The Fine Art of Walking Backwards

Since the end of my freshman year, I have been a student tour guide for my university. Yes, I'm one of those people who walks backwards while deftly avoiding sign posts and speeding students to take you around my lovely campus and tell you  our students' average SAT score, how small our classes are, and why our having a rock climbing wall means you should come to our school. Over the three and a half years I've been giving tours, I've come up with a laundry list of things I desperately wish I could say to prospective parents and students, but, for what will quickly become obvious reasons, have kept to myself. Here's a few:

I LOVE it when people ask me questions.
I know when I was touring colleges as a high school senior, I never wanted to interrupt the tour guide because I thought it might be rude, or that my questions were obvious or not important or silly. Now that I'm on the other side, I LOVE those questions, no matter how silly or frivolous they might be. (You can keep the rude ones, though.) Please be aware: if you say nothing, then I have to talk for 45 minutes straight. If you say nothing, then by the end of the 45 minutes, not only will my voice be gone, but I'll be reduced to telling you things you don't care about, like which foreign presidents have visited my school. Please, PLEASE don't hesitate to ask anything that comes to mind. I will gladly tell you about what it's like to live in a forced triple, or the names of the fencing clubs on campus, or what the best restaurants in the area are. All you have to do is ask. It will make the tour better for me and for you, trust me.

The only exception to the above rule is: I HATE when people ask, 'What don't you like about your school?'
To be totally fair: this was the question I asked on every. single. tour. I took in high school. It made and makes perfect sense to me why people ask this question: as a tour guide, my job is to accentuate the positive and make you want to come to my school. In order to get the full picture, asking this question makes a ton of sense. But please understand the difficult position you are putting me in: not only are you forcing me to speak badly about an institution that I love, but what may seem like no big deal to you may offend or turn away other visitors. Prospective students aren't the only ones who take tours: alumni and professors will often come too. If I say something like 'I wish the administration gave clubs a bigger budget,' or 'there are roaches in the older buildings,' or anything like that, then I risk upsetting and angering these visitors. If you want to ask, have the courtesy to wait and approach me after the tour. Once we are speaking one-on-one, I will be more comfortable and more honest, and I will honestly tell you: "while there are things that I dislike about ---- University, I would not be here and I would especially not be giving tours if I didn't really enjoy it. However, I do sometimes feel..."

Parents: your child is leaving home in a year--possibly even less. You should not be speaking for them!
This one absolutely blows my mind, possibly because my parents taught and expected me to speak up for myself since the age of seven or so. So maybe my expectations are unreasonably high, but: I find it completely unacceptable when 17 and 18 or even 15 and 16-year-olds are unable or unwilling to speak for themselves. (The exceptions, of course, are disabilities or language barriers.) This bothers me every time it happens, but especially when I ask the student a question directly ('what are you interested in studying?') and the parents answers, or, even worse, when the student starts to speak and the parent corrects or speaks over them. You are not going to live in your child's pocket their whole life--let them grow up!

Students: the same applies to you. You are on the verge of being an adult. Act like it!
Nothing, and I mean nothing, bothers me more than an apathetic teenager. Yep, I know it sort of goes wtih the territory, but: these are teenagers about to go to college, teenagers on the verge of becoming adults. I am giving up my time for absolutely no money or benefits in order to show you around my school. The very, VERY least you can do is act interested, even if you really aren't. Trust me, even though I have a polite smile pasted on my face, if you are slouched down into your sweatshirt at the back of the group with a scowl on your face, inside I am thinking of ten different ways to disembowl you. The absolute worst in when your parents are being polite and interested and you roll your eyes at every word they say. Going to college is a privelege, not a right. So even if your parents dragged you here and you have absolutely zero interest in this school, be polite. You look like an obnoxious small child and you are impressing no one and embarrassing yourself. Grow the hell up.

Do not, I repeat, do not bring children younger than fourteen on the tour (or even to the college) unless absolutely necessary.
One of the most touching moments I've ever had on a tour was when a seven-year-old boy came with his mom and his seventeen-year-old brother on a tour. As we toured around the school, I was worried that the boy was ill, because he kept biting his lip and looking at the ground and clinging to his brother's hand. All of a sudden, as I was about to show them a freshman dorm, the little boy burst into tears and sobbed, 'I don't want you to go to college!' It turns out that the boy thought his brother was leaving for college that day, that his brother wasn't coming home with him. It was adorable and sweet, but I also felt bad for the kid, and it completely disrupted my tour. However, he was far preferable to the kids who run screaming down the hall, climb on old furniture, or the tweens who talk loudly on their cell phones throughout the tour. Parents: this is a college tour. It is assumed that the people on the tour are prospective college students. We even have special tours for younger children. Unless you absolutely could not get a babysitter, please, please leave your fourteen-and-unders home.

