A more direct approach

As an ice cream girl, I make every effort to be nice with customers. After all, who wants the sweet and succulent experience of eating ice cream to be blemished by a crabby employee? It is because of this that I find it necessary to wear out my facial muscles by smiling and occasionally working my voice up to such a high, friendly pitch that it is almost unnatural.

But sometimes, my friends, things get serious. 

If you have ever had the experience of working with technology or machinery, you'll know how frustrating it can be. It just so happens that the soft serve machine enjoys to exert a violent wind of hot air as it operates. This wouldn't be such a problem if we didn't need to keep a stack of napkins on the freezer in front of it. 

Originally, the solution to this problem was simple. To avoid having the napkins be blown away by the soft serve's wind, we set a paper cup (one that we usually use to serve ice cream in) on top. This was fine, until we found that customers are ruthless creatures. To my disgust, they found it acceptable behaviour to remove the cup from the stack of napkins and take it for themselves! Instead of paying the 25 cents for an extra cup to divide one serving of ice cream into two, they took our napkin holder!

At first, I took it upon myself to handle the problem. When it was slow, I used a pen to write on the outside of the cup, "Please replace after taking napkins. Thank you!" That should do it, I thought to myself.

But lo and behold, it did not! The cups were still disappearing like nobody's business, causing napkins to be flying around the shop at no end.

Finally, Jenn, the more ruthless of us two, took control of the situation. She decided to write her message on the inside of the cup, so that, as customers took it from the freezer and envisioned putting their ice cream inside, they'd see the message. Very simply put, she wrote "Put this cup back." The period at the end of the statement worked quite nicely, and she added a "Thx." as an after thought.

Sometimes, I am sorry to say, an ice cream girl can not always be nice.