'She sat at her table, too stunned to complain': Coffee shop boss goes to dramatic lengths to make customer's coffee exactly how she wants it

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    Cheezburger Image 10394077440
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    You want your coffee hot? Even hotter? How about we curdle the milk for you?
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    This happened a few years. ago when I was first starting in hospitality, but this was the best intro I ever got to what hospo is really like.
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    It was the afternoon, and my boss was already in a cranky mood because he was teaching a 17 year old how to use the coffee machine which would drive anyone mad. A woman came in and ordered a dine- in coffee extra hot. He let me do the coffee while he went out back, and I made the milk to 75C. For those who don't know, milk is steamed to around 65C
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    (149F), so this should have been fine. She came back: "I asked for extra hot and this is lukewarm at best". I'm brand new at this so my boss assumes I've made a mistake. I remake the coffee showing him it's now at 80C (176F). He tried a bit (edit: by pouring the milk into a separate first), burnt his mouth, and confirmed the
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    thermometer was fine. I took it out to her, said sorry, and came back in to a life lesson from my boss saying that customers can sometimes tell when someone is new so they prey on them. Again, the woman comes back. "I come here all the time and I have never been so disappointed" or something to that effect, and storms back to her
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    table. My boss and I are really confused at this point. He remakes it again. She brings it back again and begins to yell at me full Karen style; my boss has gone to the toilet at this point. I'm 17, brand new to customer-facing jobs, and trembling and crying. Finally, my boss walks up, yanks the cup from her
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    hand, puts it under the steam wand and turns it on. Milk is boiling over the cup, all over the counter top, and onto the floor; he just stares at her. He hands it back to her without ever breaking eye contact, milk curdled, half a cup of liquid missing and says "there. It's hot. I made sure of it".
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    She was mortified. I was horrified. She sat at her table too stunned to complain and drank the coffee in peace. He went into the kitchen to tell the chef and they cracked up laughing. That boss was the best and worst boss I've ever had. One time we were overbooked and had to cancel the most recent
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    reservation. They called him a c*nt, so he set up their table cloth and utensils on the ground outside the restaurant and sent them a picture confirming their booking.
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    s1a1ky I had an experience like this with a pedantic customer who sent her coffee back twice saying she wanted it hotter. I explained to her in no uncertain terms that the milk would burn and she just pushed the coffee towards me and told me to "fix it". When I got back to the machine, my manager took the cup from me
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    without a word, put the handle of the cup under a jet of boiling water for a few seconds, dried it, and took it back to her. The exact same cup of coffee with a hot handle. She said it was finally the perfect temperature and thanked him profusely for making it right.
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    seeyouspacecowboyx. Was that woman an actual demon from ? How on earth does she usually make her coffee?
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    TroubleExact I feel your pain. I used to work in a coffee shop and the "extra hot" crowd are some of the worst customers. Whenever someone ordered an extra hot cappuccino my manager would always say "one cappuccino with burnt milk, coming right up!"
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    funkiemonkiefriday ouch! you need some thick thick skin to be able to hold a cup under the steam wand while boiling hot liquid spills over the sides and onto your hands. your boss sounds pretty badass
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    williambobbins Remember reading somewhere (maybe here?) that old people can lose the sense of heat in their mouth and not be aware of it, which explains a lot of these stories
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    ravenwolven I had a boss at a magazine who was cool AF. He ran an ice cream parlor on a boardwalk up north back in the early 80s. He said one hot summer day some ego maniac guy came in and started giving the young girl who worked there a hard time about not making his double scoop cone big enough.
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    He was hollering at her, making her cry. My boss stepped up to take care of the problem customer, making him an extra large ice cream with three scoops, wrapping the cone with a napkin and quietly breaking off the tip of the cone under the napkin. He
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    said after about 5 minutes in the heat outside the ice cream had melted and run all over the guy through the hole in the bottom of the cone.
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    nzml89 I don't understand how hot some people want their coffee to be. I'm in my 30s and I still ask the barista to please make mine a kid's temperature
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    gimmethegudes Omg the last short story, amazing
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