Moms (and, occasionally, Dads) I really appreciate it when you keep me from walking into things.
What's surprising isn't so much that there's a mom on almost every tour who warns me every time I'm about to step off a curb or into the path of a post or another person (I walk backwards,) what's surprising is the occasional tour where no one tells me before I walk into something, even though they're watching it happen. I suppose this is the Bystander Effect, where people don't say anything because they all assume someone else will. Still, though, when my back is literally seconds from colliding with a lamppost, you'd think someone would speak up!

I appreciate your interest in my life, but please remember that I am a person, not just a tour guide.
I start off every tour with a little spiel, "My name is X, I'm from X, I'm majoring in X, and I enjoy doing X." I'll also mention my internships and that I studied abroad, before going around and asking each student about themselves (if it's less than thirty people) or asking people to call out some of their interests (if it's over thirty people.) Maybe once every four or five tours, I get a person (almost always a dad, occasionally a mom or student) who has some kind of connection to one of those areas of my life (they had the same major, they're from the same city, whatever) and feels the need to talk to me about it throughout the entire tour. I don't mind chatting with prospective students and parents--in fact, I enjoy it--but not while I'm meant to be giving a tour to twenty or so other people. I once had a man who, after I told my tour group that I had done a three-week class in Guangzhou, China, felt the need to spend the whole tour telling me about a business trip he once took to Beijing. It was disruptive and made it hard for me to cover the information that everyone wanted to hear--and yet, I will take that guy any day to the people who ask the invasive and rude questions about my life. It is not appropriate or polite to question someone's religious beliefs, heritage, political affiliation, sexual orientation, or financial situation--all things I have been asked on tours. There is a line, and you should know where it is. If you don't--know that if you cross it I will calmly and coldly tell you that it's none of your business, and I will make note of your name to the Admissions Department.

Teachers: I understand that field trips are sort of like mini-vacations for you, but if you expect me to do your job, then I will take a cut of your paycheck, please. 
For the most part, school groups are my absolute favorite sort of tour. The younger kids especially are super excited to see the school, and are perfectly content if I spend the whole tour telling them ghost stories, fun facts, stories about movies filmed at my school, and famous people who have visited. My absolute favorite moment ever was when a little nine-year-old girl asked me in perfect seriousness what college kids' bedtime is. Another was when a twelve-year-old boy, upon seeing a woman walk by while smoking, yelled at the top of his voice, "Smoking is BAD FOR YOU!!" You tell her, kid! But I am not a teacher, I am a tour guide, and it is not my responsibility to make certain your students behave. I have had tours where teachers wandered at the back of the group, ignoring their yelling, arguing students who are completely ignoring me. Two friends of mine, a guy and girl, once gave a tour where some teenage boys kept making blatant sexual comments about them--and the teachers ignored it. Once I took a group of rowdy fourth graders into our Student Center, only to have them run madly all over the place. One of the teachers looked at me and said, "You shouldn't let them do that." Really lady? Really? I love kids, I love showing them my school, but I flat-out refuse to be the disciplinarian for forty OOC kids. Do your job--or your school won't be invited back.

Rules are in place for a reason, and no, I am not going to bend or break them for you no matter how much you weedle or scowl at me.
You wouldn't think there would be that many rules to follow on a tour of a college, but people seem very adept at finding them and asking to break them. Specifically: I cannot show dorm bathrooms, I cannot show our gym, and and I cannot show a room in a dorm other than the one I have been assigned. The bathroom and gym rules exist to protect student privacy. I understand that other schools like to show their state-of-the art workout facilities, but I think it's good that my school refuses in order to protect student privacy. As for the dorms, we have freshmen called Dorm Buddies who sign up to show their rooms at specific times. This is to avoid putting someone in an uncomfortable situation and to ensure that every tour gets to see a room. I'm sorry you'd rather see Smith Dorm instead of Jones Dorm, but I am not going to change the rules for you no matter how pushy you become with me. If your student comes here, they will be going to a school that respects their students. Be content with that.

I have absolutely NO bearing on your student's admissions decision.
The exception, of course, is, as I said above, if a student is unusually--like way over the top--rude, then I will inform the Admissions Department, and that may negatively affect their opinion of you. But other than that, I have NO bearing on whether or not your son or daughter goes to X University. Therefore, do not feel the need to nudge your student into asking an 'intelligent' question in order to show their smarts or their interest. If you or they genuinely want to know then I will happily answer, but understand that I can pick out the questions designed to catch my attention and give me a positive impression of a student a mile away. For instance: "I am interested in study abroad. What are the chances that a double major in the honors college could study abroad?" Well, what do YOU think the chances are? Pretty good, obviously, which is why you asked. Most people aren't that blatant, but you'd be surprised just how far some will go.

