Sometimes I wonder at how you guys all manage to encounter such extraordinarily difficult and attitudey people…is it really that big a deal that they say “Greb” or “Snagglepuss” or “Ventilating Hut” after you say small, large or medium?
From the way I’ve seen it work at Starfrock’s West (I work around eleventy Starfrock’s, S.W. is my fave because it’s near my gym), after you place your order for a Lipidinouscinno, they screech out the order to the barista, who I imagine has committed the drinks to memory with the Starfuck’s name during their training (don’t they get some sort of extended training?). So I say “small, please” (as I do every day at 2:15 p.m.) and they bellow “Lilliput” or whathefuckever to translate it for the person making it and that’s it. It’s not like they shove the cup in my face being like “TALL TALL TALL YOU FUCKING YUPPIE WHORE! SAY IT! SAY IT STUMBLECUNT OR BEGONE FROM THIS ESTABLISHMENT!”
My take on it is that they’re instructed to convey their “branding” to you as much as possible. Their half-wit size names may even be copywrited or trademarked or whatever (I never took an IP class). So if you order using a normal word, they’re told to parrot back the Starfuck’s nomenclature.
I actually do not like Starfuck’s that much and only frequent the place because Coffee Bean and Tea smells like wee outside, but I’ll stand by my assertion that they give a reasonable level of service. I get free coupons like candy when Dewey Cheatham and Howe brings all kabillion of their summer interns down for a -cinno and everyone has to wait till Newbie McEsquire hems and haws his/her way through the menu. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them calling their coffeemakerpeople “baristas” or whatever. I’d rather people take some pride in their job.
WTF is “American coffee,” anyway? Does Joe Lunchbox think they harvest the beans from the slopes of the Rockies?
On the other hand, I’ve encountered more than my share of smug, self-important “baristas,” so this is one cross-cultural cage match I’d be happy to see end in a double fatality.
I’m strange. I like to eat hamburgers with no toppings; just plain, with the patty and the bun.
Tears ago, I could go into a diner, order a plain hamburger, and about ten minutes later be presented with a plain hamburger. In recent years, the request for a plain hamburger is usually met with this response …
"You don’t want nothing on it?
“No.”
“No pickles or onions?”
“No.”
“No cheese?”
“No.”
“No lettuce or tomatoes?”
“No.”
“No ketchup or mustard?”
“No.”
You get the idea.
It’s not just one restaurant; it’s EVERYWHERE. To avoid such an excruciating ordeal, I now have to order a plain hamburger like this:
“I’d like a hamburger, plain, nothing on it, no condiments, no toppings, no cheese, just patty and bun and nothing else.”
I’m willing to bet our blue-collar coffee aficionado probably went to more than his fair share of baristas from some coffee shop go the same quizzing, turning an order for “medium coffee, black” to something like this:
“Medium house coffee, black please.”
“Just a grande dark roast?”
“Uhhh … a medium coffee.”
“Regular or defaf?”
“Regular, please.”
“Want room for cream or sugar?”
“No. I said I’m having it black.”
“What kind of boost do you want?”
"What’s a boost?
"Well, we have an immunity boost, a focus boost, an energy boost, a … "
“I don’t want a boost. I just want a medium coffee.”
“You mean a grande?”
“Yes!”
“Would you like to donate a dollar for the Metro Area Kid’s Fund? You can signs your name to a shamrock, and we’ll post it up on the wall?”
Then again, the all-American snarking was uncalled for.
That’s right, and it’d better not be French’s either (almost as bad as ketchup/catsup), it’d better be imported stoneground brown! And don’t get me started on “acceptable” hotdogs.
Wow! Sorry for the long post, but I just logged on to check the thread and there were four more pages of posts than there were last time I saw it.
Does it matter? Everyone uses Starbucks’ names anyway.
The look on his face seemed to belie that–he seemed like a man who’d said the same exact speech a million times to show off how jaded he is.
All he had to say was “coffee”. We don’t pre-sweeten anything, not even our iced tea. I don’t even ask customers if they want room for cream–I leave it up to them.
Who said I rehearsed it?
Er…OK. I’m not sure where you got “can’t handle the pressures”. I was just mouthing off about an annoying thing that happened to me at work. I must be the first guy to do that in the Pit, though, right?
