Would You Like Room For Cream?

Could I get a triple Grande caramel macchiato upside down stirred? The world has become a coffee addict through Starbucks retail stores all around the world. Over 7,000 coffee retailers around the world and over 25 million customers visit Starbucks each week. Starbucks now has the highest turn over ratio in the retail industry.

My name is John, and I’ve worked at Starbucks Coffee Co. for over two and half years. I started as a trainee to a Barista, a Barista to a trainer, and a trainer to a shift supervisor. Over the past two and a half years I’ve learned, experienced, and achieved many things through out my life at Starbucks. These are just a collection of mini-stories of my past experiences at Starbucks.

Brainwash –

When I was first hired I had to go to a training session at the corporate offices in Houston. It was an 8 hour long class of pointless crap. It was a class to brainwash you into believing that Starbucks was “the greatest” thing in the universe. In the business world we do have to put on a show and dance for people sometimes, not literally. This class was 8 hours of lecturing on how excited we are about coffee, the origins of coffee, the history of coffee, the smell of coffee, the taste of coffee, and anything to do with coffee and Starbucks. While sitting through the class, the instructor kept insisting I contribute and show that I’m excited about the class. Being me, I’m not that type of person that can be excited about something I don’t believe in. In addition, it takes a lot of effort to “act” excited.

Towards the end of the gruesome 8 hour class the instructor calls my name and asks what store I’m from. By the way all stores have a store code number. I replied with the stores code number and she replied back by threatening that she was going to contact my manager for not participating. Pathetic! That’s the only word I could think of. Gung-ho my ass. You can shove all the coffee beans in the world that is harvested by these poor third world countries for pennys by the pound and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. Welcome to the corporate world, a world where you must dance like a damn monkey when told to.

Its soo funny how some people act really excited about working at Starbucks. They act as if they were born for the sole purpose of making coffee for the rest of their lives. “What do you want to be when you grow up Johnny?”

“ummm… I want to make coffee and serve it to rich people.”

Some of the people in the class were so intensely participating that I kept tasting a little bit of throw up that would keep coming up in the back of my throat. Maybe it’s me? Maybe I’m just so negative I can’t work for Starbucks. Eh… who knew. I wasn’t made for Starbucks.

After the class, I went through 2 weeks of intensive training on the register, espresso bar, and the God forbid please, the frappaccino bar.

Frappaccino bar –

EVERYONE hates the frappaccino bar. Why? It takes time cleaning the pitchers, you constantly run out of frappaccino mix, you run out of ice all the time, and you run out of whip cream every 5 drinks. It’s a workstation which runs out of everything constantly which makes things frustrating. Why does everyone love frappaccinos? Cause we are the fattest city in the U.S. The smallest frappaccino drink Starbucks serves has about 160 calories and with whip cream that totals to be 240 calories. Average person running a mile burns about 60 to 65 calories. That means you would have to run 4 miles to burn it off. 4 miles!!! I can barely run a mile without reaching for my inhaler. It’s the end of the world for all the fat people as we know it.

Customers are ALWAYS right -

In any retail job they’ll teach you that customers are always right, in “most” cases. Through out my career at Starbucks I’ve met some very interesting customers. Some nice, some rude, some that are straight out stupid and I pray that God may give them some sense of intelligence.

One day as I was working a day shift, I was working the register ringing up customers. A lady came in with her daughter and ordered a drink. “Could I get a Grande Coffee Frappaccino with caramel on top?”

I replied, “Sure no problem.” And I rang up a Grande Coffee Frappaccino and the extra .35 cents for the caramel because the drink originally doesn’t come with caramel. Than the lady looks at the register for her total and realizes I charged her for the caramel on top of her drink and asks me why I charged her.

“Why did you charge me extra? I come in here and order the same drink everyday and I never get charged extra for the caramel!” she grunted in anger.

I politely replied, “Well the other employees that rung you up didn’t charge you when they were supposed to.” While I was standing behind the counter explaining it to the customer, I had the cup in my left hand ready to mark the cup with the drinks name. But I was holding the cup by the lid.

She yells, “Now I don’t want that cup! your hands touching the lip of the cup! I don’t want that cup, give me another one!”

At this point I’m annoyed and ready to curse this lady out. So I called my manager forward and told her, “I can’t handle this lady. Shes crazy! And by the way, don’t hold the cup by the lid.” I sarcastically replied.