Understand: if you ask about alcohol at all, in any capacity, you are putting me in an impossible position.
There's just no way I can win with this question. If I say that there is a healthy party life at my school, then I will chase away certain parents and students. If I say that there is minimal on-campus alcohol use and most students take part in other activities, I will chase away certain other parents and students. Reciting the university policy--that alcohol is only allowed in rooms where everyone is 21+--only makes people more curious. If you really must ask about alcohol--whether it's 'where are the best bars?' or 'I'm Mormon and don't drink, will I fit in?'--then please, please, please, approach me privately after the tour, and I will give you as honest an answer as I can. It's a college. Yes, people drink. Yes, people can be really stupid. No, I don't think we're a crazy party school. Oy.

The same goes for sex.
Duh.

Believe it or not, I actually enjoy doing this!
People always look amazed when they learn that I (and all the other tour guides) do this for no pay and little personal benefit. We do it becauase we love our school, and we enjoy interacting with people. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it. Take that as a huge endorsement for my school--you'd be surprised how many schools either hire their tour guides or have them on work-study programs. The fact that we have people who volunteer at my school--so many people, in fact, that we actually turn people away--should be a huge sign of how much the students love going here.

Cates

Make Me Smile: A Review of Sarah Micklem's Firethorn

I recently read Sarah Micklem's Firethorn, a high-fantasy novel for adults. To be perfectly honest, if I wasn't required to read it for class, I probably never would have picked it up. I put that out there just to acknowledge that this book is not the sort of thing I usually choose to read, so some of my feelings about it may be due to my lukewarm attitude towards the genre in general, rather than problems specific to this particular book.

To be clear: I love fantasy, but only certain types of fantasy, and even within the types I like I'm very picky. For one, I vastly prefer children's fantasy to fantasy stories intended for adults. The exceptions are pretty much Lord of the Rings and medieval literature like The Mabinogion and Sir Gawain. (Yes, I am a nerd. Sue me.) Then, even within children's fantasy, I vastly prefer 'low' fantasy--which, to me, is defined as fantasy that has its basis in the real world, like Diane Duane's Young Wizards books, to 'high' fantasy, stories set entirely in a fantasy realm with little or no connection to the real, modern world,  like Victoria Hanley's The Seer and the Sword. (Of course, my absolute favorites are the ones that take place almost entirely in a fantasy world, but manage to start or anchor themselves in reality, like Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, all of Eva Ibbotson's work, the Pendragon books, etc., but I digress.)

Firethorn is definitively both high fantasy, and intended for adults, not children. (I'm pretty sure anyone fifteen and up would be fine reading this, but that's true of most adult novels.) The thing was, even though Firethorn isn't my usual cup of tea (Twinning's Earl Grey, brewed for two minutes, with a slice of lemon if available.) there was a lot about it that was very, very good.

The writing was beautiful and flawless in a way that made me jealous with its flowing, lyrical language. The titular main character skated the hairy edge of Mary-Suedom (and, from what I heard, dove right off the freaking cliff in the sequel) but managed to be likeable, sympathetic, and engaging. The main thing that saved her (for now) was that she was flawed. She was naive, and impatient, and conceited at times in a way that made her entirely real and relatable. Then there was Micklem's world-building, which was phenomenal. Another review described it as 'typical serf and sword medieval with an Indian-Greek-Japanese mythology fusion,' which captures it very well.

Micklem's greatest strength is making this world feel incredibly real to the reader, from the sights to the sounds and the settings and, yes, the smells. For most of the novel Firethorn is travelling with a group of soldiers marching off to war, and there is no romanticising to be found. The entire experience is captured in gritty, realistic detail. Firethorn is travelling with the soldiers because she becomes the, ehm, "bed companion" of one Sir Galan, and though they have a mutual attraction that grows into something like love at the end, it is done in a very realistic, non-romantic way. Neither ever forgets that she is a mud (low-born) and he is a blood (noble) and therefore she is bound by law to obey him.

With all of that going for it, I really had to sit down and think to figure out exactly why I did not enjoy reading this book.

The one reason I knew I'd had an issue with it was because throughout I couldn't escape the distant feeling, like a minor itch, that Micklem had copied just a little too much of Firethorn's character from Tamora Pierce's Alanna of Trebond. The similarities were thus: both are redheads, both are healers who grow into their gifts over the course of their stories, both are stubborn and proud and suffer the consequences of their stubborness/pride, both are women operating in a mostly men's world, both grapple with their feelings for a high-born man because they fear losing their independence, and both are marked by a female god as special in the middle of a forest. All of what I just said could be and probably is true of other characters in literature, except the last point. Again, I'm probably over-reading it and I'm sure it wasn't deliberate. But I couldn't escape the feeling that I was reading about Alanna under a different name in a somewhat different set of circumstances.

The bigger problem though, and the reason I started this blog post, was that the book did not make me smile at any point while reading it. Now, again--this is not a cardinal sin. This is a problem that is specific to me, definitely not to every reader out there. But after thinking about it, that was the problem that I specifically could not overcome. There was nothing joyful in this book, and there was nothing humorous. I get that humor was entirely not the point of this story, but that didn't change the fact that it wasn't there, and therefore I didn't enjoy the book.

