I would hope that Starbucks is realistic about the limits of tehir business model.
You don’t really believe that the customer was confused by the choices, do you? He had a friend there who could have answered any questions he had about the sizes. He wasn’t expressing his frustration at being in an unfamiliar place; he was expressing that he was a little too real for this sort of establishment. There is nothing that could have been done to please him, short of a radical reorganization of the business, so he should have been encouraged to find another coffee shop.
Of course, this would be a great place to mention the Michael Kinsley column on revers snobbery.
Y’know, when I open a coffee stand my sizes are going to be Large, Larger, and Largest. Large is 12 oz, Larger is 16 oz, Largest is 20 oz.
Maybe a 24 oz Extra-Largest.
Anyway, going into a coffee shop and asking for “a coffee” is like going into a bar and asking for “a beer”. You’ll get a beer or a coffee, but you won’t know exactly what you’re getting. If you’re the type to get upset when you get served Pabst Blue Ribbon on tap, you should have been more specific.
And the trouble comes because in a modern coffee shop, the standard drink is a caffe latte, not drip coffee. Of course they serve drip coffee, but people who want drip coffee know to ask for drip coffee rather than “coffee”. Not that a barista shouldn’t know that people who aren’t used to going to coffee shops mean drip coffee when they say “coffee”, and it’s pretty silly getting upset when people who aren’t used to going to coffee shops go to great pains to let you know that they mean drip coffee, not that frou-frou, sissified, frenchy-style coffee.
Plus, it would be a poor business model indeed that requires employees, on pain of firing, to absorb any degree of rudeness with a smile and a nod. Most halfway decent employers will, in my experience, back their employees over their customers when their customers are rude and/or insulting, particularly when those customers are in effect insulting the employer.
Certainly, the level of rudeness demonstrated by the customer in the OP wasn’t nuclear. Its essential nastiness comes in part from the slam at the store itself, and part from the implication that the person behind the counter is too stupid to manage a simple order without having it repeatedly stated. It’s condescending and unpleasant. It’s not the height of rudeness, but neither was the employee’s response, IMO. He didn’t spit in the coffee, insult the customer, swear, amplify the intensity of the encounter, or refuse service; the customer pulled his chain and he pulled back.
As an employer, I’d prefer employees with a bit of self-respect, not doormats. I certainly wouldn’t want a single customer making unchallenged attacks (however mild) on my business within earshot of (potentially) dozens of other customers, with my employees refusing to respond in any way for fear of summary dropzone-style firing.
Further, if I were a customer and liked Starbucks (in real life I don’t, in fact, like coffee at all, but go with me here), and I overheard the counter staff give back in response to a blowhard like the one in the OP, I’d patronize that store more often, and encourage others to do the same. However mild his insult, it was aimed at all the other customers in the building, as well as the store and the employee.
In other words, good for you, OP. I’d hire you in a heartbeat.
Good point, and it reminded me of the times I’ve worked retail or in customer service positions. Maybe my experiences were not typical, but my employers did tend to hire on personality as much as they did on applications, experience, and references. You had to be one of the knowledgeable elite at times, “just another working joe” at others, and smile at jokes you’d heard many, many times before. All in the same place of business.
Was the Guy in the OP a bit of a jerk? Sure, but what else could Fetus have done? Maybe meet the Guy on his own territory and remove any kind of elitism from the incident. I’m envisioning something like the following dialogue:
Guy: [Says he wants coffee black, nothing frou-frou, etc.]
Fetus: Plain ol’ cuppa joe, eh? Yeah, we can do that. How big you want it?
Guy: Largest you got.
Fetus: Okay, I’ll have it up in a minute.
Of course, maybe Fetus is not having a good day or is trying to achieve six goals at once and so doesn’t need this guy’s attitude, but even if that did occur, I don’t see the Guy’s statement as being particularly troublesome or rant-worthy. If dealt with in a way that Guy likely wasn’t expecting, it would be, to Fetus, just another incident in the day–perhaps good for a laugh with fellow employees later, but likely soon forgotten. Guy would be happy (someone in this pretentious place is speaking his language!) and probably return.
