On customers I like :
I love tips. I flirt, tolerate 99% of peoples' bullshit, and talk myself up in order to get tips. Tips make me happy and make my drinks just that much better made. They also make me less inclined to snap at customers when they get tetchy and entitled like the bastards they so often are. Regardless, I don't require a tip to be a good barista, nor a happy one at that.
The customers that I enjoy working for are the ones who smile and look me in the eye when they talk to me. Really, it doesn't take much to make me a happy camper. There are also a lot of idiots out there who don't know how to demonstrate the simplest of courtesies--i.e. a greeting, looking at people in the eye during conversation, saying please and thank you. It's not much to ask for, but you'd be surprised how inhuman you become to the world when you're behind a counter. You're expected to have mechanical efficiency, speed, consistency, and an answer for every question that might, by chance, flicker through their blank, auto-piloted minds (thank you, Starbucks).
I'm not asking to be friends with my customers--in fact, I'd much rather not. What I ask is the same that PETA's plight demands for all non-sapiens--to be treated like a human being.
Thus said, to those of you who already practice such niceties, thank you! For those of you who will adopt this practice, your baristas will thank you in the manner of a high quality drink for being a considerate, normal, human being with integrity. And if you can't seem to manage any of the above...well, there are a million ways a barista can convey the words "f*ck you very much."
