The Regular

As a small kiosk of a GJ's coffee house in a small suburb shopping centre, most of our sales come from regulars. I could pretty much give you a rough timeline of who will come at what time on what day.

To be honest, I generally love my regulars - we chat, they understand when I dart away from them to quickly prepare their food, they don't bitch when I accidentally cock up and drop their change. Most of the time. For most of the regulars.

A perk that comes from being a regular is you can (generally speaking) pretty much walk up to the counter, and one of us will greet you by name and prepare your order without you having to say a word. While this is all good and fun for both the customer and us workers when it's a nice regular, being a regular can also turn a cool person into an Entitlement Bitch. Too often have I accidentally wiped the smug grin off a regular's face when I've accidentally forgotten to give them their 'Centre Discount' - "Uh, no that's not the right price. I always pay less than that." they'd snap.

So today, along comes Marie. I have only ever served her once before, and she was as rude and cranky as she was then as she is now. She's leaning on her trolley, her face is completely covered in wrinkles and I can barely see any crows feet around her eyes. She also looks like she constantly smells an unpleasant smell. I can tell she's a happy chappy.

"Hey, how are you today?" I chirp generically.

"Just the usual," she hisses.

Okay, so I did say that our regulars can generally stand at a counter without speaking and we'd know what they want. But they also generally have common sense and are nice enough to will tell you what they're after in the event that their order has slipped your mind.

So, having only served her once, I wasn't sure what her regular was. "I'm sorry, ma'am, what were you after today?"

I'm still grinning, expecting her to hiss "CAPPUCCINO" or something at me. But no, she chucks a fit.

"My usual. My usual!" she spits, leaning forward at me with this intense look of what I suspect was distaste in her eyes. "I want my usual!"



Well fuck, I wasn't aware there was a drink called "my usual" for sale at my store.
At this point, I have no idea what to do so I look to J, the barista for help. "Small cappuccino for the lady!" he bellows, and I ring up her order. She throws the money on the counter for me to pick up, while growling, "you must be new."

No I'm not, lady. In the 6 months I've been working here, I haven't seen your batshit ass until last week.

While becoming a Regular is obviously a strongly sought after title in this shopping centre, would it really kill to just realise that once in a while, ordering like a normal person wouldn't hurt?