After I handed the cup over to the manager, the customer went wild. I had woken up the beast.

“Oh HELL NAW! You smart ass mother fucker. I’m about to WHOOP YO ASS!”

Right at that moment there was a customer right behind her watching this whole boxing match unfold, while there was another customer around the bar on the other side watching it happen. The customer at the bar spoke up and said, “ma’am he has been nothing but polite to you. You need to calm down.”

The lady flips out and starts threatening to whip that customer’s ass along with mine. I couldn’t believe this was happening. The whole time it felt surreal as if I was in a movie scene where a fight breaks out at a bar and eventually stops the fight by shooting my shotgun into the air. I even wondered if there was some kind of hidden camera somewhere from a television show. After a 3 min brawl the crazy lady finally barks out, “Whatever! I’m out of this bitch before I kick everyones ass.”

After she left I couldn’t stop but laugh but also at the same time scared that this lady could’ve started attacking me. This lady was about 200lbs, five foot three inches, and looked like she had a lot of experience in beating up people. Of course I would’ve laid this lady flat down on the floor if needed to defend myself but I thank God that she left without any other problems. I wonder what her daughter standing next to her was thinking. I would’ve been so embarrassed by my mom acting like an ass. I would’ve crawled into the corner and tuck my head away in shame and hoped that the world would end right at the moment.

Later that week I found out that this crazy lady is actually very well known through out other Starbucks stores. I was told by several other Starbucks partners that shes given them problems in the past.

Rich Customers –

Starbucks is not cheap. Venti cup of vanilla latte runs at $4.15. With $4.15 you can go to any fast food place and get a full meal (burger, drink and fries). But I’m not encouraging you to eat fast food. We Houstonians are over-weight as it is already. Over 25 million customers go to Starbucks every week. 25 million customers’ multiply the average; $4.00 a person equals $100,000,000 dollars on coffee alone.

First of all, there are your regulars. Regulars are the customers who come everyday and order the same thing every time. These are the customers that are part of your personal circle of friends at work. They come in everyday and say hi and a brief “how’s it going?” The usual quick chit-chat and off they go.

Than you have your addicts who are regulars but come three to four times a DAY! Not only do they come more than three or four times a day, they come spend $4.00+ every time they come in. That averages out to $16.00 dollars a day, in a week they would spend $112.00, and in a year $5,824. If you’re spending $5,000 a year on coffee alone, you have some serious issues. Save that money, cut down on the addiction and invest it in some mutual investments, or donate it to a local cancer foundation. Please stop wasting money on coffee. Who needs coffee 3 times a day? If your addicted to coffee than make it at home. Just don’t buy the beans from Starbucks cause they charge $12+ a pound of coffee.

Kids Addiction –

Every once in awhile a customer comes in with their kids and buy them orange juice or yogurt. On the other hand you have your parents who buy there nine year old kid cappuccinos and lattes. What kind of parent lets their kid order a fully loaded espresso drink when the kids only nine years old, bad parenting.

Than there are the high school kids. They drive me nuts! They are by far the worst customers. They come in right after school around 2:30 pm and order Frapaccinos all day long. Not only do they order frappaccinos they order them all separately so that I can’t make the in one pitcher to save time. Not only do these kids love the unhealthy sugar loaded frappaccinos, they love to hold up the line asking questions such as: “what’s good here?” “I don’t like coffee, what can I get?” People! if you don’t like drinking alcohol you don’t go to the bar, if you don’t like smoking cigarettes don’t go near a person who smokes, if you don’t like coffee don’t go to a COFFEE SHOP. COME ON!!!

Customers & Money –

Most people have wallets to keep their money neatly folded and organized. On the flip side there are customers who don’t believe in wallets; people who just crumble up any cash they have and cram it down their pockets. When they order their drinks and come up to the register to pay, they reach into their pockets and pull out crumbled up money, along with pocket lint, and throw it on the counter expecting ME to pick it up and unfold it for them. Those of you who do this, please stop. This is rude and plain annoying. People who are ringing up on the register don’t have time to pick up your raggedy, crumbled up money with pocket lint and unfold it for you and count it for you. In addition please hand the money to the employee ringing you up. Throwing money on the counter is barbaric. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? Hand the money to a person, not throw it.

