Dig if you will this picture: You cozy up to the bar at one of Portland’s 9,563 coffee shops or liquor establishments with a mind toward that first blast of caffeine to help get you through your miserable day or that first sting of booze to help wash away the memories of your miserable day. And what are you met with? Casual indifference. Barely masked contempt. Facial expressions that allllllmost veer into deeply frustrated eye rolls and sighs.

Yes, friend: You made the mistake of walking into a place of business to exchange money for goods and services. Those folks behind the counter are going to make you realize the error of your ways with each mumbled reply to your questions and every shrug at your attempt at pleasantries. That’ll show you!

Listen, Portland customer service people, I get it. There are a lot of dipshit tourists wandering our streets clutching pink boxes of Voodoo Doughnuts to their chests and wondering aloud if Fred Armisen still lives here. There’s also a lot of asshole locals who can’t be bothered to set their smartphone aside for two seconds and read a goddamn menu. And, yes, it’s a real bummer that you have to steam milk or pull a tap for not very much money when you could be home working on your passion projects or getting high and binge-watching Desus & Mero. But we need to come to some kind of compromise here.

Somewhere there’s a comfortable middle ground between the studied disregard you evince from underneath your ironic eyewear and home haircut, and the sugar-rush ingratiating of a Dutch Bros. employee shoving their perfectly coiffed head in my car window so they can quiz me about my plans for the rest of the day/week/year/millennium. We don’t need to become besties or even know anything about one another, beyond the fact that we stand on opposite sides of a bar engaging in a transaction that will take up, at most, 10 minutes out of our respective days.

And it doesn’t take much! Some pleasantries. A reasonable amount of small talk. Or, at the very least, a facial expression that doesn’t look like you’d just as soon kneecap me as make me a goddamn latte. Keep the fancy foam art and the cocktails that require 14 separate ingredients to make. Just give me a little common courtesy and when I scribble out some approximation of my signature on that iPad, and I might just consider going above a 20 percent gratuity for your efforts.

Robert Ham is the Mercury's former Copy Chief. He writes regularly about music, film, arts, sports, and tech. He lives semi-consciously in far SE Portland with his wife, child, and four ornery cats.

5 replies on ““What’s Your Problem, Portland?” Rude Baristas and Bar Keeps”

  1. @1, 2 — you’d be Fun to stiff.

    Are you currently working in the

    Customer Service/Hospitality

    industry, somewhere local?

    Or, perhps your an Educator* in said Biz?

    If not, you’ve obviously Missed your Calling.

    *other than a little pro bono freelancing

    right here?

  3. Arrested, El Zamboni?

    Oh, pardon me, I forgot to mention — this technique should only be used by (current) Members of the .01 Percenters Club, or by Law Enforcement (them [cow-] boys at the bar was Texas RANGERS, btw) (horse & cattle thieves, too, but they stole them back from a guy in olde Mexico, so it’s all good/okay).

    However, feel Free to use my name anywhere, El.

    You’ll likely be flabbergasted at the service you’ll receive.

  4. I’m a server with a sunny disposition, but my co-workers all joke that they make more tips because they’re cold and grouchy to their customers. And it’s true. Being cheerful leads to the customers thinking you actually like them, and in the case of sad goober men, that you LIKE them (ewww) and, hence, there is no need to win you over or tip you. They’re doing you a favor by brightening your day.

    Customers, sadly, feel the need to be liked, and the tip is one way they hope to be the person who breaks through the server’s icy indifference. If you’re a bartender, even worse: a lot of alcoholics like to yelled at and bossed around. You won’t get that tip unless you remind them of their abusive parents.

  5. So True, Ovidius.

    I once worked one night a week for the Little Nickle selling ads. The one night i Kicked ASS was the nite I came in pissed off over … whatever. I treated those poor people I was cold-calling — we took our leads from people selling shit in the local paper — I treated them like used TP.

    My sales were through the roof!

    But it was not Worth it.

    I guess I’m just a shitty Capitalist.

    Sad.

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