When did it become acceptable for service engineers (hey, no laughing, its a very scientific job carrying cups straight) to become targets for frustrated customers who should know better? Don’t get me wrong, I know bad manners is old news, but extreme Wally Factor is not good coffee.

Mr Large Flat White came in at 7.00am, threw his briefcase on my table putting a nice big scratch in it and then clicked his fingers for service. Of course I took my time getting their since I and every other service engineer knows that clicking means go slow. In our world that is. And when you enter the cafe, its my house and my rules.

So eventually I saunter over, and ask him ever so sweetly if I could help him.

“First,” he says “change the TV channel, I want 7. Then get me a coffee.”

“What kind of coffee sir?” I ask, again so so sweetly. I didn’t know at this point what he slurped, I mean drank.

“Hot coffee, what else is there?” he snarled.

So in my head, I wanted to say “ARE YOU FOR REAL” and then rattle off the entire universal list of coffees – cappuccino, flat white, latte, long black, short black, macchiato, long macchiato, Doppio, skim, soy, decaf, organic fair-trade etc etc etc. You get my drift. He didn’t.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we worked out his poison of Large Flat White, fed him and had him out the door in 25 minutes. He tipped me 10 cents which I asked him to keep in case he needed it to call his mum. Who else would Mr Happy call or who else would take his call.

As he left, he turned around and asked if I was this rude to all my customers or just him. “Nah,” I said “you’re special. I thought you deserved a little something extra.”

He told me he liked a challenge and “see you tomorrow.”

What’s a girl gotta do to get rid of a customer these days?  MMmm, I am sure I can think of something.