Flashback Friday: Recognize. Respond.
Every Friday I dig into the archives and dust off an old post. If you haven’t read it, it’s new to you!
Not every Starbucks has a singing barista, but mine most certainly does. Or at least, it used to (more on that later). Some mornings, the baritoned barista’s impromptu ballads about coffee cake brought a welcomed smile. He was happy…I was happy…the world was happy.
But some mornings, when he would annoyingly deliver the Batman theme song, I wasn’t so happy. Maybe it was because I was trying to process email and the nana nana nana nana drove my concentration factor down.
Then there were mornings when I was happy…but he wasn’t. I didn’t get a song. There was no crumb cake tune, no masked crusader ditty. He was reserved, quiet, and maybe…whoa! Is that a little bit of barista bad mood I detect?
I also noticed that my singing barista had a similar effect on other customers. There were some who playfully interacted with him. There were others who appeared to want to push his head into the coffee grinder and hit “Turkish Blend.” There were people who just wanted their coffee, skip the show.
It’s interesting to note that one day, he was just…gone. No melody. No medley. He waltzed off into the espresso lane, never to be heard from again.
I’ve always wondered what happened to him, but I’ve never forgotten the two important lessons I learned from him:
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