All of my favorite books, and even every one that I can recall enjoying, have made me smile.

I can and have read books mostly devoid of humor that I still enjoyed, like Phillip Pullman's Golden Compass. But I can still remember smiling when I first read about daemons, and the description of the kingdom in the North, and the bridge made of dust. If a book doesn't have humor, it needs to have wonder and awe, at least for me to enjoy it. To give a "literary" example, John Steinbeck's East of Eden is a heavy, serious, not-funny-in-the-least story. But the moment when Lee, Samuel, and Adam discover the meaning of Timshel gave me chills, and the ending, with its quiet promise of hope and redemption between Cal and Abra, gave me a happy, hopeful feeling inside.

Firethorn never did that for me. That's not to say the book is all doom and gloom, but it is heavy and serious, and even when things are going well or looking up for Firethorn, it's all still pretty grim. K.A. Applegate's Animorphs was even darker and heavier than Firethorn, for all that it was written for children, but it was still a rare book in the series that didn't make me laugh out loud. (Don't believe me about the darkness? Just try tracing Jake and Tom's relationship and character arcs sometime. If you're not weeping at the end, you didn't read the books.)

So my long, drawn out point is: I didn't like Firethorn because it didn't make me smile. Maybe I'm alone in this. Maybe it's because I'm addicted to happy endings. Maybe it's because high fantasy for adults really isn't my thing. Maybe it's because it started off with twelve pages of scenery and no dialogue, something that's sure to put me off. But I did not enjoy reading Firethorn, and I don't care for the book. To me, great literature--whether for adults or children, whether science fiction or literary novel, whether written a hundred years ago or a hundred days ago--are the stories that do it all. The ones that make you laugh, cry, smile, scream, tear out your hair and dance around the room. Great literature makes me smile.

Kates


P.S: On a mostly unrelated note: I strongly, strongly recommend reading Georges T. Dodd's review of Firethorn, and his objection to its (and other medievalist fantasies') portrayal of rape. Then, read Sarah Micklem's even better defense of her story and her character, and of rape survivors in general. Both of them have excellent points and present them in a logical, respectful, well-written manner. I'm going to meet Sarah Micklem tomorrow, and though I'll stay mum about my feelings about her book, I will thank her and congratulate her for her phenomenal, empowering essay.

Memoirs of a Soda Jerk

So a while back, there was an article in Reader’s Digest that collected a list of things that people in various professions wished they could say to their clients or customers but never would.  Some of them were amusing, some were surprising and gave me new insight, and some of the ones by doctors especially were downright terrifying.  Being that it is I have a somewhat unusual job—I mix soda and scoop ice cream in a 1950s-style soda fountain attached to a pharmacy on the main street of a small town in America—I figured I’d come up with my own list.  I should probably say that I love my job and I think it’s one of the coolest parts of my life right now, and that most of these are minor pet peeves.  However, they are also things that I wish people would take two seconds and consider before they acted.  None of these suggestions applies to every customer, or even most.  95% of the people that frequent the soda fountain are nice, fun, quirky, and extremely polite and considerate.  There are, however, a few I’d rather not have to deal with. 

Please use a little discretion in what you choose to disclose to me.   One of my favorite parts of doing my job is talking with the customers that come in as they eat their ice cream and sodas.  This includes hearing small snippets of people’s life stories can be fascinating – I once had a lengthy conversation with a traveling salesman about the similarities between Satanists and self-help books, and another with an architect about the philosophy of aesthetics.  These topics of conversation—and other ones such as career choices, books and movies, popular trends, political issues, and even the weather—tend to be entertaining and lively for all people, and are perfectly appropriate for casual social interaction.  Other subjects, such as hate-filled tirades against one’s landlord, explicit descriptions of past sexual encounters, thorough descriptions of one’s entire family history of mental illness, or brutally honest opinions about one’s fellow regulars, are not appropriate to talk about to a young woman you have only just met, and should probably be avoided in an establishment filled with many families.  Though I am flattered that you feel comfortable disclosing this kind of information to me, I also think you should be aware that you are making me and everyone else in the shop uncomfortable and you are potentially opening yourself up to social judgment.  So please, keep it casual when in public talking to someone you don’t know.

On that same subject, please use a little discretion in what you ask me.  Although, as I said, I love talking with patrons at the soda fountain, I also prefer to keep things professional, which means not giving out personal information about myself.  I will be delighted to answer any questions you might have about aspects of my job—how I keep my hands from drying out in the dishwater, what kind of ice cream soda I like best, and so on—and I will be happy to talk about other surface aspects of my life.  I enjoy answering questions about where I go to school, whether I live in the area, what my career goals are, what books I like, who I plan to vote for in the upcoming election, or what my major is.  I’ll even tell you my age, my heritage, and my home state.  However, expect me to deflect or else outright lie if you ask me what my last name is and how to spell it, how to contact me online, what my parents do for a living, how much money I make, what my real opinion is on my boss, how I feel about any of your fellow patrons, whether I’m studying psychology because I have a family member with a psychiatric illness, or any sort of question that starts with “Don’t you just hate…?” followed by the name of a person or group of people. 

