7

I am terrible at the art of dealing with conflict.

There is nothing more intense and awkward, knowing that unhappy vibes are directed towards me.

Seriously. 

Because I work at Starbucks, and because I'm apparently on this Earth to please every single soul; which I should, within reason, this makes my job a little, rough.

This is because today, a lady came in and ordered a iced Venti 5 Splenda Shaken Passion Tea Lemonade. 

Before I go further, let me explain that the drink itself is pretty sweet without additional sweeteners; mind you putting an additional 5 packets of genetically modified 'sweetener'.

So I made the drink to the best of my ability counting out 4 instead of 5 Splendas and delivered it on the hand off bar.

I could see the lady sitting on the leather chairs next to the condiment bar and decided to physically deliver it to her; most likely done out of kindness and charity on my part.

"Here you go m'mam, you're iced Venti 4 Splenda Shaken Passion Tea Lemonade!"

"Wait...did you say 4 Splenda?"

"Um... yeah. Was that not right?"

"Goddamnitno! I asked for 5 Splendas!"

-mind you, she's sitting RIGHT next to the condiment bar, where, she could rip open a packet of Splenda and to her pleasure, add that ONE packet of sweetener, but that would be too much.

"Um... would you like me to remake it for you? then?"

"Um, yeah!"

I'm not passing judgement, but good Lord. She was a foot away from the condiment bar. 

Really? 

So I kept her drink, and later drank it knowing I had imperfectly created it, and remade her drink.

With one more Splenda. 

I backed down so quickly, maybe because of company standards ("The customer is always right, JUST SAY YES!!!")

but more realistically, because I can't take conflict.

I can only imagine how I would have reacted as a 'John Smith' or whoever it was that took away the Native American's natural America. I would have probably backed out as soon as they insisted in their indigenous language to reserve their land as THEIR land, probably not letting go of the situation until later that night, while writing a letter or journal entry describing my pain and personal disappointment.

But then again, I love the Native American culture. 

Thank God our forefathers had a backbone.