One of the heavy ironies of my new job is that I seem to be drinking less tea. Sure, I’m surrounded by it; but I don’t drink more than the 1-3 cups I’ve long had at work, because there’s no bathroom in the back and I hate public washrooms. (Plus, I’m working!) And my hours are so much longer now…which is good, but it means less time to drink tea at home!
I like this one, yet I don’t. I don’t know. It’s chocolate-y, but not too much. It’s got a nice strong cinnamon overlay, but it’s not overwhelming. The flavours blend fairly well. It won’t exactly bowl you over, but I’ve had it as a latte, and it was really good as a latte.
And that’s really about all I have to say about it. I don’t know. I guess I’m tired today. And somewhat tired of sweet/chocolate/“cake” teas today, for reasons I can’t identify. I’m feeling the tea equivalent of blue balls at the moment. Nothing is satisfying me at the moment, and I don’t know why.
Maybe I’m just wiped out. One of our new staff has been a bit of a no-show lately, and I’ve had to pull overtime hours on top of full time. So yeah, maybe just too tired to really absorb the stuff I’m drinking lately.
Not that I’m complaining! Work has mostly been fantastic. Although yesterday was so slow that I don’t know if we even made enough to cover staffing costs. It’s not even like we could really sample much, because the mall was so dead that pretty much only FedEx and UPS guys were walking by in the hall! I’m scared we could get into trouble for that, but I don’t know what else we could have done. We only got a shipment of one box, and ran out of things to clean. So I just worked on my training manual, my coworker read some Sherlock Holmes, and I said to him at one point, “You realize we’re getting paid to sit and drink tea? What a great job.”
Then the most awesome customers came in! A white guy and his [presumably] Chinese wife who told us that they’d been living in China for 10 years before coming back to Canada. They were curious about Japanese tea – especially matcha – and looking for a variable temp kettle. I tried hard to sell them on either the Breville One-Touch or the Zojirushi. They seriously considered both, but agreed that neither worked because they need something with a longer spout for the Chinese tea ceremony they do, which I’m afraid I didn’t recognise.
Then they spent an age talking to us about tea! They told us horror stories from other tea shops they’d tried farther north in the city, then we talked about matcha. I was blunt about the quality of mall tea, and the fact that our matcha is not exactly top grade – which they didn’t seem surprised by, haha – but they wanted to try it anyway. So we did them up a couple of matchas on the house to show them how it works. I made the husband a ceremonial bowl (and I was super stoked to get really pro foam when I was explaining it!) and my mix master co-worker whipped up some flavoured combo of oolong and matcha. They thanked us and told us we were doing really good for people so new to tea and working in a tea store, way more professional than other tea shops in the city, that they appreciated “all you do,” and that they’d be back with some Chinese greens for us to try. YAY!
They didn’t buy anything, but you can tell the difference between a customer who truly wasted an hour of your time with no intention to ever buy, and a customer who will definitely be back. They’ll be back, and I look forward to seeing them again.
That is an awesome work story.
Where do you work? Teavana?
@MegWesley – I know, right? It’s definitely people like that that make you happy to go to work.
@Rachel – Yep, Teavana.