September 07, 2014
00:19
I can see why people work so hard to succeed at their dreams. Something I once found kind of ludicrous in a way, I guess.
I have not wanted to write about this because I haven�t wanted to relive it, but it�s just weighed heavy on my mind for as long as I have been off work.
Yesterday someone came to the Starbucks I work at and tried paying for her groceries and also ordered a drink we simply don�t make, while claiming she�s gotten it there before, which I now figure was a lie or was prepared by someone who lied to her. I ran into errors with the groceries, of which there were too many in the first place and she probably should have gone to the regular checkout especially considering the amount of customers behind her.
Anyway, so I wasn�t able to make her fictional drink, so she got nasty at that point, commenting on how she had to get to work, and had rapidly transitioned into ordering me on what to do. She ordered the most time consuming form of coffee we have, then she went to do more shopping or whatever and I took the next customers, partially because I don�t like people to be kept waiting on their feet while I prepare one drink and partially because she was terrible. Which I think was a mistake because obviously this person wanted to denigrate someone and would use whatever resources she had at hand, and my vindictiveness was just fuel for her to spread her upbringing onto the world like so much hellish marmalade.
So by the time she came around, I had a row of drinks to prepare, was about to begin on hers, and she shouts at me about where her shit�s at and she just began trash talking me. I don�t think I said anything in particular to set it off. Maybe I did. If anyone deserved it, she certainly did. So I put one coffee out there for someone, because I�d begun preparing her time-consuming ridiculous thing and the other one was just faster, and some of it burned me which is pretty much an occupational hazard and happens all the time and she laughs at me because of it.
And my regret at this moment is not just putting $1.90 on the counter and telling her to leave. At which point I�d probably have to call a manager because that would be the new catalyst for this creature to cloak the world in her vile fluids. I think I told her to stop talking because it was so obnoxious. She was cackling like some awful human caricature and I mimicked it and she was commenting on how I really sounded like a woman, but I didn�t sound like a woman, I sounded like her, a hand puppet with a drunken underpaid puppeteer. She asked where I got my customer service in response to something, I don�t know what, and I asked who raised her, and that is the only thing I feel good about because it is the only thing that might potentially make this pig reflect on the trough she came from.
So she got her drink, which hopefully tasted like shit, and I thanked her and told her not to come back and she said she would be back ho ho, to talk to my supervisor and I�m like go ahead. Because my manager is worse at customer service than I am and also sees what piles of shit people can be and will not take the side of this blight on Starbucks. I guess I�m grateful for that. I have a manager who will brush people off like that and see my side of things.
Then the woman suggested she�d be back that night, implying she�d be around to harm/murder me I guess.
I think the worst part of the incident is immediately after she left, one of the people she�d been talking to took this obvious sickening glee in asking me if we were out of her drink, because I�d accidentally started on another one next instead of hers. And I was so disheartened by this because I thought it was obvious to anyone who wasn�t this hellion that I was the only person working the store with a big line and that I was being harassed while doing my job. But nope, this person just saw something she could kick.
I have seen a side of humanity I never wanted to see, I never wanted to believe was so pervasive throughout. When I see recognizable features in people, I see features of people who want to hurt each other, I see an electrical current of abusive hateful behavior throughout our world now that I never wanted to see.
I don�t know where I�m going in this life. I once thought you could just be a fully realized being while working at a place like this, that you could pursue art and transcendence and whatever else while working a place like this, but now I see why so many people seem to think that is impossible: because people will do anything in their power to destroy a person behind a counter. It is more than just a place where you put in some time to survive then continue being the person you always were. It is a place where violence is inflicted upon the earth and hatred is fed, nourished, and raised, and things are never the same again. It is a place that has changed how I view people, that maybe it isn�t so tragic when a lot of people die at once, because maybe most of them are like this.
I have something to fight for now, myself, my existence, because all I see are the rotting teeth of America, and I have to see the good.
And after that woman and her follower attacked and left,
a soft-spoken customer said he didn�t know why people are like that,
and he thanked me by name.
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