Burns from Costa coffee

[Ebad9518]

Well, a cup of tea.

Been on holiday all week, it's been lovely. Although accomodation was pretty sure. We had to change our bed sheets due to a period stain in my side and a rip on DPs side, as one example.

Going to leave today and got coffee and tea from the restaurant who serves Costa coffee. Just given a cup for the tea which was very full. Stupidly didn't ask for another cup or a holder despite thinking this was going to be tricky. Picked it up from the lid to walk away, not quite on the lid but holding on the top iykwim. The whole thing crumpled in my hand and burnt me. I tried not to drop it but had to because of the pain. Thankfully it didn't get DSS. Went to the till and informed the girl that I was very sorry but I'd dropped it and she literally sighed and rolled her eyes. Another woman stepped in and was like 'as long as you're alright' which I absolutely wasn't. She made me another tea despite me protesting as I just needed I've on it. Managed to keep my shit together until I got to the car. Thankfully had I've packs in the cool bag and have had to sit for 3 hours in the car with a bloody ice pack on it. I've birthed a child bit fuck me the pain. Thankfully it's calmed now but i feel so pissed off at this girls reaction. I've worked in customer service for years and hers was awful.

So aibu to be so pissed off?

AIBU to want to know where this costa is that actually serves their hot drinks hot? 👀😬

You expect a minimum wage coffee shop worker to be professional? Seriously?

Yes.

CatherineOfAragonsPrayerBook
Its not just unprofessional it shows a general lack of empathy for others. I think we can probably all agree the accident was the OPs fault but on a human level if someone spills a hot drink on themselves wouldn’t you be moved to make sure they were ok?
I’m surprised none of the other customers noticed and asked the OP if she needed help.

You expect a minimum wage coffee shop worker to be professional? Seriously?
I’ve worked minimum wage supermarket jobs and I’ve managed to be professional and compassionate most of the time. Don’t insult low paid workers by implying they don’t give a shit.

Ps I say most of the time because everyone has off days.

I imagine the woman on the till thought you'd just dropped your tea and thought "god I've got to clean it up now!". Unless you said "I burnt my hand" she wouldn't have known you were hurt.

You could have clarified when the other woman said "as long as you're ok",

You visibly recoiled in pain Op, strange choice of words but there you go.

When I burnt my hand on the cooker a few years ago because I was a careless twat my immediate reaction was to shout "you god damn, mother fucking, absolute bell end, or words to that effect. But I definitely didn't recoil. And mine was like yours, I ended up with it numb.

Im not sure I believe that you recoiled because I find it very hard to believe that absolutely NO ONE noticed and offered help.

@Purpledaisies oh gosh I didn't realise. I'm so surprised that it's okay today as it looked as though it had split my skin on all my fingertips yesterday and was just so painful. Why is it a bad sign?

So this all happened yesterday then? But your opening post reads like it happened today

The OP's post was from 2am. I imagine she posted before she went to bed.

Maybe you need an IQ higher than 80 to post on Mumsnet.

This thread is exactly why I hate customer service and am doing my damdest to get out.
You're a grown up, you know tea is hot, you know that you need to handle it carefully or you may scald yourself. You also know other humans are in general, not mind readers.
If you needed help after scalding yourself you should have asked. Dear God take some responsibility for yourself and your own actions! Stop trying to blame everyone else. This kind of shite is the reason that h&s laws are ridiculous and people in customer service aren't allowed to use common sense but must follow protocol and procedures.
They're cafe assistants not nannies.

"But McDonald's never lowered the temperature of its coffee*."
" McDonalds were totally in the wrong to serve coffee hot enough and the woman didn’t do anything wrong."

It's quite hard enough to find a takeaway coffee that is hot enough to be enjoyable without people who don't carry the cup properly campaigning for it to be served even cooler.

Anyway, this thread is about tea, which is supposed to be made with boiling water - near enough 100ºC. It's horrible if it's made with water that's not hot enough, but it does mean that people who buy it have to treat it as if it will be very hot and handle the cup appropriately.

Hot tea made with boiled water is hot. I'm shocked.

Gets my goat when people exaggerate their injuries and try to blame other people for them but there you go.

Gets my goat when people misrepresent what OP says in their eagerness to kick them, but there you go. OP never once tried to blame anyone else, and as you don't know what her injuries are you can't claim that she has exaggerated them.

Yes the OP was responsible but that's no excuse for:

Eye rolling
Not showing appropriate concern.

There's this impression that because customer service roles are not well paid, just anyone can do them and you don't need to be professional and lastly because some customers are rude, then it's ok to show annoyance etc.

It's not.

Of course everyone has off days, but if remaining polite in the face of challenge is too difficult then find a different job with no direct customer contact. There's a way of dealing with rude customers or if you feel out of your depth, and that is to get a supervisor or management to take over.

