Tasty Tea?

Sigh.  I'm so grossed out.  Yesterday the sun came out, and with it came the quirky patchouli-smelling people.  Well, one person, really.  And she came to, of course, the tea house!  When the patchouli scent precedes the person, you're certainly in for something. 

First off, I was completely weirded out because this lady, pleasant enough in speech, wouldn't make eye contact.  Hello, hello!  I'm over here!  You know when you're a kid in grade 6 and you have to deliver your first big speech to a gymnasium-filled audience on the perils of global warming?  You know when your teacher coaches you to stare at the forehead of someone to make it SEEM you're making eye contact?  That's crap.  And that's what this woman was doing.  I spent the first five minutes of our interaction thinking I must have a piece of food stuck to my head.  Her random fits of nervous giggles didn't help either.  Anyway, she wanted a citrus-flavoured yerba mate tea.  Okay, we're getting somewhere!  I have that!  I lead her to our yerba mate section and open up the sniff tin for her to take in the scent of the tea.  Because this particular blend contains lemongrass, I explained that it'd be a little more difficult to catch the smell because lemongrass really releases its aroma in water.  More nervous giggles.  Less and less eye contact.  It is critical I share something with you about our sniff tins.  By the calendar, we change the teas once every three weeks to ensure the smell remains fresh for the sniffing pleasure of our customers' noses.  That said, those sniff tins meet a LOT of noses.  Some are little and pretty.  Some are old and warty.  Others have hair.  Some are infested with snot...a LOT are infested with snot.  Some noses stay far away from the tin, others get right in there.   If sniff tins could type, they'd be writing this blog, not I.  Moving forward.  I leave my customer with sniff tin in hand and turn my back to walk back to the cash desk.  Nervous giggles ensue.

Customer:  "Oh yes, I can taste the lemongrass."
Munch, munch.  

I spin around at turbospeed....could it be?  Could she be..... Ohhhhh noooooooo (this rang through my head in slow motion like the movies)....she's EATING the teaaaaa!  FROM THE SNIFF TIN!!!!!!

I couldn't save her.  It was too late.  She ate the tea from my sniff tin.  Will she live?  Does she not know what noses have gone before her?  Wait, do I CHARGE her? (kidding on that one)....

In the end, the tea-eating sealed the sale...she bought tea and left with her patchouli-scented self.  Hopefully she's somewhere with yerba mate in hand, not making eye contact, and enjoying this lovely Mother's Day (if she wasn't poisoned, because then that's not a very nice Mother's Day at all).