I Found All the Polite People
The findings presented here shouldn’t be considered in any way scientific. What’s more, the evidence compiled herein certainly doesn’t constitute a statistically significant sampling. And the story I’m about to relate should positively be considered anecdotal. But all of that notwithstanding, I finally found out where all the polite people ended up: They’re working at Dunkin’.
I gathered the results of this decidedly informal survey at three local Dunkin’ outlets. By local, I mean in or near South Windsor, Connecticut, the town in which we reside. Since America, after all, runs on Dunkin’, geographic specificity is of paramount importance here, no? I visited each of the outlets on three completely separate occasions. The elements common to each of my three orders were a lovely breakfast sandwich (a different one each time) and a large dark-roast coffee, hot and black. I limited my study to the drive-thru lanes at all of the three outlets.
Outlet #1
This shop is located in close proximity to the salon in which I get my haircut. Since I’d scheduled a recent ears-lowering appointment early enough to compel my getting up before breakfast, I emerged from the salon freshly coiffed, staggeringly handsome, incorrigibly modest, and ravenously hungry.
Spotting Dunkin’ across the parking lot, I steered my vehicle (that’s vee-HIC-le if you’re from the South) toward the entrance of the drive-thru lane, followed the arrows painted on the pavement to the menu board, waited for a disembodied voice to ask me what I wanted, and placed my order. The voice then instructed me to shift my transmission to Drive and to proceed to the pick-up window.
At the window, I was greeted by a young man. He asked me, with obvious sincerity, how I was that fine morning (aside from freshly coiffed, staggeringly handsome, incorrigibly modest, and ravenously hungry). He told me a fresh pot of dark-roast coffee hadn’t quite finished brewing yet. But, he went on, if I’d like to take a spot in the parking lot, he’d be happy to bring my coffee out to my car. I thanked him, parked my car, and went inside.
When he saw me enter the shop, the young man approached me and reiterated what he’d told me. I said, “You’re hard at work. I’m not. And if you’re polite and generous enough to offer to deliver my coffee to me, the least I can do is come in to get it, shake your hand, and thank you for your exemplary service.” Then I told his manager what he’d done.
Outlet #2
The next shop I visited happened to be on a fairly busy thoroughfare I was traversing after having helped my wife, Anne, with a residential-staging project. Suddenly recovering from a bout of amnesia, I remembered I’d forgotten to eat breakfast that morning. Spotting the Dunkin’ sign to the left in my peripheral vision, I jerked my steering wheel hard to port, veered across two lanes of oncoming traffic, screamed into the parking lot, scared the shit out of a guy who spit out his dentures along with his glazed cruller, locked up my brakes, and did a fishtail skid up to the menu board.
As the smoke from my screeching tires cleared, I heard a disembodied woman’s voice say, “Good morning. May I help you?” After I’d placed my order, I was instructed to pull up to the next window. I did. There, I was greeted by a young man, every bit the polite equal of the young man I’d met at my last Dunkin’ visit. He, too, asked sincerely how I was that morning. After cheerily taking my money, he instructed me to pull ahead to yet another window, from which my order would be dispensed. I did just that.
A young woman, even more pleasant than the young man I’d just encountered, opened the window. Smiling, she had a bag with my lovely breakfast sandwich in it in her left hand. In her right hand, she held my coffee, freshly poured in one of the new paper cups with which Dunkin’ has replaced styrofoam.
Before leaning out to hand them to me, she smiled and asked me how I was. I told her I was fine, albeit a little worried about the guy with the cruller. And I asked her how her day was going.
Beaming, she said, “Wonderfully!” She told me the store had given the guy a fresh cruller and that his choppers hadn’t broken when they hit the pavement. He just dunked ’em in a fresh cup of coffee, which the store also gave him on the house, and slid them back in his yap. All’s well that ends well.
Outlet #3
My research concluded at a Dunkin’ that happens to be on a well-traveled secondary road — three lanes in either direction — adjacent to a major shopping mall and the entrances to and exits from two interstate highways, I-84 and I-384. Consequently, the place does a land-office business, day and night, catering to the needs of the traffic-stressed, the shopped-out, the road-weary, and the caffeine-addicted (like yours truly). I pulled in to the drive-thru lane, this time with Eddie riding shotgun in his doggy seat.
Eddie and I waited for the disembodied voice, this one, again, a young woman’s. After placing my order, I followed her obligatory instruction to pull ahead to the window. The same voice, this time in the body of the young woman who owned it, greeted us at the window. Spotting Eddie, her smile got even wider. She said, “Oh, my God. How cute!”
Eddie said, “Don’t get your hopes up. She’s not talking to you.”
I turned my head back toward the young woman hopefully. She looked right past me and asked, “May I give him a Munchkin?”
Crushed but determined not to telegraph my wounded vanity, I said, “No, thank you. He doesn’t eat people food.”
The Moral of the Story
The bad news is there’s no shortage of generalized, generational bad-news stories or people willing to tell them. Baby Boomers this. Generation X that. Millenials the other thing. Generation Z something else. We can stereotype all we want. And we do. In truth and fairness to all of us, every stereotype, like every cliché, has elements of truth in it. That’s how they start. And it’s why they’re perpetuated.
The good news is every stereotype breaks down at the level of the individual. And if we take the time to know people — individual people — we’ll find that people are like cats: There are truthful generalizations to be made about every one. But every one is different in personality, in temperament, in its capacities for communicating, for giving, for loving.
That’s how I found all the polite people. They work at Dunkin’.
But don’t take my word for it. Ask Eddie.
