After months of stalking Providence’s craigslist page, I finally managed to swoop in and score a job at Blue State Coffee. This is good news on multiple levels. 1. I will be able to afford to replace all of the pens I have lost during the course of the semester and won’t have to steal borrow from my friends’ and peers’ and 2. I love working in customer service and genuinely think it has made me a better person. These are some of the self-actualizations that have occurred throughout my past experiences working among the people.
- Vomit: The obligation to tidy up a store or restaurant doesn’t disappear when a kid goes a little bit overboard on the banana split and voms all over the freshly swept floor. I had a serious phobia of vomit. Not just other people’s, but my own as well. Now, I don’t even blink when someone hurls. Not an eyelash.
- Book Recommendations: When you’ve worked somewhere a while, the regulars start to get very comfortable sharing personal details you did not ask for. This is equal parts awkward and enlightening. An anecdote: a regular at the coffee shop in my hometown came in on my last day of working to hand me a copy of Johanna Lindsey’s seminal classic, Hearts Aflame (the cover features Fabio staring longingly into his topless mistress’s eyes). The woman then looked into my eyes (I had my top on) and said, “I thought you could use this.” Customers can sometimes be extremely rude, verbally abusive, and smelly. But sometimes, they give you presents and I can’t complain about that.
- Community: It is easy to get caught up in our own little worlds of school, friends, and the squirrels that hang out outside Harkness. So it is actually very special to feel like you are apart of the greater community in which you live. I get to serve coffee to lawyers, doctors, professors, and youths alike and learn the most intimate details of their personal lives. There is a strong possibility that I won’t be able to live in Providence after graduation. So I am very excited about trying to shove my way into the hearts and coffee cups of Providencians (sp?) until they can’t imagine their lives without me.
The moral of the story is: working in customer service can be very frustrating, arduous, and smelly. But it can also be really rewarding and generally make you better abled to deal with people and their various excretions. I highly recommend it and I’ll hopefully see some of you at my place of employ.
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