“We don’t like to focus on individual employees at our store,” states the droid-like Nordstrom’s corporate puppet into my voicemail. 

I had requested an interview with Santa’s photographer from Rich Hansen’s photography, who sets up Santa shop at Nordy’s, but unfortunately I got completely denied by the snooty Seattle big-wigs.  Don’t like to focus on individual employees, Nordstrom?  Are you saying that they don’t matter to your multi-million-dollar “big picture”?  That all you care to focus on are sales? On pushing away the media?  Are you too good for my stupid little column?  Too good to talk to your community?  To my seven readers?  Do you appreciate me so little as a representative of your customer base that you’d shun me like that?

Well, I’ll tell you who DOES care about their customer base, the community and talking to the media: Sumner’s Beyond the Bridge Café (or BBC, as the regulars call it). 

While I munched on the best pumpkin bread ever, which later gave me the best pumpkin bread burps ever, I chatted with an extremely witty BBC co-owner, Ben Rubke.

STEPH DEROSA: So did you guys get into King 5’s “Best of Western Washington” top five again this year?

BEN RUBKE: Oh hell no. 

DEROSA: That “Best of Western Washington” is a bunch of bulls***, if you ask me.

RUBKE: Oh, for sure.  You have to work your butt off and network like crazy to get people to log on — and for what?  NOTHING.  You get nothing.

DEROSA: Finally, a business that sees the truth of the tricky, mad-marketing ways of King 5.

RUBKE: When you get “top three” in your division alongside Bigfoot Java and Cowgirl Espresso, it’s really not saying much as a business.  In reality, who cares?

DEROSA: I sure don’t.  So, do you ever have any confusion with the British Broadcasting Company when being called “BBC” for short?

RUBKE: Nah.  I actually don’t mind if people get us mixed up with something that represents “information and empowerment” like the British Broadcasting Company does.  It’s better for us.  Well, at least until they sue us.

DEROSA: How could someone sue an entity as pure, wonderful, and compassionate as Sumner’s Beyond the Bridge Café?

RUBKE: For that statement, we like you.  You are welcome here any time.

DEROSA: You’re not kicking me out?  This is a first for this column!

RUBKE: Just make sure you Febreeze before you leave.  Your pumpkin bread burps are deadly.

[Beyond the Bridge Café, 13624 Valley Ave. E., Sumner, 253.863.0556]