Anyone else noticing a pattern here...San Jose, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, no public restrooms. Other people seem surprised at this, but as someone who has, like fredweena, struggled to find one in San Francisco, I can tell you this isn't unusual. Maybe there are a lot of junkies around here. Maybe they were tourists. ;) You wouldn't catch me paying to use a toilet either way.

The "no restroom" part doesn't surprise me at all. What does surprise me is the people criticising LPM for her role - she's just upholding the policy of the establishment where she works. She's not the one who decided there was no restroom. She's only the barista, who metaphorically gets used as a public toilet. The public sucks. Food service sucks. Retail sucks. All she did was proceed with business as usual, and she got all kinds of nastiness directed at her.

LPM, it could be worse - I used to work at a coffee bar located at a bus station. Think about it...half the people are either in a terrible hurry, drunk, homeless or crazy, or worse. People order their drink 30 seconds before their bus is going to leave, and then scream at you about it. Bus drivers aren't exactly the cream of society either. Plus, I was trapped in a little kiosk with no access to a restroom myself, unless I shut everything down, locked the door, and walked over to the bus station bathroom. The stalker factor was fun too...aah, the good old days!

I've done both food service and retail. I'm not proud of the way I handled myself at times. Some customers are assholes, true. Le Petit Moi behaved with class by not losing her cool. That's a Good Thing. She won't have to look back and think "what an asshole I was!"

This is rather disheartening, but you can tell from this thread the people that would be there bitching and being rude just by their thoughts on the subject. I still don't understand why people can't just get over themselves, realize that some places don't have restrooms for a reason, and find another. You don't even have to say something unfathomably kind such as "thanks anyway," you simply have to walk out of the store. Instead, these people decided to be extremely rude to employees who have no control over the matter. Grade A assholes.

-Lasereth

I've been on the waitstaff/service person end and have said a rude thing twice. But no more. I think encountering people like that as a younger person helps you avoid becoming one as an older person. And by LPM's measured and decent response, she's not going to be part of the problem, but part of the solution.

Have a bad day. Go write about it. Seems absolutely rational to me.

I don't know if the Starbucks clientele around there is anywhere like it is here in Fairfield, but I firmly believe that seeing someone walk into Starbucks and give some indication that they will patronize the institution should be legal justification to open fire.

God, I hate yuppies. I'm surrounded by fucking yuppies.

ziadel, the bathroom I am sending people to is a public toilet in between Peggy Sue's and the Spaghetti Factory. It is there for a reason.

It could have been a lot worse... way back, before you were even born, and I was working in retail... the store I managed didn't have public restrooms (It basically woudl had set the company up for all sorts of liability issues have customers trapse thru the stock room to get to the restroom) Plus the mall had public restrooms. On more than one occassion, I had a customer, who was denied access to our restroom (and we told her we'd hold her purchases til she walked across the hall to the public restoom and come back) who would use a carpeted fitting room (with upholstered chairs) as a restroom... Talk about gross... One woman, ticked me off enough i had arrested for vandalism... (that was fun going to court that day)

mal, you're right, it COULD have been a lot worse. But it's just ridiculous that ADULTS act this way. One should expect more from a fellow human being.

Bad days at work suck (I won't give yours an autopsy). I'm sorry you had one.

follow that into NYC and you'll find that lots of places don't have public facilities, and if they do they are very nasty. I can't tell you how many times I would hike all the way from the middle of Central Park to The Plaza Hotel because that would at least be the nicest bathroom ever... but even bathrooms in the office buildings can be pretty sketchy.

Not exactly tourists, but... San Francisco and Santa Cruz are destinations. Places where people go, especially young people and drifters (young and otherwise), in search of some mythical cool counterculture that will envelope them in an amazing experience that doesn't require _them_ to do anything. I used to have a website about Santa Cruz, and I'd field questions from anybody about the town. And I got a lot of "I hear Santa Cruz is soooo cool and laid back. This summer, if I showed up with my surfboard, is there some way I could connect with somebody who'd let me sleep on their couch _for free?_" People like this take thoughtless and rough advantage of any resource they can.... including restrooms.

Both towns also have a rather backhanded, liberal/libertarian policy towards street people. They aren't run out of town, they're simply... ignored. As they play out their sometimes mental-illness-inspired fantasies on the street, or simply blow their minds away with whatever they can hustle up. That we step around them on the street without saying anything is supposedly liberal and tolerant. I haven't quite worked out the morality behind that one yet... At any rate, free-floating not-quite-domesticated young people and street/homeless people (or just plain addicts) with problems are big factors behind restroom closures, in both places.

That doesn't explain dull and prosperous San Jose, of course. If there are a lot of rude young people in the Santa Clara Valley, it's probably because Mumsy and Dadsy together are pulling down about $200K working at Adobe and HP and were too busy to give the young things anything but a comfortable, vacant, life and an unearned sense of entitlement which translates into arrogance when dealing with the service industry.

Yeah, Rodney, it is true that many wealthy folks come in, acting very snobby and inconsiderate. Not everyone, but many. The Starbucks I work at is just down the street from HP Pavillion and Adobe. Blleeehhhh...

