"Friends" Flashbacks and Rachel Moments

Anyone remember the television series, "Friends"?  Particularly the episodes early in the series when Rachel is working at Central Perk?  Remember that moment when her customer ordered the really weird drink?  Well, I admit I had my "Rachel moments" today.  Thank God I was awake enough to keep my mouth shut!

There's a regular customer who - I would almost bet on the fact - is a fairly normal person in the real world.  However, when she walks into the shop (which is always the first morning rush, so there's a huge line of people) all of us on the floor have a collective GroupThink, "What's it going to be today?"  Let me explain:  she always orders some type of precise customization that is impossible to perfect.  Her drink today was exactly as follows:

• Small Iced Mocha
  
• No Ice
  
• 4.5 (not 5 and not 4, exactly 4.5) pumps of mocha syrup, because "I can taste the difference" (sic)
  
• 2 Splendas blended (with the electric blender) into the drink, not simply added
  
• Topped with Whipped Cream

So if we ignore the contradictions apparent in this drink (an iced drink with no ice and Splendas with whipped cream), there's the acute fact there are to only be 4.5 pumps of syrup in her drink.  How that last .5 of a pump impacts a drink like this I'm not too sure, but I expect there must be some complex chemical reaction with the artificial sweeteners that would somehow cause the drink to bubble and fizz like something out of Shakespeare's Macbeth and turn it into poison.

On the other hand, there is that ever-so-rare phenomenon where people just have to be difficult to customer service personnel.  (OK, it's not so are, but you should know by now there's bound to be a little bit of sarcasm in my postings) Now this phenomenon is not news to me.  I was a former flight attendant and saw more than my fair share of difficult people.  But I never really understood it.  (Oh, and make no mistake, I am very clear about the fact there are certainly rude customer service people out there, too, and there's rarely an excuse for rude service)

There was also this drink from someone else.  He was so belligerent and he kept asking customers to taste his drink  -  "Does this taste right to you?" then he began screaming that the baristas could never make his drink taste right...his drink of choice was:

• Large Decaf Latte
  
• Plus a regular shot
• Half Soy Milk /Half Whole Milk
  
• 1 Equal
  
• 1 Splenda
  
• 1 Sweet and Low
  
• 2 Raw Sugars
  
• 3 Pumps of Cinnamon Syrup
• Shaken, not stirred ("'cause that's how James Bond likes his martinis and that's how I like my lattes")

Huh?  Just how should that taste?

The first customer had us make her drink again because there was "just a little too much" mocha in it.  The second customer, well...So these two incidents today caused me to think about what Rodney King said and I wondered:  "Why can't we just keep everything simple so we can all get along?"