KEN V. BROKEN BARISTA: A Rematch
The batista I broke a few weeks ago by giving him a quarter after he had already entered my order into the POS has apparently remained broken.
“Hi. I’d like a large tropical iced tea with extra ice.”
The batista stares at me for a few seconds. I stare back. “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” he finally pipes up.
“Oh,” I say. The music is kind of loud, as it usually is here, so I think he means he can’t hear me; so I lean in closer and speak louder and slower. “A LARGE…TROPICAL… ICED TEA… EXTRA ICE.”
He starts to punch buttons on the point of sale screen but stops in frustration. “Are you saying you want an herbal tea?”
“Maybe. Is the herbal tea tropical?”
“Uhhhhhhh….”
“OK. What flavors of iced tea do you have?”
“We have black, green, and herbal.”
“Yeah, and what flavor is the herbal?”
“It’s herbal,” he says. “It doesn’t have caffeine like the black and the green.”
“Yes. But what flavor is it?”
He looks as though I’ve caught him napping in History class and have woken him from a dead sleep and asked him to recite the quadratic formula.
“Flavor?….” He seems to be searching for something with which he can connect that strange and exotic word. Suddenly he brightens. “It’s tropical,” he exclaims.
“Isn’t that what I asked for, a large tropical iced tea with extra ice?”
He rings in the order.
“Oh, and what’s the WiFi password today?”
“Coffee zero two,” he says tentatively, as if he’s frightened it’s a trick question.
“Thanks,” I say as I turn, and look for a table.
I can only assume that either this guy’s last job was at McDonald’s, or the phenomenon that makes me scramble the brains of McDonald’s employees has begun to affect other service workers. Maybe it’s confined to servers of coffee and tea. Most of my battles with McDonald’s occurred as I attempted to order a large iced coffee with no cream, sugar, or flavoring.
Whatever the actual cause, I feel bad that I’m the one who broke him.
Originally posted October 18, 2015
Recent Comments