Parents, don’t you think you’re going a little overboard on teaching your kids not to talk to strangers?  The parents I’m talking about aren’t the ones who like to keep an eye on their kids and prevent them from wandering off—this, in my mind, constitutes a healthy amount of concern.  The parents I’m talking about are the ones who don’t seem to notice or care when children as old as thirteen or fourteen are visibly intimidated by me.  I’m a five-foot hundred-pound baby-faced adolescent midget who is, as previously stated, if anything too polite.  I’m not that intimidating.  So it has me concerned when a frightening proportion of children refuse to look at me, talk to me, or respond to my questions about what toppings they’d like with anything more than a desperate glance at their parents for guidance.  I’m not asking that every child no matter how shy be forced into a full-on therapy session with me.  But I do firmly believe in parents who gently tell their shyer children to give their orders directly to me rather than using the parent as a middleman, or nudge their kids in the right direction with a “can you say thank you?” after I deliver the ice cream.  Again, I understand that some kids are shyer than others, but I also get incredibly rankled by parents who walk in , gesture to their children, and say “she’d like a hot-fudge sundae” without even consulting anyone, and then answer any questions or comments I direct at the child without giving him or her a chance to answer.

The “ring for service” bell is there for a reason.  No, that reason is not so that small children can ring it repeatedly and make me want to strangle them, which is what every single one who discovers the darn thing does.  It’s there so that when I step away from the counter to restock shelves or mop the floor or even just use the bathroom, I can figure out if someone wanders up to the counter in my absence.  But people will just stand there awkwardly and not ring it for a good fifteen minutes if I’m busy in the back for a while, or, worse, they’ll wander away without having rung it at all.  I promise I won’t be offended if you ring the bell.  If I didn’t want people to ring it then I could just as easily take it off the counter.  Please, please let me know if you’re waiting for service.  I don’t want you to be so polite you can’t get service, because though it might not seem like it ringing for me is in no way rude. 

If you just ordered three scoops of anything, I can tell you right now with absolute certainty that your eyes are bigger than your stomach.  Not to be stereotypical, but the only people who ever order three scoops of ice cream are males between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five.  And none of them ever succeed in finishing that much ice cream; what’s left behind is anywhere from half a scoop to over a scoop and a half of ice cream.  The extra forty-five cents the soda fountain made because of the bigger order are not worth throwing away that much food.  Ice cream is a heavy, thick food with a ton of calories packed into very little space. There is just no way that people can ingest that much of such a heavy food without getting sick.  Frankly, the only reason I think we still have that option on the menu is so that people won’t feel like they’re getting a “large” when they order two scoops instead of one.  With the exception of one single rail-thin teenage boy with the metabolism of a Norwegian Ridgeback, no one has ever finished off three scoops of ice cream in one sitting.  And the teenage boy/garbage disposal came back after that and ate a milkshake and two bagels with cream cheese as well, so that just firmly cements the idea that he was a one-of-a-kind freak of nature. 

I wash your dishes after you use them.  Learning this should probably come as a relief for most people.  However, what this also means (that many people fail to consider) is that I have to handle any dishes that you just used.  So dumping all the trash in your pockets into your petal glass, hawking a loogie onto your empty plate, or (my personal favorite) sticking wads of used chewing gum to the rims of your bowls is inconsiderate and disgusting.  Even if we did have a dishwasher (which we do not), I would still have to scrape your wad of gum off our bowl by hand.  Considering that there is a trash can easily accessible at the end of the counter, and there are napkins available all over the place, I really wish people would stop and think for two seconds before creating an extra fifteen minutes’ worth of soaking, scraping, and disinfecting for whoever cleans the dishes by leaving gum stuck to bowls. 

I don’t know what you mean by “regular.”  There is nothing more frustrating for me than when someone comes in and uses the word “regular” at any point anywhere in their order.  A “’regular’ root beer float” could refer to the size, in which case the person could consider small, medium, or large to be “regular.”  It could refer to the type of ice cream, in which case “regular” could mean either chocolate or vanilla.  It could refer to the frequency with which this person has ordered root beer floats in the past, in which case it tells me nothing at all about size of type of ice cream.  It could mean that the person intends for the root beer to be “for here” not “to go”—or the other way around. It could even mean that the person simply knows that root beer is the most common vehicle for floats and the order itself is therefore “regular.”  I have no idea, and the use of that word starts of a string of twenty questions I have to use to narrow down what the person really means.  And don’t get me started on “regular coffee.”  For half the people that means “with the regular additives” as in with cream and sugar.  For the other half “regular” means black.  Except, of course, for the ones who mean “regular” as in “not decaf.”  Or the ones who want “regular” coffee as in small, the most commonly ordered size, or medium, the standard size.  Or the people who, as with the root beer floats, are simply referring to the commonality of the order either for themselves specifically or for the world in general.  I can’t tell which of the thousands of potential uses of “regular” you mean to employ in any given sentence.  I can use slang with the best of them—“diesel” for espresso or “unleaded” for decaf, “shamrock shakes” for those with Irish Cream ice cream and “black and white” for those with both chocolate and vanilla—but I can’t do a darned thing with ambiguity except pepper you with eight more questions to try and narrow your order down. 

