Melina Salazar, a wonderful woman from Texas, has worked as a waitress for most of her adult life. While she initially jumped around, for nearly the past two decades, she’s worked at the same Luby’s Restaurant in Brownsville, Texas. Over her years as a waitress, Salazar learned to deal with difficult situations along with even more difficult customers.
However, some customers are a lot harder than others, like Buck, a WWII veteran who seemed to hate everything around him. In fact, soon after he started coming to Luby’s, Salazar became the only employee who would wait on Buck. While he was often a curmudgeon, in the end, Buck would change Salazar’s life forever…
1. Loving Her Job
Melina Salazar was a middle-aged woman working as a waitress at Luby’s, a cafeteria-style restaurant, in Texas. While most don’t consider “waitress” a dream job, Salazar felt differently. Over 17 years as a waitress, and six at Luby’s, Salazar learned to love her job and became incredibly good at it. Without a doubt, she was one of them, if not the, best waitress in the place.
Salazar always focused on excellent customer service, treating every single customer with respect and sympathy, no matter how difficult the customer behaved. According to her co-workers, she’s always smiling and trying to cheer everyone up. But, by setting herself apart from the rest of the staff, Salazar also opened herself up to her most difficult challenge yet…
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2. Great Customer Service
Because of her great attitude towards every single customer and swift service – especially those who were demanding – a manager assigned Salazar to a special position: she would deal with the pickiest customers at Luby’s. Most of us would hate this job. But, of course, Salazar had no problem fulfilling her duties, wanting to treat everyone with respect.
Specifically, one particular customer acted so poorly that the other waitresses never wanted to take his order, unless they absolutely had to. To be fair, Salazar didn’t find dealing with this customer particularly easy. In fact, he was one of the most problematic customers she had ever deal with, in her entire career. However, Salazar had her reasons why she decided to continue serving him.
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3. The Pickiest Customer
89-year-old and veteran of World War II Walter “Buck” Swords was the regular customer whom the staff at Luby’s wanted to avoid as much as possible. According to most, he had a short temper and a severely less-than-pleasant personality. You can see why the staff at Luby’s avoided him.
Over the years, he built quite a reputation among the waiters and waitresses. Not only did he have a bit of a temper, but he also went to Luby’s for lunch every single day! Unfortunately, his reputation ultimately got the better of him. In time, no one wanted to serve him, no one except Salazar. Thankfully, she always felt ready to serve Buck.
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4. Finding Flaws
While everyone knows someone grumpy, Buck took it to the extreme. Whenever he walked inside the restaurant, no one knew what to expect. It didn’t matter the quality of food or time of day, he would always find something to complain about.
Buck didn’t like to be kept waiting, so he often got impatient and cranky with his orders. In fact, according to Salazar, he even sometimes “cursed at the staff.” It got to the point where even the most senior waitresses in the restaurant had, little by little, grown tired of his unreasonable demands. However, unlike the rest of the staff, Salazar always loved the challenge and would happily wait on his table, with a bright smile.
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5. Respect Comes First
How did Melina Salazar continually serve Buck, while others could not? Well, despite his grumpy reputation, Salazar had always believed the key to successful customer service is respect. Still, like everyone else who worked at Luby’s, even she had some run-ins with the infamous customer.
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