Over the last few weeks there has been a bit of friction between different users and different viewers at Realneo. You can observe this friction in some of the comments at Realneo, and if you look closely you can see it in who hasn’t recently been commenting or seen at Realneo.
We all want our coffee served just the way we want it, don’t we?
And if your morning coffee has cream and you ordered it black – the start of your entire day just sucks.
And of course, not everything that happens, happens on the public face of Realneo. Everyone on Realneo has a “contact” which allows private emails.
It has been an interesting learning experience for me.
For example, an email came from a west sider who accesses Realneo under an alias. This person really, really has come to like Realneo because for them Realneo has always been served very hot, with one sugar. The person liked what Realneo served so much they had a bill scrunched up in their outstretch palm which was headed into Realneo’s tip jar. Wow! Good Coffee here and appreciative customers!
But a problem arose - Realneo’s coffee brewing pot thermostat stuck – so the temperature changed - so that when Realneo was served for a few mornings very hot but with 8 sugars this anonymous person with the crumpled up bill in the palm of their hand right above the tip jar broke down to the point that they would never go to Realneo for coffee ever again. Period. So they won’t be reading this.
That was one interesting learning experience.
Then there was a friend of mine who accesses Realneo both under an alias and under their real name. Under the person’s real name I had coffee several times with the person – they took their coffee with cream and honey. Not a problem. Realneo can do coffee with cream and honey. YUM! Sometimes we even had coffee away from Realneo – I remember once we had coffee at the real person’s house and a few times we had coffee at my house.
That was friendship!
But the YUM coffee drinker had a schizoid alias. Kind of a
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde relationship . For the sake of clarity, let’s call the real person Dr. Jekyll and the alias person Mr. Hyde.
OK
Mr. Hyde didn’t like the fact that Dr. Jekyll was being served coffee with cream and honey by Realneo. So Mr. Hyde sent Realneo an email and asked a Realneo barista to offer coffee with Angostura Bitters – in fact, as I recall now, Mr. Hyde asked the barista to feature Angostura Bitters at Realneo.
Of course Realneo has a lot of baristas – everyone at the REAL.COOP Coffee shop is a barista – so someone, I can’t be sure who it was, put a few bottles of Angostura Bitters out. Some were placed on the counter next to the cream, sugar, and honey, and some were put on the tables.
A few morning’s later, I was sitting with my laptop hooked up to the wifi, when what looked to me like my friend Dr. Jekyll, came into Realneo and saw the bottles of Angostura Bitters in prominent sight.
Apparently that was too much. Dr. Jekyll lost it. Or was it Mr. Hyde who lost it? Now I am confused myself.
Anyway what happened next was that Jekyll/Hyde grabbed the first bottle of Bitters they could get their trembling fist on, snapped off the neck with their teeth, and threw the razor sharp bottle at my laptop screen.
BOY, OH BOY. Lucky the thing just missed my eye.
This kind of passion from my friend Dr. Jekyll, who now also looked to me like Mr. Hyde, was another interesting learning experience I have had at Cafe Realneo.
My take away? Everyone "gets naked" - loses their self control - so you can see clearly who they really are at Realneo.
And that’s pretty cool.