Your sarcastic commentary is neither as amusing nor as original as you clearly think it is.  When I’m struggling to lift two ten-gallon tubs of ice cream at the same time, trying and failing to muscle open a stubborn cherry jar, literally up to my elbows in hot fudge, or otherwise visibly frustrated, you know what I really appreciate?  Customers coming up behind me and going “having fun?” as if it’s the wittiest thing in the world.  Mostly I respond to these inquiries by smiling and going “of course!” as if I had no idea the question could be in any way sarcastic.  It’s not that I don’t get it.  It’s just that the alternative is saying something I’ll regret. 

Please control your children.  Mostly I love having kids at the counter.  They are upbeat, funny, and as often as not more polite than their own parents.  They have an endless fascination with the tip jar that means that more than once I’ve had a whole gaggle of kids begging their parents to let them put money in—“Joey got to put a whole dollar in, can’t I put a whole dollar in?”—which never fails to amuse and delight me.  That said, I get very frustrated when parents don’t even comment on it when their kids scream, yell, knock things over, pull bottles off the shelves, make inappropriate comments about other patrons (“she’s really fat”), stand on the counter, tip stools over, or repeatedly pound on the “ring for service” bell when I’m already standing right there.  Generally parents are very good at trying to correct their kids gently or not let them get out of hand in the first place, but when a child of ten or eleven who is old enough to know better is repeatedly whacking the bell and screaming about how he hates chocolate ice cream, and his mother’s only response is a tired, “Michael…”  Well, gosh.  I wonder how your son learned to misbehave in the first place. 

This will no doubt come as a shock to a lot of people, but I actually like my boss.  Sure, she can be a little rough around the edges at times, but she’s also funny and considerate and more than willing to be flexible and she is very forgiving of occasional broken dishes or accidental cursing on my part.  However, even if I didn’t like her, this does not mean that I would ever consider mouthing off about her to a patron when asked, letting people get away with paying less to screw her over, doing anything that she would “never have to know about,” violating rules such as opening the register to give change because I didn’t care about her, or in any way validating statements such as “Isn’t ________ such a pain?”  I’m sorry that so many people apparently have such strained relationships with their employers, but that’s simply not true for me. 

This is not a low-calorie food.  That statement applies to pretty much everything we serve—ice cream is ice cream, soda is soda, and candy is candy.  None of that stuff ever claimed to be anything different.  The main ingredient in all three foods is some kind of sugar or saturated fat.  We have options such as soy ice cream, diet soda, or candy made with artificial sweeteners that have less sugar and fat than the full-blooded options, but that doesn’t mean that any of that stuff is remotely healthy, just less likely to cause you to gain weight.  I’m sorry there are no other options, but if you want to be healthy don’t order ice cream.  Or else do so in moderation—get one scoop with fresh fruit or nuts instead of the flavored syrups, and hold off on doing so more than once or twice a week.  And then enjoy it.  I do feel bad that there are people who are older or overweight and therefore can’t have as much junk food as I can while still remaining healthy.  But I still feel frustrated on behalf of anyone who spends half an hour agonizing over calories before ordering something with lots of ice cream and candy and extra hot fudge and then sits there looking miserable while eating it because the calories have become more important than the yummy taste.  If you’re going to feel guilty and miserable after—or worse, during—your caramel sundae because of your health, then I can guarantee you it won’t be worth it.  If you’re going to say “screw it” for a day and enjoy the heck out of yourself while being bad occasionally, then I say by all means go for it.  The point of ice cream is to make people happy, not healthy.  If you can’t get either effect out of eating dessert then I’d recommend a nice spinach salad instead. 

“Warning” had it right.  Although kids are some of our most awesome customers, my personal favorites are the old ladies who fulfill the poem “Warning: When I Am Old I Shall Wear Purple” to the letter.  These are the sweet grandmotherly ones who pull up to the pharmacy on ten-speed bikes or motorcycles, who call me “dear” and curse like sailors but always apologize afterward, and who eat ice cream every day because they can.  They tend to talk constantly about “kicking the bucket in a few years” and yet are some of the happiest, craziest, most fun-loving people I’ve ever met.  They learn my name and the names of the other regulars and actually remember, they ask me how my psychology degree is going even though I only mentioned it to them once several weeks ago, and they talk about Jesus in the way that has to do with loving everyone equally and not judging people who aren’t Catholic.  These women are what I want to be when I grow up.  No question. 

