Or you could have said, “Yea, I know. It’s a little confusing here” and let it go.
Alright, you smartasses, just give me a small, then.
No, they shouldn’t. And yes, he is.
But the reality of it is that people who don’t frequent Starbucks much can find the menu to be a bit bewildering, and the names of things to be pretentious and confusing. When navigating a jungle of venti alpacinos and grandie pantsofchinos, the term “Coffee sm” does not immediately pop out, even though a tall coffee is the first thing on the menu. It’s not hard to understand why some people come to the conclusion that the one item that coffee establishment does NOT carry is, you know, coffee.
That’s a little frustrating for people who might feel like they’re not part of the club. And customers vent. It’s their unfortunate nature. And to the customer, the clerk (or barista, or caffiene engineer, or latte technician) IS the store. The clerk’s face is the face of the store. And the clerk is the most obvious person to vent on. He’s easy. He’s right there. He’s a lot less trouble than wring a letter that will probably be ignored.
It ain’t right, but it’s the nature of the beast. That’s why it sucks to work in retail.
Actually, Caridwen brings up a good point. If the OP had just responded simply and politely most likely the dude would have been deflated from the initial belligerence. Most of these types of people do deflate when they find they can’t get the reaction they want. The only thing the OP’s reaction did was cement the snobby froufrou aura of the company in his mind. Which just means he’s going to unload on the next Starfuck’s employee he comes across.
I still don’t like people like that, though.
Gods, customer service, I do NOT envy people in that field.
That’s what he should have done, but here’s something else: Retail workers get a kind-of skewed view of the world. They deal with the minutia of the job hour after tedious hour, day after relentless day. They soon take for granted that the smallest is called tall, the previews last for six minutes after the movie is scheduled to start, and that Advil is now available only from behind the counter.
These little obscurities become Obvious Facts of Life for clerks. If they didn’t the job would be impossible. And sometimes it’s hard to remember what it is to be a clueless customer. Customers often come off as far stupider than they really are just because they don’t know the obscure arcana.
I worked as a Barista for 2 years many years back and the guy described in the OP was a mild annoyance. For me it came from both sides; idiot coffee snobs and idiot anti-coffee snobs.
I once had a guy start going off because it took too long to make the espresso drinks and he had to wait for his coffee. He started saying quietly (I think so he could still get his coffee from me) that cappuccino’s were stupid and he couldn’t believe that people would wait and pay for such a stupid thing. After he got his coffee he starts yelling in a high mocking voice “loooook at meeEEEeeee, I’m drinking a cappuciiiiinooooo… lody-frikin daaAAAaaah”. He was clearly crazy and rude, but I still nearly laugh out loud every time I think about it. Thirty or so business people earnestly waiting for their coffee while this nut job just walks by mocking them, it was uncalled for but still funny.
I think the main problem with coffee shops is people, for some reason, view coffee shops differently than restaurants. I would constantly have people ordering venti mocha macchiatos from us even though our menu contained no such thing. I would just approximate what I thought it was and serve it if it was within reason, if not I would politely suggest they consult the menu for ordering suggestions.
On the spot, publicly, and with extra humiliation as a warning to the others. That sort of behavior cannot be tolerated for an instant in ANY business.
Here’s a little saying you’ll grow sick of, if you ever manage to find another job where you get any customer contact: It takes weeks or months or even years to get a customer but it only takes a second to lose him. Thanks to the OP’s snarky joke that guy will never go back to ANY Starbucks and will tell all of his friends about it and will encourage them to get their coffee elsewhere, too. Good word of mouth can make a business and bad word of mouth can kill it.
We could do a whole thread (and probably have) about the way Starbucks chooses to name their sizes, but in my mind, everyone knows small, medium, and large, and if you have to keep explaining to customers what tall, grande, and venti means, maybe you should just go with the law of the land and call them small, medium, and large. And it’s the tall that gets people - in common vernacular, tall means big, so when you call your smallest beverage a tall, it makes people rightfully confused.
