customer service

Today was the funeral service for one of my regular customers from starbucks. And while i will mention her name (Margot Harvey), this post is larger than her loss. I will be leaving starbucks to begin student teaching at the end of the summer, and have been reflecting on my 5 years with the company. Margot represents the best that the job had to offer. Over the four years at my first store in Tustin, I got to know a wonderful group of people who have all left a mark on my heart. Some of those people were coworkers, and some were customers who could have just come in for their morning cup of coffee, paid, and left. Some of those thousands of people who waited in my line did more than that.

As a job, starbucks was a steady predictable (if occasionally menial) part of my life. I was fairly compensated and treated well by all, and allowed to be my own peculiar self ({mostly}within dress code). What i will take away was the community i felt with my customers/neighbors, who i genuinely looked forward to seeing each day (and some of the ones i didn't).

Margot, the star of today's post (if there is such a thing), once caught me riding to/from work without a helmet, and gave me a hard time about it for a week, and then turned up one day with a brand new helmet she bought for me. (i did briefly wear it when i thought she might see me).

Harry loaned me his flatbed truck for a few days when we moved across town to our current apartment.

Sal got me a case of pig's feet on short notice so meg could teach a suturing workshop. And always remembered me around the holidays.

These are only a few prominent examples, and there are many more who offered me nothing more than a sympathetic ear, or pleasant conversation, but all of them generous in their own way. These are the people I will miss. The people who made my job pleasant.

I encourage you, dear reader (using a plural here just seems like hubris), to be one of those people to somebody insignificant in your life. make them more significant. it's always good to have one more person speak well of you when you are gone.