it, she practically told us to shut up. I apologized and we kept it down after that. When we close at our store I always give our customers a 15 minute heads up and then as I'm closing up I let everyone know it's time to head out. I did that and I went to lock the doors. This woman proceeded to sit on her phone and shoot me looks as I waited for her to leave. She finally waltzed out 10 minutes later.

Fine. So the next night I come in and my boss informs me that this woman (who was in our store AGAIN and had been there ALL DAY) complained to her about me. Said that I was complaining about my hours (which I did not, I simply said I was working a lot) and about mopping (again, I did NOT, I just said the mop felt heavier than it usually did). She said I was rude to other customers (ridiculous, 90% of our night customers are regulars and I adore them) and that I mopped over her shoes (do I even need to comment on how dumb that is). I explained to my boss what happened and she said she didn't take what the woman said to heart anyway because that woman had a HUGE chip on her shoulder and a horrible attitude. So my boss blew it off.

So the woman is in our store for the second day in a row. She tried to be all sweet and nice to me. My co-worker than night was helping her and I was in the middle of cleaning something so I didn't think there was any reason for me to speak to her. She tried to be all nice to me and I smiled and said hello. This woman tried to tell one of our regulars to be quiet (again she was rude about it) and this regular pretty much told her where to stuff it. I frankly couldn't see how this bad customer could have had any problem with me that night.

Now, days later, I come into work to find out that this b*itch (sorry, it's the only word I can think of to describe her) had written to corporate. Our DM sent the e-mail to my boss and then called her. My boss didn't read the e-mail because she already knew what had happened but the e-mail (which my boss let me read) pretty much painted this woman as Miss Perfect Customer and me as Miss B*tchy Barista. Our DM, not knowing any other info on the situation, suggested that my boss write me up. My boss explained that that is not the way things happened and that she wouldn't write me up.

Thank God my boss has faith in me and knows I wouldn't do the things that that woman said I did. But seriously, that letter made me feel horrible. I pride myself on my customer service but I also don't think it's fair for someone to be rude and mean to me. It also hurts because my DM has always liked me and now I feel like she thinks I'm not so great. I almost want to call her and explain things myself because I do not want her to think that I'm making the company look bad, I wouldn't do that.

This customer hasn't been in since but she's had a big impact on my life, sadly. I watch everything I do or say at work and I feel constantly on guard. And truly I don't think there's anything I could have done short of kissing her butt to have made things turn out any differently. She just had it out for me and because of that I now look bad.