People don't suck. Not always.

I need to leave my job, and I know this, quite solidly, but every time I think I'm gonna scream some amazing customer makes me reconsider.

We have a young nanny who comes in after dropping off her charge at the local nursery school. She sits in a comfy chair and reads, naps, chats, reads s'more. At noon she takes off to pick up the little one, but before she goes we talk a little about books, music, nannying, Boston... anything. The other day we talked about children's lit. Next morning she paid for her drink and handed me a big ol' book - a collection of short stories by Roald Dahl.

Then there's the big T. He comes in two times a day and gets the same thing in the morning: the NY Times, a multi-grain bagel toasted twice with butter, and a large coffee. He's about 65 and works odd mornings at a school somewhere, and works as a tour guide in some historic site on the weekends. He studies furiously for both jobs, highly nervous about them. He insists that I should be an actress. He also insists that Sinatra, if he'd put as much work into acting as he had into singing, could have won an academy award. This gentleman talked up Bonnie and Clyde with such reverence that I eventually felt I had to rent it to see for myself. He fairly glowed with happiness when I shared my review with him. "I saw it at every theater in Boston on its opening night. The audience... You could hear them gasp in that last scene..."

One of my customers started out surly. He's a young Irish researcher affiliated with the hospital in some way. He'd come in and order a large coffee, dump half of it in the trash and fill it up with milk. One day I yelled at him: "Dude, just order a small coffee in a big cup. You're throwing away a good fifty cents every time you come in." Since then he's warmed up a bit and we've had jokes back and forth. When I came back from my surgery he announced loudly, "Oh, I thought they'd finally fired you!" Thanks, dude. One of the girls I work with said something like, "Whoa, I didn't know he could talk." Since then I've set out to sweeten him up with everyone else. This mission resulted in a contract trading 20 seconds of Irish jigging for 14 days of free coffee. He turned purple with embarrassment but eventually signed it and taught me a simple jig. Now he comes in with a big ol' tip ready for whoever serves him.

The nanny, just so you know, was so intent on her reading that she missed the jigging. Woe is she!