As the reader may or may not be aware, this author works in a chocolate shop called Pure Dark. As is the case in any job within customer service, it requires patience, a good nature, and great social skills. At Pure Dark, an ability to stifle your giggles should also be a pre-requisite; awkward questions/situations arise frequently.
For the enjoyment of the reader, this author will now recount some Pure Dark employee/customer exchanges that occur on a regular basis:
Pure Dark employee: Hello, and welcome to Pure Dark. We are a chocolate shop that specializes purely in dark chocolate.
Customer: Do you sell white chocolate?
Pure Dark employee (pointing to the ingredients board): Please try our mix of the day, which has all the ingredients written on this board.
Customer (staring straight at the ingredients board): What's in the mix of the day?
Customer (after having been told that we are a dark chocolate shop and then sampled some of our chocolate): I hate dark chocolate.
Pure Dark employee: If you'd like to buy our chocolate, we sell it by the ounce for $2.75 per ounce.
Customer: So, how do you sell it? By the pound?
Pure Dark employee: In this case we have our slabs, which are thick bars of chocolate, and barks, which are flat pieces of chocolate with fruit and nut toppings.
Customer: What's the difference between a slab and a bark?
Pure Dark employee: This mix includes nibs, almonds, chocolate covered almonds, and chocolate covered cherries.
Customer (pointing to a chocolate covered almond): What's this chocolate almond shaped thing.?
Pure Dark employee:...a chocolate covered almond...
Lastly, the one that is asked every hour of every day without fail:
Pure Dark employee: Please try a sample of our chocolate that has caramelized and roasted nibs, which are the crushed up cacao beans.
Customer: What's a nib?
Do people just not listen? Do they listen but not understand? It is truly baffling! There are signs all over the shop that explain what we are and what we sell, are people just impatient and not taking the time to look, really look, and listen, really listen? (Fellow actors, please excuse that lame eluding to acting-methods).
This author would like the reader to know that, however baffled she is by some questions and comments, she really does enjoy interacting with all the diverse people that walk through our doors. 99% of customers are so friendly and a pleasure to serve. There is that 1% that this author cannot quite get her head around...to help the reader understand, she will leave the reader to contemplate the following incident which occurred today:
After having tried a chocolate covered dried cherry, a woman, so besotted with it, pulled her friend over (a woman in her late 60s I presume) to taste it. The friend put the cherry in her mouth and then proceeded to make a face like a 9-year old eating brussel sprouts and said with venom, "I don't like eating dead fruits." When this author and her colleague (both dumfounded) asked her to explain what she meant, she told them that as far as she was concerned, dried fruit is dead fruit, which is disgusting. She then proceeded to tell the Pure Dark employees that she doesn't ever mix her fruits, because if God had wanted us to eat mixed fruit, he would have made mixed fruit trees. The reader may be proud to hear that, this author, who is both agnostic and highly opinionated, managed to keep her mouth shut and let the customer walk away in all her ignorant glory. Boy, did the Pure Dark employees have a great topic of conversation for the rest of the day!
Visit us at Pure Dark (W10th and Bleecker) for more hilarious antics, and, of course, delicious PURELY DARK chocolate.
copyright (c) 2010-2011 Celia Mei Rubin
