Rich could take a lesson from Jim, who describes himself as a "connoisseur of crushes" and keeps lists of his weekly top 10 love interests on his blog. The customer service crush, Jim argues, is doomed to fail if pushed beyond its place of origin. "When you bring them to fruition or take them out of the world of fantasy, it's like stapling a butterfly to a desk," Jim says. "There's no way it will continue to be a butterfly."
Indeed, the beauty of a customer service crush can be its very lack of seriousness. "It's not like, 'I have to go to her parents' house and hang out with her dad,'" Jim explains. The crushes are "a sugar burst -- instead of having to chew the gum all the time, you chew it while it's fun, and then when it's not fun, you don't go into that bar for a year and a half."
Debra Ginsberg, the author and former waitress now living in San Diego, agrees that the customer service crush is often a fantasy -- or, seen from the employee's perspective, more of a nightmare. "How can this person really be into you after you serve him a bowl of minestrone?" she asks. "He's got some fantasy that has nothing to do with who you are. Especially if they leave their phone number and a bad tip -- it's like, 'Dude, think again.'"
Against her better judgment, Debra did once, in 20 years of waitressing, agree to go out with a customer. "It was an absolute disaster. He was psychotic," she says, adding that "the best policy is to date people you work with because those are people you see every day and you know what they're about. That's why you often have people in a restaurant having sex with each other in the storage room."
Until a few years ago, Jim usually set his sights on bartenders. "You get progressively more ridiculous as the night goes on -- you're pretty much handing out money to these people because you're completely in love with them. You get a $2 Pabst Blue Ribbon and it's like, 'Here's a five, keep it -- I just want you to be happy.'"
Although he no longer drinks, Jim says, "There's something erotic about people who present you with the things that you're addicted to" -- and caffeine certainly counts, which is why Jim stops by at least two coffee shops a day. Even when it comes to latte, apparently, the personal is political. "There's camaraderie between people who have crappy jobs," Jim says. "They aren't expecting you to take them out for caviar or to go yachting. If you leave Sweet Tarts in their tip jar, they'll be like, 'That was the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me!'"
Perhaps it's that intoxicating sense of being appreciated that at times causes the customer service crush to operate in reverse, with the lust flowing not from customer to employee but from employee to customer. Rich, the EMS shopper, found himself on the receiving end of a customer service crush from a 70-something cashier at the place where he buys his lunch. "She's a short, cranky little old lady," Rich says. "But she rang me up every day, so I always tried to be nice and chatty. One day I go in there and she's like, 'Do you know how to dance?' I don't know why, but I kind of knew what was coming, and I said, 'Me? No, I've got two left feet.' She said, 'Cause I've got a Sadie Hawkins dance next Friday and my regular date has bowed out.'"
In part because of the 50-year age difference between them, Rich was, he says, shocked and a bit unsettled -- though not enough to start buying his lunch elsewhere. "The guys I work with said, 'You shouldn't be so friendly anymore.' But I was very flattered. It's always nice to be asked out no matter who it is."
Believe it or not, some customer service crushes do end happily ever after. Just ask Susie Gelbron, a 31-year-old letterpress printer in San Francisco. In February 1998 she was outside a Patagonia store with a friend when she saw a cute guy she'd noticed walking several blocks earlier. When Susie pointed out the guy, her friend recognized him as Steve, a college classmate. It turned out that Steve worked at Patagonia, and Susie and her friend followed him inside.
"I was really nervous because right away I thought, This guy seems great," Susie says. "He went into the back and my friend was like, 'Pull yourself together. You've got broccoli in your teeth! You're a mess!' She was handing me lipstick and trying to fix my hair."
Unfazed by this Bridget Jonesian introduction, Susie called the store several times over the following week to ascertain when Steve would next be working -- and when she figured it out, she went in and asked if he'd like to have lunch. Steve now jokes about how Susie "stalked" him at the store, but apparently it worked: They've been a couple for six years.
Though it was, of course, Steve himself who attracted Susie, his place of employment didn't hurt. "My idea then of getting dressed to go to a bar was cute jeans and a little Patagonia vest," Susie remembers. "I thought black Patagonia [jackets] were the bridge to dressing more like an adult." In fact, the merchandise played a key role in their early courtship: Susie wore Patagonia shorts on their first date ("I didn't want to be too dressed up") and for her birthday -- 12 days after they first went out -- Steve gave her a fleece jacket.
In short, it was a match made in customer service heaven. As Susie says now, "My mom joked that she couldn't believe I found a boyfriend and a discount."
About the writer
Curtis Sittenfeld's first novel, Prep, will be published by Random House in January. She lives in Washington, D.C.
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