That must be another regional thing. Over here in NYC (where regular coffee means milk and sugar), no one asking for coffee wants latte. People who want a latte ask for a latte. That’s at any coffee shop, from the deli with a steamer, to Starbucks, to an independent shop, that I’ve visited.
I think the customer was a tool and a good response would have been to say “OK”, then just yell back “I need a Venti frappamochafrostyvanillacocoachina!!!” then say “Hey, just kidding. I’ll get your coffee.”
Take the piss out of him a bit without being a jerk about it.
Webster’s New Millennium™ Dictionary of English
**barista **
Part of Speech: n
Definition: a person who works at the counter of a coffee shop; a coffee bar server
Nothing wrong with an honest job, but sheesh - the way the title is thrown around - like an the barista is an artiste… sheesh.
In what fantasy land do you live? Have you ever actually HAD a job?
Then good luck for both of you. I’ll wave when you’re locking the doors for the last time, oh, about six months from now.
Fetus and storyteller, see how easy it is? The customer didn’t make a scene, he just wanted a cup of coffee without any of the bullshit those damned kids who are always walking on his lawn like to mix in. A “plain ol’ cuppa joe” and the “largest you got.” Give him that without any lip and you’ll never get rid of him and his friends. Of course, that means you’ll never get rid of him or his friends and they may not be the demographic Starbucks is shooting for but by gently offering to sell them more stuff usually causes them to move along.
Oh, and if he’s ex-military, as so many older guys are, an American-style might seem a little weak. Try pushing straight espresso in the largest cup you got. He’ll put you in his will as the guy who FINALLY knew how to make a cuppa joe.
That’s not true of Starbuck’s. I have gone in and asked for a “small coffee” and without any sign of confusion have been given drip coffee. Now, it’s true that most people in Starbuck’s don’t want drip coffee, but they specify what they want, be it latte, mocha or whatever. If the joker in the OP had simply asked for a “coffee,” he would have gotten what he was looking for without any further trouble.
Count me with the OP on this one too. The guy was insulting both Starbuck’s chosen business model as well as all the other customers in the store. And, frankly, the OP’s retort was extremely mild. I’d hardly call it an insult. The customer was looking for a fight but all he got was a sarcastic remark.
The tall/grande/venti thing seems pretty silly to me, too. There are days I just can’t quite bring myself to order a “venti”. But then, I’ve found I can often get a chuckle out of the staff by ordering a “huuuuuge honkin’ latte”.
“I want some real coffee. Real coffee. Real, simple, coffee. Nothing fancy. Just plain black coffee. I don’t take sugar, I don’t take cream, just real, old fashioned American coffee.”
If I order what I want: “skim milk steamed, with raspberry syrup, as big as my head with a touch of whipcream” I get corrected.
If I order they way they want: “venti non-fat raspberry syrup cream with light whip” I get the wrong drink.
Seriously - if I order it their way I have to repeat myself about 4 times, and half the time it comes with expresso in it (which is dusgusting, BTW) so I have to send it back.
I recognize that part of this is because the job market in Calgary is such that people who were formerly un-employable due to a complete and total lack of any sort of job related skill are now eagerly sought after workers, but come on - if you’re gonna bitch people out for not ordering correctly, you should at least get their drink right when they do.
That’s a subject for a whole 'nother thread - on the one hand, customer service is agonizingly slow and sporadic here now, but we are saving huge bucks on tips.
Not that I owe you any credentials, dickhead, but yes. Happily employed consecutively for my entire life since entering high school (I enter my 30s this year).
