friend or foe

i've already well documented how customers can piss us baristas off, but what i find really funny is when customers piss each other off.

incident #1
only two customers in line. customer 'a' was ordering her drinks while customer 'b' was perusing the pastry case. customer 'a' ends up ordering a pastry that customer 'b' had just decided she couldn't live without. when customer 'b' asked if we had any more of her chosen pastry in the backroom, she was heartbroken to find out that customer 'a' had taken the last one. usually a customer would get pissed off at the barista at a time like this, but instead customer 'b' gave customer 'a' a dirty look and hissed, "you knew i wanted that and you ordered it anyway!" to which customer 'a' just shrugged. "i hope you get food poisoning from that!" customer 'b' hissed again.
i tell ya, it was almost surreal. i'm sure us baristas will be talking about this for days.

incident #2
we got a rush out of nowhere. six people in line and only two of us on the floor. normally this isn't such a big deal, but the woman at the front of the line didn't know what she wanted to drink. instead of letting the people behind her order, she asked the register partner about every single drink and what they tasted like. a man in the back of the line started screaming at her to just order something - fast. i swear, it was just like that scene in that will ferrell movie. the lady called him rude and continued to muse over the menu. the guy kept telling her to hurry it up and calling her a "slow cow". needless to say, i let the register partner deal with the slow cow while i took the orders from the other people in line. they were all happy with me, but hated that lady.
but here's the best part: the lady didn't end up ordering anything! instead she asked us for a glass of water.

partner rant: bux, you're gonna be the death of me. don't you think we already have enough blended drinks? don't you remember what a failure the tiazzis were? so why are you bringing back fruit slushie type drinks? where do you think we will store the damn things? please, let's get back to simplicity.