I just work here.  Okay, I’m being facetious, but it’s really true that people fail to grasp this.  What many people fail to appreciate is that I do not run the entire company, and there are therefore many decisions that are simply out of my control.  For instance, I do not mix the ice cream that I serve them, so I can’t do a darned thing if they want more chocolate chips in their scoop of mocha chocolate chunk, or less mint flavor in their Irish Cream.  I can’t spontaneously conjure a topping, flavor of soda, or type of coffee they would like to order but we don’t have.  I can’t help it if they think the fountain should open sooner or close later or switch to serving a different type of root beer.  None of these suggestions mean anything to me.  Furthermore, I get extremely frustrated when people blame me for things that simply cannot possibly be my fault: if their Maple Walnut is made with maple sugar not maple syrup, if their Butter Pecan needs more nuts, if their bagel doesn’t have as many sesame seeds as the ones we had last week, so on and so forth.  Yelling at me won’t change the fact that I have no influence over any of that.  In the same vein, I’m glad if people like a particular flavor, but compliments on the ice cream are meaningless to me.  Compliments on the presentation of a particular sundae or the size of an ice cream scoop I added to a float mean a lot more, as do suggestions for improvement in this area. 

It’s a soda fountain, not a restaurant.  This means that it works the same way as a café: you order at the counter, you pick your food up at the counter, and you drop your dishes off at the counter when you’re done.  On busy days especially I don’t have time to run six or seven bowls out to people who ordered and then went to sit outside, and I especially don’t have time to go running outside to collect the dishes that they left behind.  I’m considering implementing the Starbucks method, whereby orders are simply left sitting on the counter for people to pick up or not.  I’m a soda jerk, not a waitress.  If you expect me to bring your dishes to and from your table, I expect a twenty percent tip for my services, please. 

On the subject of tips, I have never once in my career done anything to merit more than a dollar or some change in the jar.  I may appreciate people leaving me two dollar, three dollar, or five dollar tips, but this also makes me very uncomfortable because it makes me feel like I’m getting more money than I deserve.  Like I said, I’m not a waitress.  Convention dictates that giving me more than a dollar or so is total overkill, and I agree.  I don’t cook food, or bring it to people’s tables, or even do much more than combine a few ingredients in a cup or bowl.  The single greatest factor that dictates how much people tip me is how big a wad of change I hand the person after that person pays.  I love it when patrons take note of the fact that I’m working hard and give me a small bonus, but the whole tipping thing is largely subjective, and I accept this fact.  So don’t feel obligated to tip, and most definitely don’t feel obligated to tip generously. 

If you notice that I’m a little cold toward you or I’m not as patient as I would normally be, consider that it might be something about your own behavior inspiring that response.  I have never once snapped at a customer, rolled my eyes, used a put-upon sigh, or even lost my temper at all.  I pride myself on killing people with kindness even when they’re themselves being rude.  However, about 90% of the time when I have observed this behavior in waiters, receptionists, or other café employees, it is as a direct result of something the customer is doing.  Snapping at someone making your food, telling the person to “hurry up” when there is really nothing the person could do to move faster, loudly pointing out a small mistake the person is already well aware of, criticizing something about the store the person cannot change, or telling the person that he or she is doing something wrong in an order not your own will not endear anyone to you.  Therefore, if you say something like “Why isn’t my damn coffee as hot as it’s supposed to be?” or “you just broke that cup; now you’re in trouble” or “Could you be any slower?” don’t be so shocked if the employee isn’t absolutely polite and pleasant in response.  It’s the golden rule, and it still stands. 

If I’m watching you unsubtly as you peruse the make-up aisle or fiddle with the tip jar, it’s nothing personal. The fact that I am watching you and being obvious about it has nothing to do with your age, or your gender, or your ethnicity, or the way you’re dressed, or in fact anything about you at all.  It’s just the fact that you exist, and you’re standing in the make-up aisle, and people steal from the make-up aisle of the pharmacy or attempt to do so all the freaking time. I don’t know what it is about cosmetics that causes people to have sticky fingers, but there you have it.  Everyone who spends more than ten seconds in the make-up aisle gets watched, and it has nothing to do with any sort of profiling.  What is really annoying about this is the fact that we would probably be more willing to overlook theft of food, toiletries, or medicine, but these items never get taken.  It’s just the make-up, which no one can claim to need to get by and yet be unable to afford.  The same overt watching policy goes for the tip jar: that’s my money, and you’re pawing through it.  I consider such behavior suspicious no matter who is doing it, and I will therefore be staring at you until you put the jar down.  Yes, we employees of the pharmacy are all perfectly aware that it’s rude to stare, but we’d rather lose money by failing to get your business than lose money and our products by having you walk out with full pockets. 

