I’ll Have My Usual
I used to work at a Starbucks right next to a Walmart. One of the Walmart employees would come in for lunch every day. She was in her 60s and was very strange and very demanding.
She always ordered a spinach feta wrap on a plate with cutlery and a tall hot coffee with room for cream. When I would see her, I would say hi and then say her order, and she would reply, “Yes, that’s right.”
Then while I would type it in, she would repeat it very sternly. Then, while I would put it in the oven and get the plate ready, she would tell me again very sternly.
She would repeat her order a few times despite me displaying that I knew what it was. She was always angry and scoffing during the process. The next part of her ritual was somehow even MORE annoying. She would go find a table and rearrange the furniture VERY loudly.
She would drag the metal bottom of a table across the polished concrete floor. Then drag the wood chairs across it as well. Even some customers would offer to help her move them, but she always insisted that she could do it.
So for a solid five minutes every day, everyone in the store just had to listen to thunderous sounds. Next, she would go get her coffee ready at the little bar and make a HUGE mess. She always pulled out a bunch of sugar packets and spilled them everywhere.
Then she would take a load of napkins and come back to the counter without cleaning her mess. She would squeeze in front of whoever was currently being helped and say that we were out of napkins.
Then, she would go have her food and drink, leave the plate and cup there, go into the bathroom and throw all of the napkins on the floor, along with some paper towels as well.
We always had to have someone go clean up after her. She would go back to work and return later. When she returned, she would always complain that she had left her stuff on a table and that it was now gone. We explained that we had cleaned it up and that she could not reserve a table for herself.
She would be furious and demand a free coffee, which she automatically got anyway with her first order. So, I would give her a free refill and she would drag the tables and make a huge mess for us to clean up all over again.