The customer service crush can spring into existence just about anywhere:
restaurants, banks, video rental stores, even airplanes. My personal favorite is the over-the-phone computer-help-desk guy. As your hard drive melts down, you're so vulnerable and emotional, and he's so clinical and competent -- how can you not become smitten? The customer service crush is the girl at the dry cleaner's with the French accent, the guy at Kinko's whose dirty, shaggy hair is dirty and shaggy in a good way. These people are extra friendly to us (or maybe alluringly unfriendly), and their place of employment can provide an automatic common interest: You drink coffee? Oh my God, I drink coffee, too! Or, as 29-year-old Rich, a Web content manager living in Boston, puts it about the Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS) store employee who struck his fancy, "I think a lot of it was that she could talk about tents with great ease. Had I met her under other circumstances, it might not have prompted me to go back three times and leave a note."