The Golden Rude

(I am working at the drive-thru at our coffee shop.)

Me: “Thank you for choosing [Coffee Shop]. This is [My Name]. How may I help you?”

Customer: *complete silence*

(I can see his car in our camera and he’s not talking.)

Me: “Did you have any questions or anything?”

Customer: “Well, there you are! What kind of smoothies do you have?”

Me: “We have strawberry banana, orange mango banana, and chocolate banana.”

Customer: “I want a strawberry one.”

Me: “Okay, that will be—”

Customer: *drives away from the speaker before I can finish*

(The customer in front of this customer in the drive-thru line has an issue with her order, so we have to wait until it is ready. During this time I make small talk with the customer as we are trained to do. After handing the customer her beverage, the next car pulls up.)

Me: “That will be [price]. Your smoothie is on its way!”

Customer: “I have a concern. You just wasted five minutes of my time having a conversation with that other customer. If I had honked my horn, you would have called me rude, but don’t you think it is rude to have personal conversations on my time? I just can’t believe you would do things like that. My time is valuable and I don’t like my time to be wasted!”

Me: “Well, they had an issue with their order and we had to wait. I thought it would be rude to ask her to stop talking to me. I will go check on your smoothie.”

(I get the smoothie and come back to the window.)

Me: “All right, there you go!”

(I am holding the smoothie out toward the customer. He spends a good two to three minutes talking on the phone while I wait.)

Customer: *turns and finally sees me* “Well, finally, what took so long?”

Me: “I’ve been standing here for two minutes.”

Customer: “Well, I was on the phone. Why didn’t you say something?”

Me: “I didn’t want to be rude.”