Owning a coffeeshop in the Haight comes with its own unique set of challenges. Prominent among these is how best to handle our mentally ill customers.

In general, our approach is very hands off. While individuals suffering from mental illness may behave oddly in comparison to other people (staring into space, talking to themselves, making nonsensical statements), they are almost always harmless, so we extend the same welcome to them as we extend to everyone else.

That being said, however,  we have to draw a line when it comes to disturbing others. If someone is behaving in a manner that upsets our other guests, we must intervene. This happened the other day and Maddi Wu commented on it in her blog:

there was an incident where one of the employees told a woman to leave and that she could only come back the next day.  hmmm, i sure hope the employee had a good reason because you would think that a cafe with social justice pasted across its walls would uphold that within the confines of its store.

Ms. Wu was right to be concerned. Asking a customer to leave the store is a pretty drastic move and it should only be undertaken under special circumstances.

In this case, the person involved was a regular customer of ours who appears to suffer from untreated schizophrenia. Most of the time she keeps to herself, but lately she has been approaching other customers and touching them on the knee. We're not sure if she does this to get their attention or to check if they are real or what, but whatever her reasons, it is freaking people out. On one day alone we had five people get up and leave the coffeeshop because she wouldn't/couldn't keep her hands to herself.

Initially we dealt with this problem simply by asking her to stop. We found that worked, briefly. All too often, though, she was back touching people 20 minutes later. Sadly, although she understands that she shouldn't touch people and is always very apologetic about it afterward, she just can't seem to help herself.

Our new strategy is to use a one chance a day policy. Everyday she is welcome to come into our store as long as she doesn't touch anybody. If she does start touching people though, she has to leave for that day, but is free to come back the next day and try again.

I think this a pretty reasonable policy, but we have yet to see if it will work. If you have other ideas about how to handle this situation in a sensitive manner, let me know. In the meantime, if this particular customer happens to approach you and place a hand on your knee, don't worry--she does that to everyone. Just ask her nicely to stop and she'll go away.