Unhealthy Customers –

Ladies and gentlemen lets all be honest here. The majority of Americans are over weight and it’s becoming a problem in many areas. I live in Houston, Texas the fattest city in the United States. About 8 of 10 people are overweight in Houston, and no ones doing anything about it. Your thinking, “where does Starbucks fit into this?” Starbucks has a big contribution to this. Not only does Starbucks sell $5.00 cup of coffee, they sell wonderful pastries. Cheesecakes to cookies, biscotti’s to muffins, they got it all. What strikes me oddly is the fact that overweight customers come into the Starbucks and purchase a Venti size (biggest) Caramel Frappaccino with extra caramel, and on top of the drink that has over 500 calories, they order a Caramel Fudge Cheesecake which is another 350 calories. In one setting that one customer is consuming over 850 calories with a drink and a slice of cheesecake, ½ of your daily requirements of calorie intake. WOW. I shake with disappointment and awe every time these overweight customers come in ordering unhealthy things. People need to start making better choices for their health benefits in the long run.

Customers who cheat the system –

Every now and than you get customers who get smart on you and cheat the system to save money. I say “more power to ya” if you figure it out but it’s not honest.

So how do they cheat the system? I’m only explaining how they cheat the system for educational and humoring purposes. Please don’t try this at home.

What they do is they order a double shot of espresso for .55 cents each in an iced Grande cup. Hmmm… why would someone get two espresso shots in a Grande iced cup with ice? if you didn’t notice, on the condiment bar there are there three crafts filled with milk. One with non-fat, whole, and half & half milk. They would take the Grande cup with the 2 shots and walk over to the condiment bar and make them selves an iced Grande latte, just by adding milk into it. They’ve just saved about $2.50 on their drink. Lets do that math. Starbucks looses $2.50 a drink, 6 times a week would be $15.00, and yearly would be $780.00 Starbucks would be losing. Imagine if one person did this for every store in the world. That’s a lot of money but I never really cared about it too much. Starbucks already makes billions of dollars a year.

Don’t take what’s not yours –

Most stores has its up time and down time. When Starbucks has its up time, it’s busy as hell; customer after customer, drink order after drink order. It becomes a vicious cycle which can wear you down very quickly.

It was a busy day at Starbucks and drink orders will piling in. There was a mountain of white cups on top of the espresso machine begging to be made. When I was working at the espresso bar, I was in the zone. I would pump out drinks right after another like I was a machine. Customers are usually slow to respond to pick up their drinks at the end of the bar. So eventually the finished drinks would pile up. So I had about 5 drinks already made and set on the bar for the customers to pick up, and this one lady comes up to the bar, grabs a drink and sips it. She looks a little confused. She asks, “hey is this mine?”

I replied very annoyed, “What’d you order?”

“I ordered a Frappaccino,” replies with a dumbfound look.

“Than why are you drinking an espresso drink that doesn’t belong to you?” Frustrated. The lady could not answer me. I was so frustrated I just wanted to throw a drink at her. That’s probably one of the dumbest customers I’ve ever encountered. I give her a 2 out of my top 10 stupid customers list.

Prejudice –

We’ve come along way since the segregation era and the extreme racists attitudes. Till this day we all still experience many degrees of prejudice and racism. You’d think that after all this time we’d actually move on with the issues of color of skin but we are all still stuck on skin deep. “I have a dream…” dream my ass… This world will forever be filled with hate, and racism. Maybe you may see me as a negative and hopeless attitude type of person but it’s the painful truth.

I won’t name any names but this one “partner” I worked with for about a year, she was one of the most hardest and earnest workers I’ve ever met working at Starbucks. I later found out she had worked for Starbucks for over 8 years and now running on 9 years. I asked her why she hadn’t been promoted to a manager position with her own store. The only reason she was given by the district manager was that she doesn’t fit the “profile” of a Starbucks manager. Another reason was that she spoke English with a bit of a Spanish accent.

THAT RIGHT THERE is prejudice and employee profiling. It’s like denying someone of a job because of their heritage or because the person was ugly. It is extremely against the law and the partner has yet to do anything about it. I’ve encouraged her to talk to an employment lawyer about her situation but nothing action so far. I hope justice will be served.

