Do Salespeople Know You?

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Every other month or so I buy a certain kind of Earl Grey tea in a tea-shop owned by a Chinese woman. I mix it with Darjeeling which I get from a different source. My husband knows where the shop is but as it happened, he's never been there with me. Yesterday we were downtown together and I decided to get some tea. He said he'd accompany me so that he'd see my Chinese tea lady I'd told him about. We chatted about this and that, mainly about her daughter who attends the secondary grammar school I used to teach at before my retirement. While we were talking, she took a big tin box from a shelf, filled tea leaves in a paper bag and weighed it. I paid what she told me and we left. On our way home it struck me that we hadn't exchanged one word about what I wanted to buy. She hadn't asked me and I hadn't told her. And yet, I got exactly what I wanted, the right kind of tea and the amount I always take! If you find this admirable on the part of the woman, I have to tell you that it really isn't. She hasn't got many customers. Her problem is that we live in the south of Germany where people drink primarily coffee. She has a small group of tea drinking customers which doesn't grow. Coffee drinkers don't become tea-drinkers because of friendly service. I think she earns more with the Asian food she also offers. Obviously there are enough Asians in our town to support her. More impressive is the owner of an Italian coffee bar in the town centre who goes to his coffee making machine when he sees me approaching and puts a small cup of cappuccino on the counter the moment I enter. I've gone there for years and I always take a small cup whereas all other customers take the big one. Is it that that makes me stand out? The first prize, however, goes to two baristi, a young woman and a young man, in the main train station of Stuttgart. There I always take an espresso macchiato (with milk foam). I tried it once and I like it. It's a rare concoction. My Italian husband finds the mere idea revolting. It has also happened in this bar that my coffee appeared on the counter when I entered. Ah, you may say, it's clear why because I drink something hardly anybody else does. This isn't a convincing argument, though. Wikipedia tells me that every day ~248.000 travellers move through the station. I don't know how many find their way into the bar, but it must be a considerable number. I go there twice a week and only during term time at uni which is four months in winter and three in summer. I've asked the man how many customers he knows by sight and he said about thirty. Why am I one of them? I'll never know. Age-wise I'm between his mother and his grandmother. I wouldn't say that I'm mousy and inconspicuous but I'm certainly not an outstanding and striking person to look at. Or am I? What keeps me grounded is a shop-assistant in a small printer repair shop in our town who once claimed that he'd never seen me when I came to him the third time in the period of two weeks.