Being low paid is not an excuse to do a half arsed job. You agree to do abc for payment of xyz. The fact xyz is crap is neither here nor there. You can either take pride in what you do or you don't, it's a life attitude. Plus it's bloody insulting to ordinary people who take genuine pride in what they do. Everyone working at every level in the economy matters and can do a job that's appreciated.

Bad customer service makes my blood boil because I know how I treat the people I work with, and I expect the same. I'd be appalled if I reported dropping a scalding hot cup of tea and the staff member eye-rolled! This why the Robot economy can just take over, after all what are you missing really when staff are completely lacking in empathy?

I hate working with people who have this 'it's just a job' attitude or insist on only sticking strictly to their work remit.
Guaranteed it means I'll be doing most of the work and that their bad attitude will be directed back at me.

The woman in the McDonald's coffee case was a passenger and IIRC it was her grandson who was driving the car. He had pulled over so she could stir in cream to the coffee when she spilled it. McDonald's later admitted responsibility because they had been serving the coffee far hotter than what it should have been.

But let's not let the facts get in the way of a good story...

Pay peanuts, you get monkeys. That hasn’t changed in my life time.

Pay peanuts, you get monkeys. That hasn’t changed in my life time It might be true of products, but it's not of people.

It's a crappy attitude and also not true across all people in low paid jobs. Surely you have had the experience of someone doing an excellent job or going above and beyond what is expected? It's an attitude like I said.

I remember an interview with Muhammad Ali and the interviewer asked "what would you have done if you had't been a boxer?"

M.A. replied "no matter what I would have done I would have been the greatest at it. If I had been a street cleaner I would have been the best street cleaner, etc etc. It's not what you do it's your attitude doing it"

@CatherineOfAragonsPrayerBook

You do have a point imo with regards to customer service and just because it's low paid, expectations should be low. However I get really pissed off when people refuse to treat me professionally, in fact treat me like I'm a lesser being, yet expect not just professionalism, but most of the time super human qualities.
The first server shouldn't have rolled her eyes 'out loud' as it were, but the second server said "As long as you're alright" that does show concern, and it implies that the server (as would I, and I think most people) assumed that as the OP didn't say that she'd scalded herself when dropping the cup, that she was ok. It was also the perfect opportunity for the OP to say "Well actually I'm not OK, I've scalded my hand" for first aid to then be offered/applied.
But the OP didn't and though, did literally only ask if they were BU to be pissed off (well no, hot water scalds hurt!) but you've then got others wading in and saying the servers were both at fault and didn't care. What I read indicated to me that the second one did care, but was under the impression that the OP wasn't hurt.
I do think though that the problem with customer service is that expectations have got out of hand, people expect anything they desire to be achieved, even if it's impossible, and then will threaten a poor review or 'reporting' if the expectations aren't met, and sometimes if they are.
There's a real 'us and them' feel to customer service sometimes, like the customers are only there to try and catch you out in something and get some return for that and the staff's whole purpose in life is to make customers lives a misery for a bit of power.
We're all supposed to want the same thing, the customer to have a good experience and enjoy themselves - some seem hell bent on not doing that regardless and that number is growing. A returning/recommending customer will put more money in the till, making jobs more secure and (in theory, however it doesn't happen in practice!) Pay rises more likely - some staff lose sight of that.
Ultimately, the customer has the power in most scenarios, and some (a lot more than used to IME) abuse that power.

I entirely agree that customer expectations are beyond ridiculous. I don’t think anyone should expect “professionalism” from anyone other than a professional. If someone picked up a hot cup in a way almost guaranteed to spill, I’d roll my eyes too, especially if I was expected to clear it up.

If I were employing you Alsohuman and a customer dropped a scalding hot drink and I saw you directly eye roll in the customers face, and I was forced to come over and cover for you, I'd give you a bollocking and a warning.

It's not about whether it was her fault. It's about a hot drink being spilled and potentially hurting her/others. Tgat takes prior concern. By all means moan after shes gone.

Again professionalism in the context of custmer service means not making the customer feel like their idots and you can't be arsed.

If doing that is too much for you then rightly, you need another job where you are never challenged by the incompetency or mistakes of others.

Good thing you could never afford to employ me then, isn’t it? And your attitude is precisely why people who work in customer service roles tend to be useless because nobody with an atom of self respect would work for anyone who treated them the way you purport to treat your staff.

If doing that is too much for you then rightly, you need another job where you are never challenged by the incompetency or mistakes of others.

Being challenged by it, and having to deal with it is one thing, being blamed for it is entirely another. I'd deal with that situation without rolling my eyes and clear up and carry on, however unless it was me that spilled it, I'm not going to accept the responsibility for it too, just because I'm behind the counter and the customer needs to blame someone else. That's not being professional, that's just allowing yourself to be a scapegoat.