Particular customer

I will tell you exactly what I want. You can serve me and make me happy, or you can ignore me and make me unhappy. Or we can renegotiate.

This is real for me as I have a daily ritual luxury of a morning coffee, and I like my morning coffee in a very particular way. Boiling – as in technically boiling – hot. 

Over the years, I have attempted to communicate this request in as many ways as I can to ensure I get a boiling cup of coffee. 

Words like boiling, burn, volcanic, 100C. I also now tell people that if they do not do this, I will send the coffee back, and they will need to remake it. 

It seems like a fairly simple instruction. 

I work hard to make the particular request easy for people. 

But the number of times I get lukewarm is alarming. 

If you give me what I asked for, I will love you for it and, in the process, make your life in service easier because you know exactly what to do to keep me coming back.

Being picky, in distinction to particular, is an entirely different experience. I am not picky. I will not change my mind. I will not critique everything. (Unless it truly is deserving of critique.) I am not oppositional. 

I am particular. 

Particular can be well served if the communication is clear. Picky is impossible.

Great customer service knows the difference between particular and picky.

Photo November 2024, Article written March 28th 2025