Samples –

People always love anything that’s free. Who can really deny a free sample of a scrumptious piece of pastry? or a nice slice of caramel fudge cheese cake? Samples are given out by the sellers to convince the buyer to buy their product. But some buyers sees it as an all you can eat buffet line. When I was at working at Starbucks I was always sampling out pastries and drinks so that I may convince customers to buy the pastries. Who am I kidding? I sampled the pastries for myself! Sometimes I would feel like a nice slice of pound cake, or sometimes a piece of the frost covered cookie. It all varied on my mood of the moment. I soon realized that my pants and clothes started to feel tighter so I soon dropped the bad habit of sampling the pastries. So as I sampled the pastries out, some customers would actually come to get samples and nothing else. Some brave souls actually come in and order a Grande water and grab hand full of samples and run out the door in quick shame. It’s quite funny when a customer comes in to get the free samples and justify that they came into buy a drink an hour ago already when I know that they haven’t.

Getting High –

I would say I’ve had my share of getting high on drugs as I was going through my teen years. Who hasn’t experimented with drugs at one point or another? Even our x-president Clinton admitted that he smoked marijuana but justifies it by saying he didn’t inhale. Bullshit.

I’d say 75% of Starbucks employees are pot heads, 5% are coke heads, and 20% are drug users who use drugs I’ve never even heard of. It’s amazing how some employees actually come to work high and actually work well. Actually most work even better high! Well that highly depends on their drug of choice before their shift.

Pot heads who smoked up before the same to work are actually good workers. They tend to say very little and zone out doing their jobs. I’d see them mopping the floor for a good straight hour without a sound from them. I’d see them stocking the fridge without any hesitation from my orders. One bad thing was once you get them talking, it’s all over. They just talk and talk about thing’s that would only make sense to another pot head. But I’d prefer a pot head over any other drug user.

Coke heads are way to hard to control. I knew this one guy who would cut up straws and walk into the walk-in refrigerator, do a couple quick lines and come out as if he just took a cold shower after a long nap. It was highly annoying because this guy would be soo hyped up and would hardly do any work. He couldn’t stop moving and kept talking at obnoxiously loud volume. My conclusion, I hate coke heads.

Whip its? It’s when you inhale a mass quantity of cO2 slowing down the blood that’s flowing to your brain. Once your inhale everything seems to echo as if your trapped in some kind of time warp under water and everyone who talks sound like the teacher from Peanuts cartoon. Wa wa wa wah wa. It’s a quick high so the drug abuser usually does it a couple times in a row. These employees who do whip-its are the worst to work with, even worse than coke heads. At least the coke heads actually somewhat work. Whip its users are so tripped out that they can’t function at all and always has a slapped on dumbfounded look. I hate them.

Bug cases –

No matter how much you can deny it, no matter how clean you think your food is prepped, no matter how clean you think a restaurant is, no matter how much you hate it there are always bugs in our foods. Sometimes we see it and many times we end up consuming it without ever noticing it. Average person swallows 3 spiders a year. I’d say there are tons of other bugs we may end up swallowing to.

I’m terrified by only one thing in my life. I will fight fires, I will run a marathon, I will even sky dive before I let a cockroach touch me. Cockroaches are my kryptonite. I’m a big guy, and I will scream like a girl when I see one and jump up on a chair while I hold up my skirt. I’m chewing gum as I type this to prevent myself from gagging. That’s how much they gross me out.

Starbucks has the worst roach problem. One store I was picking up a shift at had roach colony infested inside the damn espresso machine. I would be making a drinking and a roaches head would pop out once in awhile out of the wholes of the machines and crawl back in. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I immediately reported it to a exterminator to come and spray the place down. (chewing more gum now).

While I was working a shift at the same store as the previous story, I get a phone call asking for the manager. I was the manager on duty so it’s my duty to take control of every situation that arises.

“Hi, I just came in and ordered a black coffee with cream and when I was drinking it I found a roach in my drink.”

I’m extremely shocked and skeptical, “Are you serious?”

“It was in my drink.”

I found it hard to believe that there was a roach in this customers drink. Why? Cause this lady was so calm about it. She was telling me as if it was story she just happen to hear from her good friend.

“I’m really sorry ma’am. Would you like to come in and get a new drink? I will gladly give you some free drink coupons which you can use at any other Starbucks of your choice.”

“no… it’s ok. I just wanted to tell you guys. Thanks.” Click!

Was it true? I don’t know. It could’ve been anyone playing a prank. But I wouldn’t be shocked if it was true. That damn store is infested. (chewing more gum!!!)

Okay, I can’t take it. I will stop my roach stories here. I’m too grossed out.