I never correct anyone. And he didn’t ask for “a coffee, black, small/medium/large”, he unloaded a bowl of verbal diarrhea on me.
Well, I’m sorry I’m not worth your time. Why are you in my thread, anyway? I’m obviously wasting your time because I don’t have a degree yet.
It hasn’t yet. I’m just sick of the “I’m a blue-collar guy and I’m better than you because you’re a stuck up hipster” attitude. I can barely afford to change my oil every 7,000 miles (you read that right), but I don’t go mouthing off about it every time I end up in a nice neighborhood. I’m not a wine aficionado, but I don’t look down my nose at people who choose to spend their time on that or unload time-wasting drivel on everyone I see drinking wine.
Actually, I was thinking of “anti” as in “antihero”. Like how an antihero is still a hero, but in an opposite way. This guy is actually an elitist in blue-collar clothing. That’s what I meant by “anti-elitist”.
Who said it wasn’t supposed to be?
It’s not. I’m just unloading steam in the form of a lame rant about something that happened to me at work. I thought about putting “(lame rant)” at the end of the OP’s title, but I decided not to because I thought Dopers would figure out that was my intention.
I actually don’t like the word much, but it was the most succint way to say what I was trying to say. And despite your porn joke, I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now.
It was almost all improvised at the moment I logged on to the Boards. Anyway, that song doesn’t have any actual irony in it.
Thank you! (Although I don’t work at Starbucks, and I refuse to memorize the names of their drink sizes, no matter how many customers try to order things in “venti”.)
Thank you! I may not make as much as a lot of the people posting in this thread–it’s just a job to get me through college–but if you don’t have experience, you can’t just jump behind the counter and make yourself a cappucino. Try a cappucino that comes out of a dispenser at 7-Eleven and then try a cappucino that a guy who’s been serving them for five years made by hand, side by side, and then tell me I don’t work in a skilled profession.
He wasn’t kidding. If he were, he would’ve at least pretended to laugh at my comeback. And he wouldn’tve adopted such a high-on-his-horse air when he said it, either.
Also, cappucino takes skill to make decently, while an Americano takes a pulse and a hand that works well enough to push a button and hold a lever.
Where I work the sizes are “small”, “medium”, and “large”. As another poster stated, the dude would’ve been drinking his coffee by the time he finished his rant if he had just said “One medium coffee, please”. Or even “One medium coffee, hipster douchebag”.
Someone said it’s not his fault I didn’t have a sense of humor. Well, it’s not my fault he didn’t have a sense of humor. There are coffee houses here that kick out customers for talking on their cellphones while ordering. Unfortunately, I don’t work at one of them. But that doesn’t mean I can’t joke with the customer and bitch about it on an Internet message board later.
Although I appreciate your support for my position, I would probably Pit you for saying that to me while I’m at work.
And oh, was I tempted. But I didn’t do any of those things, because (lucky for him) I had a basic level of respect for the guy on the other side of the counter from me.
Yes and yes. Coffee grows in Hawaii. Nowhere else in the US, though. Coffee–decent or not–must be imported unless it’s grown in Hawaii, because it only grows within a certain distance from the equator.
Am I the psycho without a sense of humor? I recall making a joke to the guy, who didn’t get it and seemed a little put off by it.
Coulda fooled me. Though I agree that VCO3 got a little too much into the conspiracy theory.
Fair enough. I was trying to lighten the mood, partly, but of course I wanted to one-up him too, in the heat of a moment where I felt dehumanized. I think the guy I answer to would take my side, but you have a valid point.
No, ordering provokes statements like “one medium black coffee, please” or just “one coffee, please”, which would’ve gotten him the same thing in less time with one fewer comeback joke.
Where do you buy coffee that the server pours sugar and cream in it for you? Everyone takes a different amount, so I would expect a server to leave it up to me (I don’t take cream or sugar, BTW). We don’t even hand the customer the cream or sugar–it’s at a condiment bar, like at most/all coffee houses.
He did make my day more irritating and difficult, and his too. The time he spent ranting and raving, he could’ve spent drinking his coffee and I could’ve spent cleaning the place up to get ready for closing (which I desparately needed to do at the time).
