Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a short gap between my morning classes and have made a habit of sitting in the library catching up on a book or the headlines on the front page of the Journal Sentinel.
The giant Andersen Library has secret niches everywhere, silent and perfect for isolating my occasionally attention-deficit self from the slightest distraction. But on these Tuesday and Thursday mornings, solitude is not my objective. On these Tuesday and Thursday mornings I, in fact, seek out the loudest corner of the entire library – the corner closest to Food for Thought, a small cafe operated by a sweet, chatty old lady.
She eagerly greets each customer, recognizing most by name, as they order their routine Venti mocha and blueberry muffin. Each day she picks a topic, and brings it up with each customer as they stop in. Sometimes the weather, sometimes a hot pop culture topic. Today she has chosen the oh-so-popular topic of swine flu. As if some human poll carefully tabulating each response, she has the same sweet conversation with each everyone…
“Good morning, Bob! The bananas are really good today, nice and ripe. You should get one. How are you feeling? Have you relatives in Milwaukee… you know the swine flu is there. They closed schools in Milwaukee. Are you worried? I hope you’re taking care of yourself. I wish they’d just close down the University. I’d feel so much safer then.”
I curiously eaves drop as each customer answers with the same lines…
“Oh yeah, heard about that. yadayadayada.”
This just doesn’t happen anymore. This dialog between customer and employee has become a somewhat of a prehistoric legend, yet here at the Food for Thought Cafe in the Andersen Library at UW-Whitewater, customer service is not only alive and well, but thriving.
Pretty sure the last time (and the time before that, and the time before that) I went to Wal-mart the ever-so-kind clerk flung my merchandise over the scanner, carelessly tossed it in the bag (heedless of the dozen eggs or malleable loaf of bread being crushed at the bottom,) just before muttering my total to me and nodding me off, sans a “thank you” or “have a nice day.”
In a world where a rapid decline of customer service has become acceptable, it’s the simple things in life – like the coffee lady’s sweet and sincere attempt to make not only a conversation but a connection with each caffeine driven customer she encounters – that motivate me to pay $3.47 for my cup of tea (which I could have made at home for $.13.)
