Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Coffee and Cream- The Dunkin' Chronicles Part- Social Experiments


Working in the service industry is a horrid existence, when in it you dread nearly every day you have to get into the car, pull out of the drive way and head down the road to another 8 hours of fun. And by fun I mean it in the same way that scurvy was fun for sailors or dysentery was for those trekking the Oregon Trail. But it needs to be done and done it is by wonderful cheerful people like myself. I worked at Dunkin' Donuts for longer then I care to comment and every day I said “once I find a new job out of this shit hole”, days passed, months passed and years passed until finally I was released to waivers. 

At Dunkin' we needed tips; it was our only motivation to be kind to customers, yet we still weren't kind to most people. We had our regulars and knew which ones would be kind enough to drop a single into our strip, tip cup. And we also knew who which customers were as stingy as a Muslims on Christmas and wouldn't even drop their nickel change in there for us. After a while working in this coffee scented hell you could judge even new customers just by looking at their miserable faces which ones would tip and which ones wouldn't. So before they could even order we hated their guts and thought in the back of our minds that we wanted to smash a pot full of scorching hot coffee over the top of their insignificant skulls: we didn't because we had what they call in the biz self control. There was an exception to this: good looking people. Hot chicks regardless of their ability to drop extra money into our pockets got good treatment. Now if you were a hot chick that tipped? Not only was service exceptional, we definitely flirted with you.

Can you blame us? First we are men. Second we worked at a miserable job all day, so we needed something to occupy our time (which led to the creation of the game which I will tackle like Ray Lewis does a murder charge in another post).

Dick customers were a whole different ballgame, they were treated like they looked: awfully. You know that saying “the customer is always right”? Well it is fucking ridiculous. Most of the time the customer is a giant moron who to our awe and amazement was able to make it through their childhood without running into the street to grab something shiny and getting smacked down by an eighteen wheeler; if a lot of these people were crushed under a few tons of American Mack the world be a better place. Some times I wish they would be tossed into an anaconda pit with others of equal ungratefulness and stupidity.

We always had a saying at the old DD: “if there were no customers this would be a pretty sweet job.” We just would fuck around all day, drinking coffee, eating donuts, catching up on the latest Baldini works, and bullshit with the occasionally cleaning of the store. But the reality was there were customers, a damn constant stream of them.  Most of whom would rather pocket their change then to drop it into our tip cup, some would not even grant us the common human fucking courtesy of a warm “thank you” are you really that much of a worthless life form that you can’t thank someone who despite your dumb face refrained from spitting in your cup of coffee? This is another reason the world is fucked. It may sound cynical, but really who doesn’t thank someone? I understand that you are paying for the service to have a poor schmohawk pour your coffee, but they are still people and deserve to be treated like such— scumbags.

     Anyway enough with the rant about the sad state of the world and back to a fun story involving myself, a uni-browed coworker and a social experiment. Well I guess it would be two separate social experiments, both of which involved our tip cups and both of which taught us many things about people.

Experiment #1- Which of the two sexes prefers real life violence

It began like any day, Adrian and I arrived at work miserable and ready to go, both donning our white polo and apron as per requirements of the Dunkin' corporate world, though I’m sure Adrian was just wearing a white tee shirt with a fire truck or some stupid crap on it. He thought it was cool to break the rules. Or its because the one time he showed up wearing what we all just assumed was his sisters polo shirt and maybe that made him sad on the inside so he never wanted to show up like that and get bullied harder then a kid jumping off a bridge. Well, it was more like he didn’t give a flying T-Rex what anyone said to them, what were going to do fire him? That’s laughable.

Back to the experiment.

We worked for a few hours serving dillbags their fix of caffeine— though let me make sure, in case any of them are reading, there were several customers that we actually enjoyed when they entered. They were real people who were friendly and courteous . . . or just fine as Pamela Anderson when she was being plowed by Tommy Lee — when the idea came to us to test the level for the love of violence in the common public: the morons.

We grabbed a sheet of receipt paper and with a marker wrote these words,  “Put money in this cup and I will punch Adrian, thanks”. We taped the paper to a cup and waited for our first rat.

The first person that saw the sign was a middle-aged male who simply laughed and put a quarter into the regular tip cup. A few more males came in none of which acknowledged the sign. We waited until a group of three females, varying in age saw the sign. The plump one read it and began chuckling as only a plum person could.

“Who is Adrian?” she cackled.

I pointed at Adrian, she looked at me and dropped some change into our cup and waited for her free entertainment. I obliged, by cocking my arm back and slamming my fist into Adrian’s arm. They loved every second of it, and left with their day made
            
     We left the cup there for a few more hours and the women would drop change and watch as I turned Adrian’s arm from a tan to a dark black and blue. The men, who we thought would be more into watching two bored young adults slug each other, rarely dropped anything in to the cup.

     Our theory when the experiment was all said and done and Adrian could barely pick his arm up was as follows:

     Women, though usually dread over gory action films and other such violent fictions love to watch real life violence, while the men of the world would rather watch Robert De Niro get his face smashed in Raging Bull than watch a real person get hit for shits and giggles. Women you are a bunch of sick people go and get your damn selves checked out by a psychotherapist.

Experiment 2- Sex Change VS Dead Beat Dad

     This experiment starts out identical to the previous one. Adrian and I arrive at work, trade hellos and insults and begin our day providing the fiends with their fix. Once again out of boredom I grabbed a sheet of receipt paper and a marker and jotted something for a new tip cup.

     “Tips will go to Adrian’s child support payments. If he falls any further behind he will go to prison. Please save Adrian’s butthole. Thanks!”

     Adrian upon finally noting this created a separate tip cup, which read as follows:

     “Please help Dan pay for his sex change operation”   
     Once again we waited for the imbeciles. Most laughed taking our grand social experimentation as a complete joke, this want it a joke at all. It was as much of a joke as the chance a fat person is going to keel over on the walk to their car

     The ones who participated, made there feelings very clear whom they would rather support. The cup which was helping me fund becoming a woman was nearly empty, I had a single pity coin, meanwhile the cup for Mr. “I don’t like to support the children that I populated the world with” Turner’s cup had not just change, but dollar bills.

      Thus leading our finding as far as this matter:

     People would rather support a incompetent father pay for back child support because he is a lazy good for nothing and instead of finding a real job he works at Dunkin' making minimum wage, than they would support someone who just wants to become on the outside who they feel they are on the inside. Bunch of insensitive dickwads. Most were even disgusted by the fact that someone wanted a sex change.  I can still remember their faces as the dropped money in a cup for Adrian’s children and apologized to me. Don’t apologized for being a jerk and not helping me reach my fictitious goals.

In conclusion

     How the fuck did we manage to do this without a single customer reporting us? How did we not get fired? There were children coming in while this was going on. CHILDREN! Won’t someone please think of the children! 

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