There are so many customers like that in every place you go. It's why I'd rather work dishpit than hostess. I hate dealing with customers. There are nice ones sure, but for every nice one there are about 5 that ignore you and 2 that are whiners. It sucks. You shouldn't have to deal with customers that are brats like that. I wonder if the management could just give you a single seater bathroom with a sink. No reason to get a big one but enough to get people off your back. Small enough to keep clean with a blow dryer and no towels. Simple to clean.

As for you two's hair - I love it. You look so cute. It fits you nicely.

Thanks raeanna. :)

Most Starbucks only have a single bathroom. We USED to have that as well, but now it is our storage room because people were doing drugs in it.

Your hair is perfect! And you are beautiful!

It's pretty unusual for a food service place to not have a restroom available to customers, but the reason is understandable in this case.

I wonder what happened to civility? Don't parents raise thier children to be polite anymore? The sad thing is that if you speak up for yourself you get in trouble.

I however, do not. I've been in situations where I've seen dumbshits verbally beating up on high-school kids because they weren't happy about something. My son and I often meet at Starbucks for a cup of coffee. Several weeks ago, we were having a cup when some dumbass started yelling at the kid behind the counter.

THey had made some sort of mistake with his order. Well, they weren't rude to him, or nasty, or anything else. The girl was maybe 17, she said something like "I'm sorry for the mistake, we'll fix you a new one right away."

Well, dumbass proceeds to berate her about her competency. His language was profane. She was polite throughout, but nearly in tears. So I stand up, tap asswipe on the shoulder and tell him he's got no call to be so rude and hostile. She made a mistake, she acknowledge her mistake, she apologized, and she's fixing her mistake.

He tells me to mind my own business.

I explain that I was army special forces, and that protecting those who can't protect themselves IS my business. Then I asked him if he thought it was strange that the high school kid is being courteous and professional, and the thirtysomething is acting like a 5 year old who's been told he can't watch TV right now.

He stammered for a bit, mumbled an apology and left.

People need to speak up more when others are uncivil.

SirLance, I commend you. No kidding. We have had a few customers like you, and trust me, they REALLY stick out in your memory. We have a customer named Steve that came busting through the doors yelling: "WHO'S ASS DO I NEED TO KICK?!" when he heard another customer screaming at one of our partners. Needless to say, Steve's large, intimidating presence calmed that other customer down quickly.

LPM, trust me, I learned long long ago, that some people are going to asses...no matter what. Just know that even though the shoes on their feet would set you back 3 months salary, you are their better. Never stoop to their level.

Oh, and the hair is nice...I like it. But, I guess I'm from the school of if it ain't broke...don't fix it. You looked pretty damn good before. ;)

I have been thinking about writing a book about my experiences as a cashier and courtesy clerk (or "bagger" to the layman) at various grocery stores. The grocery business is an interesting one because nobody can avoid going there. You see an accurate representations of the populace. I work at a Kroger that is pretty much on campus. We sell lots of beer, and get lots of fake ID's, and people don't realize that there are people watching me, and I lose my job on the spot if I sell them beer. I can throw them out with relative ease though, and if not, I always carry a knife and can also call security, so it's not so much of a problem.

The problem comes when people get uppity about stupid shit that I can't do anything about. Example: we have a machine up front that you dump change into. It prints out a ticket that you take to the customer care counter and get paper money for. There is a big sign on the machine that says: "Coinstar tickets can only be exchanged at the customer care counter, which is open from 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM." People come in at midnight and bitch at me because I can't exchange their ticket.

One thing that people who haven't worked a low-wage service/retail job fail to realize is that the employees of the company that you interact with (i.e. sales associates, servers, cashiers) have no say in any of the companies' policies. I usually try to direct complaints to a manager, but people should know better than to get belligerent with low-level employees. We're there to do our jobs, not kiss your ass and wipe it too. I refuse to be dehumanized and I have been known to throw people out on my own power. I am good at service jobs (they're actually my favorite non-creative jobs), and I realize that I am getting paid by the customers I serve, but I refuse to go beyond what is reasonable and kiss customers' asses. Good managers will realize that, and shrug off complaints about employees.

That being said, I know a lot of people who work in service jobs that are assholes to customers, but they're outnumbered by good service people.

Heh. Look, buddy - when some asshat has a problem with the place that I work, it's the corporation's problem, not mine. The corporation depends on them - not me. We are two separate entities, and if my performance is at any time subpar, I will get fired. Why should I worry about their troubles if they don't extend the same courtesy to me.

I just couldn't resist posting this moment from lowbrow:

Psycho Dad,

I just read that quote, and you know what? I hear annoying people declare loudly that they'll just go in a corner of the store, since we don't have a restroom. Blah.

The service industry sucks, you get to deal with everyones bad day, bad relationships, bad life and still keep a smile on your face.

I would've given the girl a cup to pee in...but lost my job.

Anyways, just think, some day, when you finish with school, you won't have to work there...

and those pigs should just go in the corner...and then just call the cops on them for public indecency and lewd behavior.

I seem to recall when a kid teacher's saying something to the effect of, "Do you do that in your own home?"