UnpleasantlySexy

If customer service isn't dead, it's floppin' around on the shore with only minutes to go.

See...Julia and I went to see Hellboy 2 with her folks and her brother this weekend. It wasn’t showing at Alamo (the best thing to happen to movies since Scarlett Johannson's pouty lips), so we went to a *gasp* regular theater, and all’s I wanted was a gigantic Diet Coke.

I waited in line behind two people as the girl at the concession stand ignored us completely. Her boyfriend was leaning over the edge of the neighboring register, talking incessantly to her. I waited for approximately 8 minutes, at which point the girl looked up and said, “I can help you guys down there,” and pointed to the other end of the concessions counter.

Grumbling, we walked all the way down to the far end, where we waited another 3 or 4 minutes for her to finish her conversation with her man. When she finally showed up, she helped the two people in front of me — not particularly well, but they at least walked off with what they asked for.

When I approached the counter, however, The Boyfriend was apparently trying to tell her something in sign language from across the lobby, directly behind me. The girl never looked at me – not once. She also periodically stood on her tiptoes to look over me and shout things in Spanish at the top of her lungs, but she was very small, and the tiptoe pose only made it so that she yelled right into my face.

Then, still without looking at me, she said, “What do you want?”

I said “a large Diet coke with half ice.”

She scooped the cup into the ice bin thingy, filling it to the top, and then squeezed the cup to squish some of the ice out. This deformed the cup beyond lid-able hope, but whatever. She filled it with Diet Coke, and continued to yell at her man in Spanish.

When the cup was full, she took a lid and, rather than just putting it on the cup, she mashed it down so hard that she smooshed it down into the cup, spilling my soda all over the counter. She just laughed, pulled the lid out with her fingers all in my soda, and put another one on. The cup was only about 70% full of soda now, though, so I asked if she could fill it back up, please.

She said, “Man...” and then threw the cup away and walked off. I wasn't paying five bucks for three-and-a-half bucks' worth of soda, though, so I don't think I was being unreasonable. Plus, she crinkled up my cup, and its liquid-containment ability was no longer a given, in my opinion.

A few seconds later, she came back with another cup, and things went smoothly from there on out. I paid five dollars, and went into the movie a few minutes late, hating everything about the state of customer service and fully understanding why movie theaters are losing money.

Because of THAT girl.

Am I just getting old and crotchety? How do the young folks these days get sodas that didn't have the servers fingers in it just a moment before? Maybe they don't care. I dunno. But...ew! I'd love to be the guy that fired her:

"But why are you firing me?!?"

"Because you suck at coexisting with humanity...and your Diet Coke handling skills are sub-par."