The fountain closes at 6:00 PM.  Lingering at the counter any later than this is frankly just rude. People excuse this one all the time by saying “but it doesn’t really close at six, right?”  Okay, I don’t know where so many people got it into their heads that employees secretly enjoy lingering at their workplaces for as much as an hour after the closing time, but this is simply not true.  I signed a contract that among other things stated that I would start work exactly when my shift began and finish when my shift ended, so that the company could be sure to pay me the correct amount for every single minute of labor I put in there.  I have a bus I need to catch just outside at 6:01, and on many days I have commitments that require me getting home immediately after work.  My coworker has a boyfriend who waits to pick her up after work.  More importantly, my manager is a mother of two young boys who need her home at a certain time.  The security guard who has to lock everything down for the night has a wife and son at home as well.  We’re all tired, we’ve all been on our feet for the past six to twelve hours, and we all just want to go home and have dinner with our friends or families.  When you fail to take our gentle suggestions to leave before 6:00, you prevent all four of us from getting home on time.  You inconvenience everyone depending on us.  There are plenty of other places nearby where you could drink your soda or milkshake.  Take advantage of one of those, because there is really just not justifying being that person.  Fortunately, people who do this are few and far between, but it only takes one person to throw the rest of us off. 

You are not the most important person in the universe, and I will therefore not be changing the rules of the fountain just for you. This applies to closing later, but to other things as well.  For instance, I can’t make change for a dollar unless you buy something.  I can’t let you borrow our phone.  I can’t give you free coffee, free cookies, or free refills.  Asking once and being told “no” once should be sufficient, because no amount of wheedling, pleading, yelling, whining, or attempting to bribe me will change my mind, and in fact the more of an issue you make of it the more I’m going to shut you down.  Don’t delude yourself into thinking that you’re the first person or even the umpteenth to ask me for any one of those things.  You are not special.  I’m sorry I can’t help you, but all arguing with me about it will do is piss me off. 

One scoop of ice cream costs $2.75, and two scoops cost $3.25.  I will not be changing this fact any time soon.  Like the previous statement, this only applies to a couple people who think that if they just argue enough then I’ll somehow magically decide to change the rules of the fountain for them.  I understand that some people have different financial situations than others, and I’m willing to make up the difference out of the tip jar if a person comes up three cents or ten cents or twenty-five cents short when paying for something.  I’ve been there; I know it’s embarrassing.  I’m sympathetic when a person is forced to change a two-scoop order to a one-scoop order because of lack of cash, and whenever this happens I tend to give out very generous single scoops.  If people forget to factor in tax when figuring out what they can order, again I’m willing to use some spare tips to make up the difference.  What I have no patience for are the people who want me to give them two scoops of ice cream but only pay for one, or the ones who think that if they wink-wink-nudge-nudge enough I’ll ring up their single scoop as a kiddie.  Ice cream costs a lot of money, and our prices are a lot fairer than many other places’.  As with other rules of the company, the more you try to get me to violate this the less likely I am to be willing to do so. 

If I forget something, remind me.  Or if I make an error in your order, let me know.  I promise not to be offended.  This happens most often when people order waters.  Considering a fair number of orders consist of “one strawberry milkshake with vanilla ice cream and an extra pump of syrup, large two-scoop Dusty Miller sundae with extra whipped cream, hold the nuts, two twenty-ounce cherry-lime sodas to go and one mint cola for here, a pint of caramel ice cream—oh, and a water,” I’d say it’s hardly surprising that the water is what I forget.  It doesn’t involve holding any combinations of ingredients in my head, so often it never gets memorized at all.  However, I’ve more than once realized that I forgot the water with a person’s order—only after the person had already eaten everything and left, having paid twenty-five cents for a water in a to-go cup that they never got.  I’m more than happy to get you a water if you ordered one and I forgot—but you have to tell me.  Furthermore, if you ordered your sundae with whipped cream and I forgot that, again remind me and I promise I won’t be offended, I won’t get angry, I won’t do anything more than apologize and get you what you ordered.  The last thing I would want would be to get an order wrong, have the person not tell me, and then just not come back over a mistake I could have easily rectified if I just realized I made it. 

I’m flattered that you think so, but I don’t actually run the damn country.  I can’t tell you the number of people that share this delusion.  “Why did you put sales tax on my soda?” they ask, or “how come your Hershey’s bars cost so much?”  Like I said, I’m flattered that you think so, but I didn’t put sales tax on the soda.  I didn’t decide the price of a candy bar.  I wasn’t the one who raised the price of gum to $1.49 for a fifteen-pack.  Those decisions were made by the federal government and the state government, or else by Wrigley Gum Company.  So if you want to complain about the fact that there is sales tax on luxury food items such as bottled water (which I privately totally agree with, by the way), then take it up with your congressman.  All I can do about it is make sympathetic noises or else shrug helplessly, depending on how angry you are with me over the decisions President Obama made. 

-Bug