As with many jobs in the service industry, you deal with some strange people. Many of my tweets lately have reflected such weirdos that enter Hartford Coffee Company and the weird things they do. These weirdos have nicknames, but I realize after receiving a few responses from some of you that you don’t have the same inside information behind their nicknames and the reasons why they’re so funny as I do. Well, I intend to fix that. Let’s start with one particularly loathed weirdo: #freepaperlady.

To preface #freepaperlady‘s behavior, I need to explain a bit about our store. We carry the St. Louis Post Dispatch. It costs $1 (plus 10 cents tax.) People often buy the Post, or bring their own in, and read it in the store over a meal or just coffee. Some even leave their’s behind for others to enjoy (or for us to trash/recycle for them, whatever.) We even have a little cart by the door underneath our dish bus that collects these used papers. This is a courtesy for our guests.

Well, in comes #freepaperlady (which as a nickname was coined by @travisbursik I think, he was the first person I heard say it anyway.) This lady is older, probably upper 50′s, who comes into the store in the last hour we’re open any given evening. Let me clarify, she only comes into the store in the last hour we’re open. She immediately looks underneath the bus for the day’s Post. It’s usually there. She picks up the paper, walks over to the bar and asksstops me from the closing tasks I’m busy doing to ask for a *ahem* free cup of water. After receiving such a cup, she then finds somewhere in the cafe to sit and spread the paper out. Literally, pages strewn about all over whatever table she’s sitting at. When she finally gets up and leaves the store, usually a few minutes before close, she doesn’t return the paper to where she found it & she doesn’t put her free water cup in the bus. She leaves it all on the table for me to clean up which is rude even for our paying (and tipping!) customers. We are not a full service restaurant and you’re not a paying customer. Thanks a lot biz.

Sometimes, and boy do I relish these times, they aren’t any Post’s left by other customers. Yep, no free papers for #freepaperlady. The other night was one such night! When she came in that evening, she went through her usual routine and after seeing no Post’s, she grabbed one of the free Riverfront Times which is also by the door and come up to the register for that cup of water. Well, the Post’s we have on sale are right there by the register, and we actually had two or so left. She asked me if she could just have one of the Post’s still for sale for free since “it’s so close to the end of the day.” Are you serious? I guess I could just give you a free cup of coffee as well since, you know, we close in a half an hour and I’m just going to dump it down the drain. Goodness. I tweeted about it here. While that was pretty hilarious, nothing compares to what happened tonight.

Tonight the woman came in and did her usual thing, grabbed a paper, asked for a water, make distracting small talk that distracts you from your closing task, but then the unthinkable happened. #freepaperlady takes the cup intended for water and fills it with half and half from the coffee station. This half and half hasn’t been used in hours and was probably last filled in the early afternoon. Yeah, room temperature milk that has been on the counter for probably 5 hours. Gross. Gross. Gross! It’s one thing to be cheap, but this lady is ridiculous. Next thing you know she’ll be asking us to refill the milk containers so she can have free cold milk. Then she’ll start adding sugar or honey from the condiments, or maybe even cinnamon & chocolate powder and make a free chocolate milk. I think if it gets to that point I’ll start calling her #hobolady and ya’ll will all be in on the joke.

Moving on.

A few more frequently tweeted abouts. There’s a ton of Mom’s who come into the shop with their non-descript kids for lunch. Because Hartford has a kids area, Mom’s feel pretty comfortable having group lunch sessions there so they don’t have to worry about keeping their kids entertained. This usually means a pack of wild, screaming 2-5 year olds and a bunch of oblivious Mom’s letting them run amok. One such tweets can be found here & here. (Also, #howfire is a meme I accidentally started on twitter last year when I misspelled wanting to spit “hot fire” onto something, or someone. The error was much to my chagrin and to everyone else’s delight. So much so that I eventually embraced it. Who doesn’t like begetting a meme? Unfortunately I don’t think the original tweet exists on twitter any longer. It appears twitter only allows you to go back like 3200 tweets. Lame.

There is one Mom in particular that I named #JoanCusakMom because she looks a bit like and sounds a lot like Joan Cusak. Nothing special or ridiculous about her, and she’s really nice, but she has that voice. It’s one of the few things that sets her apart from all the other Moms who buy $6 grilled cheese & peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their screaming kids who only eat about half their meal before the plate and food is put into the bus and not the trash, $7 meals for themselves, a $1.50 8oz cup of goldfish and $3.80 latte and sometimes a $2.50 scone or scoop of ice cream but, oh God, can they not tip because they’re on a cash allowance from “Daddy” and only have so much to spend. At least that’s what I heard anyway.

As I coin new nicknames for our patrons I’ll be sure to let ya’ll know. Obviously as it happens on twitter first, then maybe later here if there’s enough confusion. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the explanation of #freepaperlady and you’ll definitely LOL a bit more in future tweets.

Oh, and one last work related tweet about when a customer asked me if we had any Stevia.