First Impressions and Second Chances

Personal anecdote from circa 2018

Recently my company modified one of our coffee machines to use soy milk, instead of dairy milk. For people like me with dairy milk intolerance, this was great news. But the bad news was, soy milk being a fad, this one machine became too popular, and was almost always out of milk. In a bit of irritating coincidence, I found the machine out of milk on three consecutive days. What made it extra annoying was, the machine doesn’t tell you it’s out of milk before you start. It accepts the order, tries to make your latte, and after a few half-hearted drips and puffs, shows a flashing empty milk bottle symbol in despair. Now you are stuck with a quarter cup of coffee of random composition and a dilemma, if you loathe wasting food.

The third straight day this happened to me, the food service employee who’s responsible for refilling the milk just came by as I was about to give up and leave. Seeing her, I stopped, and mentioned how it so happens that the machine is out of milk whenever I want coffee. My tone was one of irony, and not annoyance. I tried to be friendly, despite my mood. But the response I got from her was shocking. “You drink too much coffee”. Seriously. That’s what she said, verbatim. Now, she’s not a native English speaker, and probably didn’t mean to be that direct, and probably meant “you guys” and not me personally. Even so, this was out of line. It was her job to refill the milk. That’s what she’s paid for! I was a customer, and she was being grumpy to me. I was about to remind her about of all this, but held my tongue. She restocked the machine with a new carton of ‘Silk’, I got my latte and walked away.

Since that day, whenever I saw that person, an automatic feeling of irritation would bubble up in my sub-conscious mind. I would avoid eye-contact, say something like “do your job, grouch” in my mind and walk by.

Fortunately, the incidence of the super annoying soy-milk-less-coffee-machine became less frequent after the first week. I stopped muttering under my breathe on seeing this woman. But I didn’t forget her rudeness.

And then it happened again this morning — the milk-less-machine disaster. I really needed my coffee, and so I decided to wait by the machine and hope it’d be some other employee’s shift. But no such luck: it was her. After a second’s hesitation, my need for coffee won out, and I decided to approach her. As it happened, she was in her (early) lunch break and was settling down to start eating. I couldn’t possibly choose a worse time to bother someone, even a normal person. And this grouch? I was bracing for a spew of venom.

What actually happened was surprising. She smiled very sweetly as I approached, and held that smile even when I said, “Sorry to bother you, but that machine is out of milk”. She replied, “Oh, I guess my coworker missed checking this machine. I’ll take care of it, no problem”. And she promptly took care of it, smiling all along, and finishing with gusto: “Here you go, you can have your coffee now”. She even offered to give me cold soy milk in case I don’t want a hot coffee on a warm day. I was floored. And a bit ashamed of myself.

How many times does one learn the same lesson and still forget? People have bad days, grumpy moments, get “hangry”. I probably do more than anyone else. One should let it slide, at least the first couple of times. Who knows, one may even be offered cold soy milk!