It all started Wednesday when Chloe Rose professed her love with Starbucks water. More specifically, a Venti Starbucks water. Not a Starbucks frappichino, iced coffee, or tea, but plain old water. She says their water is superior to all others. Now, right next door the selected Starbucks is the Mecca of costume jewelry stores, Charming Charlies. Chloe and I rush in and leave my mom to order our waters and catch up with us next door. She chooses to order herself a Refresher in addition to our 3 Venti Iced Waters. Chloe selects a necklace and a phone case and all is fine and dandy until and unidentified object is found in the drink. A small, hard, brown square. Upon further investigation from a Starbucks barista it is identified as a java chip. A little weird that it was found in a fruity drink, but it's nothing to rock the boat over.
Later that afternoon we perused the Domain (a fancy schmancy outdoor mall) and got ourselves a second round of Venti Iced waters. When we popped into Forever 21 Chloe Rose found a necklace that bore striking similarities of that which she bought for 11 dollars more at Charming Charlies, so we decided we'd return it. We had fun looking at all the high end stores and shopping around at the affordable ones.
Jump to yesterday (Thursday): We went to Charming Charlies to return and exchange the necklace and we were, once again, adjacent to Starbucks. Chloe and I went into the jewelry store while mom drove through Starbucks for our dose of Starbucks water. Again, she purchased a refresher for herself. When Chloe and I returned to the car we made a mutual decision to drive through Chick-fil-A to use our Free Frosted Lemonade coupon and split it 3 ways. Our server was very accommodating and gave us extra styrofoam cups and a car caddy, which was impressive considering we didn't pay a dime for our drink. As we were preparing to drive off mom pulled the lid off her 4 dollar drink and swiftly threw the contents out the Jeep window. This is not like my mother. She's frugal. We use gift cards. We split free drinks, for heaven's sake. And she just threw away 85% of her drink. No way, Jose.
Me: Mom, what was that?!?
Mom: Well, do you want to know?
Me; Yes!
Mom: This just ruined it for me... there was a hair in it!
Chloe Rose: *visibly shudders* Gross!
Me; And you aren't going to do anything about it?
Mom: Well, no.
Friends, you have to understand, this is completely out of character for this woman. Her tales of pleas for a refund and calling corporate are legendary.
She once walked into Macy's home store with a dripping iron covered in melted black fabric because she tried to iron her "rubber pants" as my grandma calls them, and she walked out with her money back.
Another time I vividly remember was when we got a personal phone call from the manager of our local Chipolte after she had called to report that an employee had slid her guacamole down the counter with too much force, bordering on contempt. The manager sympathized with her and even awarded us with a free meal. This was, of course, after he had watched the video footage and agreed that there was just too much anger in that movement of that guacamole.
You see, legendary.
She's also know for calling corporate to report exceptional service and she loves comment cards.
I've learned some of her tactics and I'm not afraid to bust them out when necessary and appropriate.
Now, she had gotten on the frontage road and was headed away from the scene of the unsanitary crime when I volunteered to go in and smooth over the situation. We whipped back around and Chloe and I walked up to the counter together and the conversation went something like this:
Me: Ah, we've got a bit of a problem. See, yesterday we came in and my mom ordered a drink and it had a stray java chip in it, and that was okay, but today it was a hair.
Very Nice Cashier: Oh! Ew! Gross!
Me: Yeaaah. And my mom's totally grossed out now. She literally threw the rest of the drink out the car window, and said she's done and not coming back. It was quite sad, and I like Starbucks. Is there some way we could rectify the situation?
Very Nice Cashier: Oh yes! We can make you another drink in any size. Really, any size.
Me: *after stealing a glace at Chloe Rose, who's turned around silently giggling her head off* Okay, we'll take the largest you have.
Very Nice Cashier: And we'll even have the bald guy make it!
*cue bald guy turning around, smiling, and waving*
Me: Great! *Trying so hard to not laugh and take the situation seriously*
Very Nice Cashier: And here's a 4 dollar gift card for your next visit!
Me: Wonderful! Thank you!
At this point Chloe and I are both losing it. The Bald Hipster Barista hands us the largest drink I've ever seen in my life. We request 2 extra cups so we can all share this monstrosity of a drink.
We walk all over the parking lot trying to find my mom, laughing like baboons. At one point I impaled myself in the foot with a stick (again, for the 3rd time in one day) and kinda stumbled forward and somehow some spit escaped my mouth and a breeze blew and it flew up on Chloe and it was just the tip of the belly laughing iceberg. We could barely make it through a whole sentence straight faced for the next hour.
When we finally found the Jeep my mom was also laughing her head off over a string of texts between the 2 of us where I updated her on the happenings at the state of our baristas hair (or lack thereof).
Oh gosh. I hope you all experience this kind of unstoppable laughter too. We just found the whole situation downright hilarious.
I felt empowered though too. I was able to explain the situation and our position and what we'd like to be done about it clearly and confidently without being pushy or rude, and I wasn't even awkward! (Win for me!)
As we drove away double fisted with our portions of our free drinks laughing like fools I realized that this was a pretty crazy story with a whole lot of hoopla, so I figured I'd put it here, on the blogola.
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