You want to pay with what??

[BaristaTrav]

Not sure why this old gem just popped into my head now..

Anyway, at my old harBucks, weeknights were usually very slow, allowing me to just chill and shoot the shit with my good buddy and shift supervisor, J. So me and J are doing the usual, talking about grand plans for quick fortune that would never come to fruition, making the most disgusting concoctions in the blender you could imagine out of sheer boredom, plotting the demise of SCs, etc, when this woman walks in. She's about 40-something, heavy set, with small child (about 10 or so) and abnormally tall woman-friend in tow. Child and woman-friend are silent and merely stare blankly at us the entire time. Here goes:

SW- her
ME -
J - awesome shift sup
Thoughts in parentheses ()

SW - "OH! I never even knew this FarBucks was here!! I'm in this neighborhood alllll the time and I've never seen this place before!!" (WTF.. we've been here 10 years, and there isn't a hell of a lot else here, particularly in this very small shopping strip)

ME- "Well, we're.. uhh... here. What can we get for you tonight?"

SW - Ramble Ramble about just getting out of the hospital, my son just died, drug addiction, jesus saved me, the Lord, etc etc. "So Glad I found you guys.. I LOVE sparBucks!" (WTF????) More ramble incoherently about her son dying, drugs, the lord, hospital, cops, ex husband restraining order, loves the neighborhood, never seen this scarbucks before, so glad, she loves snarbucks, etc etc.

J and I give each other one of those (awesome, got another bat-shit crazy SC) looks..

ME - "Ok.. well.. glad you found us then.. what can we get for you tonight?"

SW - "OH!" (as if the idea of actually ordering a drink wasn't really anywhere in her thought process) "What do you all want?" (in the direction of silent child and tall, albino-looking woman. They give an absent-minded shrug and say "nothing") "Oh come on, I'm buying, get something!" (So silent woman and child mindlessly point to some frappuccino thing and SW also decides on some calorie-laden frozen sugary death drink)

ME - "Alright then, your total is $xx.xx"

SW - "OH!" (as if the idea of paying for her drinks was also something completely foreign.. so she's rifling through her purse....more incoherent rambling, the lord, Jesus, Drugs, Dead son, Ex husband, sooooo glad she found us, bla bla bla, puke. "oh.. oh.. wait a minute.. "

She pulls out something that looks like a 7-11 money order.. this is where it gets good..

" Ok.. well, I have this cashier's check for $50.. it's made out to the electric company, but I can sign it over to you."

Me and J in unison - "what??"

(sure enough, it was a money order.. made out to the state's electricity company)

SW - "Yea, I'll just cross this part out, and sign it over to you, and you can give me the change."

J - (laughing) We can't take that. (No apology, sorry, nothing. J's been doing this way too long to coddle crazy SCs)

SW - "Oh no, you see all I have to do is sign it over to you, and then you give me the change"

J - (with deadpan stare at SC) "No."

(This is where I was very fearful that jovial batshit-crazy SC would now quickly turn into wrath of god, cops are called, local news at 11 SC... but instead)

SW - "Oh, alright then." (More fumbling through purse, mumbling about jesus and dead son and love of frappuccinos) "Here we go" (Se pulls out.. a nice fresh $20 bill.. W.T.F.??)

J - "o.....k, out of $20 your change is $xx.xx, anything else we can get for you today?"

SW - "No that's it.. thank you guys so much.. god bless you! You know jesus and god and dead son and bla bla bla bla....... I'll be in here all the time now, you guys are great!"

(Me and J think..... "f-ck")

J - "bye bye" (SW rants and mumbles more as she heads out into the night with silent followers behind)

We never did see her again.

[walking with scissors]

I don't even wanna know what she paid her electric bill with.

[South Texan]

Hey, she may have been batty, but she at least was sweet.

It is a great story about a crazy customer, but I kept waiting for the part where the hissing, fire-breathing dragon came out of that sugary exterior.

[Imogene]

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but, if you sign the money order over to me, how will you ever pay your electric bill?"
And then, you'll come screaming back in, accusing us of having taken your bill by force...

[BaristaTrav]

Hey, she may have been batty, but she at least was sweet.

It is a great story about a crazy customer, but I kept waiting for the part where the hissing, fire-breathing dragon came out of that sugary exterior.

That's what I was deathly afraid of. You just know the crazy ones who are on one of their high notes have a dark side you never, ever want to see..

[Soulstealer]

You have to lover her priorites. What's more important, bills or diabetes 2?

By the way, was the restraining order placed by her or on her?

[chops]

What's scary is, where I used to work the manager would probably have let her do that.

[Bliss]

Was I the only one who read the title as "You want to PLAY with what?" and went beyound the gutter into the realms of the pathologically sick adult imaginery?

[jerkface11]

Yeah I thought it said Play too. I was expecting a perv customer.

[powerboy]

Was I the only one who read the title as "You want to PLAY with what?"

No, that is what I thought I saw also.

[Applerod]

There are a lot of different kinds of crazy and it's hard to evaluate aberrant behavior without actually having witnessed it. In all fairness, if her son really had just died you have to cut her a little slack--unless she's always been this way. Who knows.

[KhirasHY]

You know you have a doozy when they leave the store and you both sit in silence, staring at one another, for 30 seconds or so...