Selling Wingdaddles

Here is a little story I wrote based on one of my experiences working this winter. I have changed the name of the product to a nonsense word to A)protect the company and B)highlight the fact that this really could have happened in any service position selling any kind of thing.

Selling Wingdaddles

 

The woman in front of me would prefer a Wingdaddle fresh off the wingdaddlry. The one I served her, although delicious, had been left to cool for 90 seconds and it just isn't exactly the treat she’d been hoping for. She knows this because she hired the Wingdaddle Hut to cater an event in the past and she found she liked the hot ones best. Unfortunately the only way that she can express this sentiment is by screaming "We paid you people thousands of dollars to cater our sons birthday party and I KNOW what a fresh Wingdaddle tastes like!"

I understand that it is this woman's burden to be tacky and lacking in social graces. I do not inform her that as a seasonal employee I have no connection with the catering company or that it isn't our policy to serve Wingdaddles fresh off the wingdaddlry because they can be hot enough to burn ones mouth. Factual information would only confuse and upset her so I proceed with exaggerated kindness and use small, simple words as I would with an irate child who doesn't yet understand the limits of his environment. It will please her to think that I am dull-witted.

I prepare her Wingdaddle while she waits, cross-armed and jaw-jutted, outside the Wingdaddle Hut window. I choose the most visually pleasing, robust Wingdaddle and dress it with care. There will be no tip from her today but I want this Wingdaddle to be so good that it leaves her speechless. Only when she has receded into the crowd do I privately indulge a fantasy in which she develops a sudden and severe allergy to the main ingredient of Wingdaddles.