young modern.

I think everyone should experience working in customer service at least once in their lives. Coming from a high-profile profession where people automatically put me on a pedestal, it's interesting being the polar opposite: the absolutely ordinary and invisible customer server behind the counter. The one whom you chat with everyday when you order your latte, whose name you may or may not know, whom you might not even have noticed all this time.

Even just three months into my fledgling career as a customer server, I've already feel like I've learned a wealth of very useful knowledge, mostly about people. You meet and talk to a lot of people on the job, men, women, old people, young people, nice people, mean people, lonely people... the whole spectrum of everyday, commonplace folk.

Naturally, I can't help but compare this job to my old TV job, even though they may seem worlds apart. In truth, they're not so far apart. My old job required me to put on my "celebrity costume", get on the camera, put on the smiley, veejay face, and talk to the people. My new job requires me to put on my barista costume, get on the bar, put on the customer service smiley face, and talk to the people. The TV job attracted a "fan-base". The barista job attracts a "fan-base" in a way. I have customers I favor and customers who favor me. There are customers whose face I can put a genuine smile on when I greet them every morning, and they come into the store looking forward to it. Like the veejay job, I do take requests. And instead of introducing music videos, I introduce drinks.  "Up next, a medium, skim, half-strength, no-whip mocha ready on the bar!"

Sometimes, being a barista is like micro-showbiz. If you like attention like me, you get plenty of it as a barista, but without the despised intriga. Also, unlike showbiz, people don't compare the way you look to the others in your league (which was something I personally couldn't give a rat's arse about) and people don't ask for your autograph, although you do get recognized in public sometimes ("Hey, you're the Cafe girl!").

But the comparison doesn't end there. Working in showbiz, I often get asked whether the celebrities I worked with had attitude problems. Well, let me tell you one thing I've learned and it is this: ordinary people and celebrities have the same attitude problems. It's just on different social scenes and on different levels. No matter what social class you were born into, or you were adopted into, or worked your way into, always there will be someone lower than you. A rich famous b*tch who treats the so-called "lower" people like dirt isn't any different from a fair dinkum shiela who treats people lower than her like dirt.

What is not written under the job description of a customer server is that we are sometimes punching bags of the bitter, the insecure, or the plain bitchy. As a customer service worker, we are the receptacles for all the immaturity, anger, self-righteousness, and secret feelings of inadequacy that people cannot bring themselves to take out on their loved ones, work mates, etc.

A customer will sometimes they make a big ruckus if we don't get his grande-soy-warm-extra-caramel-latte because the espresso bar is the only venue where they can have that much needed feeling importance. Maybe they feel oppressed in the work place. Maybe they feel that nobody listens to them or respects them at home. So they take it out in the only venue where they know that the customer is always right. After all, customer servers are taught to bow our heads and turn the other cheek. We are the lowly people whom you can be rude to... and still be right. (Yeah, right).

The calm, composed woman with a baby in a stroller can morph into a whiny, cursing, 6-year old brat over a cappuccino that wasn't made to her specific standards. It's amazing.

Then there's the handicap man who started screaming that he was being discriminated against because we asked him to leave the store... after he deliberately insulted one of the employees.

Yes, we customer service people do aim to please and consider it a failure when a customer is not 100% satisfied. But please... it's just a latte. Is it worth throwing a fit over? We'll make it again for you whether or not you throw a fit. A barista who takes pride in his work will accept any complaint made about the quality of his output, or even the quality of his service. But when a customer starts swearing, and name-calling, and getting personal, it's a whole different ballgame.

Which brings me to one of the great things I've learned so far: the person who is nice to his significant other, his mother, and his boss, but rude to his waiter or server is not really a nice person.

Because the truth is, even though the customer is always right, being "right" doesn't change the fact that you were a big, fat jerk towards your server. And you can be sure that your server will never forget it.

But hey, we're talking of the bad customers we get every once in a blue moon, the ones that live on forever in the service horror stories that we pass on.

And on days when you really do feel invisible and lowly, there will sometimes be that one customer who'll tell you you're doing a good job, from completely from out of the blue, as you take his empty mug. Or the one customer who will make the effort to go up to the bar just to be able to tell you personally that that was the most wonderful cup of coffee that she had ever had. Then there's the Christmas cards and boxes of chocolate we got from appreciative customers during the holiday season.

You really learn a lot about people.

So, how did you treat your server today?