In high school and college I worked for a general contracting company. The man who started it, started it from scratch and is now a very rich dude. When I started, I was 14 years old - when I stopped working there, I was 21, and a supervisor. Every working day of my life during that seven year period I dealt with at least one, often four or five (depending on how many jobs I was working that particular day) customer[s]. Sometimes they were unreasonable, rude, and even abusive. The big boss’ policy was clear from the get-go; the customer has many rights, but not the right to abuse or insult the employees. If someone was rude, to me or especially to the employees under me, I had the authority to insist - sometimes in fairly strenuous terms - that the rudeness cease - and sometimes this actually happened. On at least two or three occassions, the big boss declined jobs from customers who decided it was their god-given right to be snotty abusive assholes to the prole contractors while we were setting up shop.
Somehow he never had a problem getting customers. The quality of his product stood on its own; he didn’t need to be an obsequious weasel to attract customers. He also earned a reputation as someone who backed up his employees, so people who were good at their jobs wanted to work for him. Rather than for someone like you, who’d sell them out in a heartbeat if they dared raise their eyes to the almighty Customer. His company has yet to lock its doors, by the way.
Subsequent to that experience, I went to work in the publishing industry - eventually in a management position. In that field, our customers were readers. From time to time, I fielded complaints about a given story, or whatnot. I was unfailingly polite to these readers - even, for a while, after they stopped being polite to me (I’m actually a pretty patient guy). Sooner or later, though, they would cross certain lines and become outright insulting, of me or of the company that paid my check. In those cases, I would respond, not always in kind but certainly not “yes, sir, of course sir, may I have another, sir?” A few times, the readers in question complained to our publisher; he backed me up every single time, even to the point of removing the complaining readers from the subscription list. His company is still going strong (I left last year for a job in a related industry).
Your employees are an asset. If you have their backs, they will be loyal to you; they will care about the business. If you don’t, they’ll know. And they won’t give a crap about you as an employer.
One of us is living in a fantasy land, that much is clear. The guy in the OP entered that building spoiling for a fight. He wanted to be a dick, and he was. People who walk in a room looking to be a dick don’t magically decide not to be a dick when someone is nice to them, at least in contexts that don’t involve actors and script. You seem to have this idea that the customer was going to turn out to be a lovable curmudgeon who just needed the right response to melt his frosty heart. In my life experience, that’s usually crap. Someone who’s made up their mind to be an ass is not going to be dissuaded.
And for crying out loud, it’s not like the OP called him an asshole and spat in his eye. The customer decided he wanted to spar, and the OP sparred back - very, very mildly. If that’s a firing offense in your company, than your company has no respect for its employees.
Now this thread is making me crave one of those fancy ass coffee drinks I’m not supposed to have (caffeine, can’t have it-although I cheat all the time).
Yes, it is true that the guy entered spoiling for a fight. He won’t become a non-dick if you’re nice to him, but you can choose to let an asshole set the tone of the interaction, and of the establishment, or you can sieze control of the situation and not allow the customer who’s being a jerk turn your shop into a shop of snarky, jerky people.
I didn’t mean to say that Starbucks regulars will go up to the counter and ask for a coffee and expect to be served a latte. Just that a plurality of them want a latte and if they say they’re going to Starbucks for coffee when they get their they’ll order a latte.
The OP should have served the guy “cowboy coffee”. An americano is espresso mixed with water, “cowboy coffee” is espresso over drip. I had a friend who used to order this all the time.
Anyway, I agree that the customer was being a bit of a dick, complaining about Starbucks when he’s ordering coffee from Starbucks. It’s not like they’ve got a gun to his head. And I also agree that the OP was being a bit of a dick. He should have served the guy his plain drip coffee without editorializing. The customer was whining about real American coffee, the kind Jesus used to drink, out of fear of looking ignorant in a place that was outside his comfort zone. And it’s part of the server’s job to put a customer like that at ease, and get him his coffee and maybe next time the guy is dragged into a Starbucks by his buddy he won’t be such a scared little baby.
Of course, tdn is correct that retail workers often have no incentive to be nice to the customers except the fear of getting fired, since the fewer customers the store has the less work they have to do. Perverse incentives and all that.
