Conversations With Our Customers - Awesomness!

I know what Lou is really singing about, but it's a song that can also apply to less troublesome things, to nice things.

Gorgeous day today. On our way to The Commoner Restaurant, one of our favourite Sunday lunch destinations, a person started waving frantically at us from across the road. I didn't know who the fuck it was. The Dreaded One waved back as we started to cross the road.
"Who the fuck is that?"I asked.
"I don't know."

"Then why are you waving back at them?"
"Because when people wave at me, I wave back at them. It's just what you do."
Then the stranger started calling out, "Awesomness! Awesomness!"
Turns out she is a new cafe customer who came in when our EFTPOS terminal folded its arms and said fuck you on Friday. She seemed nice, had no cash so I said she could leave an IOU. She gave me the money right there in the middle of Smith Street. Fortunately, the little man in my head with the names file found her name quite quickly.
Also turns out that her partner builds recycled wooden things. We are thinking about a communal table for the cafe. It was all quite funny.
Then we had a lovely lunch at The Commoner. Upstairs this time, treated well by the amazingly lovely Jo. Really do love that place. The flavours of the food, the care and attention to detail...
Such a perfect day.

Not So Common

A few weeks ago at one of our favourite Sunday lunch destinations, The Dreaded One and I found ourselves talking to the owner, a lovely person by the name of Jo. We first encountered Jo a couple of years ago, soon after we moved into the area and wandered by the restaurant and peered through the window. The restaurant appeared to be closed, so we kept walking. Jo had seen us peering inside and came running out onto the street.

"Come back! We're open!"

We went back. Have been going back ever since. We love this place.

Since then, we've opened our cafe, Grumpy & The Dreaded One's Little Cafe Of Awesome. Steep learning curve, lots of hard work. Just the way we like it.

On this day, we told Jo about our previous Saturday, when our Saturday helper phoned in unwell and it was just down to The Dreaded One and me to go it alone again. Naturally, we got slammed.

Jo listened to all of this. Bear in mind here that this is a good restaurant. It's whole other levels above our humble operation. But when we finished talking about what a hard day it had been, Jo said wait here, hang on a second. She disappeared and returned with her business card. She scribbled her name and personal phone number on it and said that on Saturday mornings, she's available to work and to just call her if we need help doing whatever.

I could tell, she meant it. What a gorgeous, wonderful offer. We would never take her up, of course, but that she made the offer and meant it... wow.

Then today, Jo pops into the cafe. As well as running her wonderful restaurant, she supplies other restaurants with wild mushrooms. She was delivering some to the nearby legendary Cutler & Co and dropped a few off to us as a gift.

And again said that the offer to help out still stood.

Some humans are just so amazing. They make you take a good look at yourself and make you want to be a better person.