The OP - weak rant, weak complaint, and weak response to a bit of a jerk. You’re not there to have a pissing contest with customers - you’re there to politely serve coffee in exchange for money. As long as your basic human dignity is not being trampled on or your safety threatened, you are expected to remain polite to customers as part of your job that you get paid for. If your management won’t back you up when you stand up to someone who is trampling on your human dignity and/or threatening your safety, you need to find a different job. This guy was doing neither; he was being mildly jerky, but he wasn’t attacking you verbally or physically.
Absolutely.
Absolutely! I must find a way to work “loooook at meeEEEeeee, I’m drinking a cappuciiiiinooooo… lody-frikin daaAAAaaah” into my every day speech. 
So does grande. And it is also not the largest size. I’m thinking that venti is Italian for “frickin’ huuuuuuge!”
I know! That was hilarious.
Well you really don’t need to learn the terms, as stupid as they are. If you order the large, I’m sure the clerk knows what you mean and will give you the corresponding size. Now, if you order a large and the clerk says “we don’t have large here, please check our sizes and try again”, then I can see where it could be a problem.
Silly customer! You cannot kill a Starbucks! [/Apu]
Heh, over here at the Science Center, we’ve had people ask what time the submarine* leaves, and if it goes all the way to Station Square.
Or people who think this place is free. We had a guy who was on his way to take the kids to the movies, or something, and so he decided hey, we’re early, we’ll just stop in here and play around. No, you have to pay, sorry.
*We have, as an exhibit, a real, live, WWII era submarine, the USS Requin. Right now it’s closed for winter maitenance, but normally visitors can take a tour of the sub. Some morons actually think it’s fully functional and travels the river. Um, no.
I know that “venti” is meant to refer to the Italian word for “twenty”, as in a 20-oz up of coffee. But I keep flashing on the word “window”, and I get paranoid that they’re going to serve it in a cup with a little window right below the rim; i.e., a dribble glass.
So I always ask for a large.
A friend of mine once took a job as a bartender at a place that had been an old man bar, but had transformed into a college bar. Shortly after he started it had become popular with mid-20s professional types (who in those days were called “yuppies” unironically). One such young professional came into the place and ordered three different frou-frou drinks, none of which my friend knew how to make, and the last two times included some snide remarks about his competence. Finally he went and grabbed his boss, the owner, who was about 6’4, 102 lbs, and roughly 685 years old. Boss walked down the bar, cut off the juke biox, and leaned over and bellowed, “Look here: we got beer, we got whiskey and we got gin for the ladies. What’ll ya have?” The yuppie told him to fuck himself and stormed out. That was customer service in 1987.
If you’re offended by a company’s business model, they don’t really have to try to keep you as a customer. Some people just need to go ahead and take their custom elsewhere.
Charming anecdote but completely pointless here. That may have been that owner’s business model but I doubt Starbucks’ includes making snarky jokes at the expense of their customers. Most successful businesses don’t.
I’ve read and re-read the comment from the customer in the OP. I just don’t see that it was Pit-worthy. He was a bit grumpy and maybe borderline rude, but I would have turned it away with humor. Isn’t it better to make people want to come to your store? Here was an opportunity to gain a new customer; sway him over to your side so that he spends his money there in the future.
I worked in the restaurant biz for 7 years - everything from food prep to cooking to waitstaff to bartender. One thing which became clear to me is that one must have a sense of humor to survive there. People are strange, and weird, and sometimes mean or rude. One has to develop a way to deal with all that oddness. If that’s not your cup of tea, perhaps you should seek work elsewhere.
I don’t mean that as a slam; everybody is not cut out to do everything.
I couldn’t reply earlier because I was choking on my food while laughing at “Flimple”, “Poofly” and “Fubung” and I couldn’t dial 911 with my nose.
Should there be a thread called **“Name you coffee sizes”? ** (though I doubt Flimple et al. can be beaten)or maybe "re-name these sizes/classes" Like, for instance, a airline instead of First/Buisness/Economy call them Velvet/Velour/Velcro? (Yes, that’s two one-way Velours to Ottawa)
BTW, I always take my vanilla iced tea Flimple…too fatty for a Poofly
Most clerks don’t think in those terms. To them, more customers means more work for the same pay.