I thought I was being funny at the time. I tell a lot of jokes I think up on the spot–a lot of them score big and a lot of them bomb out. This was one of the latter, as it turns out.
You don’t have to look at the menu to say “medium coffee”. It’s listed as “coffee” on the menu where I work, BTW. I can’t speak for Starbucks. You mentioned being “part of the club”–there is no club where I work, and all of the drinks have names that are self-explanatory. I guess if you don’t know what a “latte” is you’ll have to ask, but the guy just wanted to order coffee anyway. I didn’t stare at his eyes or anything, but I don’t think he even looked at the menu. If his beef is with Starbucks, he should go unload his pile of whatever at Starbucks.
Actually, I love my job, and the minor annoyances like the one I mentioned in the OP don’t really bother me that much.
There were no others. Just me, him and his buddy, who probably gives him worse shit on a daily basis when they go to the bar to knock back a few rounds. It was right before closing time.
It wasn’t a comment, it was a speech that lasted long enough that I could’ve served another customer or two by the time he was done. Thankfully there wasn’t a line.
I don’t know where you buy your coffee, but I’ve never gotten a latte when I asked for coffee. Nobody does where I work, either.
He didn’t go to great pains to clarify his choice, he unloaded a tirade he’d obviously been bottling up all day, if not all month.
This post made my day! See how easy it is to be decent to a coffee clerk, guys?
The latter.
There are county-wide competitions between baristas that leave the winner with immense bragging rights and a lot of business from local coffee geeks. Where I work, we compete against each other to make the best foam all the time. I could bore you with the details, but the point is, just because I don’t make as much as the average, say, IT worker doesn’t mean I don’t use a skill at my job. (Granted, I myself don’t like the word “barista” because of the pretentious air it carries, but I’m learning to live with it and it does sneak into my speech sometimes, given my current profession.)
Actually, he did make a scene, and wasted a lot of his and my time, as well as making me feel dehumanized and insulted, and even (it seemed) mildly irritating his friend.
I hope he’s rich and terminally ill, then, because I would be fired. Our coffee is plenty strong, anyway. I have an incredibly high caffeine tolerance, I take it black and it’s good enough for me.
He stretched it out into a long speech full of patronizing and inane assumptions. My summary was truncated and paraphrased.
You can order any of those drinks decaf, you know, and it’ll taste the same. (Well, they’ll use a different blend, of course, but it’ll still be espresso and it’ll still taste like espresso.)
I’ve only ever heard of the latter drink called a Hammerhead. I drink it when I’m studying. If I made a habit of serving that to people who I thought wanted it, after they only paid for coffee, I would be fired fast.
I’ve found Yelp to be invaluable for finding indie coffeehouses.
You guys weren’t there to see the smug look on his face. Trust me, he was reveling in his smarmyness.
If anything, my comeback was less than proportional. I didn’t insult his intelligence or talk to him like he was a stereotype instead of a person.
Brilliant posts. The quasi-Italian was hilarious.
There are easily 2-3 times as many 7-Elevens as there are Starbucks here, all of which sell hot coffee to go, at a lower price.
False analogy. You could probably grill your own burger and assemble your own Big Mac if you wanted to, but I bet you can’t make a cappucino as good as mine.
(Am I the only one who finds it amusing that everyone assumes I work at Starbucks, and that probably a page’s worth of posts are rendered irrelevant by the fact that I don’t?)
Okay, this made my day! (Though it **is ** just 03:47, and who knows what the rest of the day holds? Still, cracked me up!)
And what a coinky-dinky, too, your play on words, since I was just lamenting (not even an hour ago) the fact that I haven’t mounted anything and groaned in…oh, sorry, wrong thread.
Nor am I going to. I’m a little casual about what details I reveal online, but that’s a little too much. You’ll have to be content with knowing that I work at a coffee house in the San Diego area that isn’t a Starbucks.
Sometimes it feels like it when you’re downtown. When I was a junior in high school I met with an admissions counselor from Seattle U at a Starbucks downtown, and I swear I passed three Starbucks between the time I got off the 5 and when I walked through the door of the one I was supposed to be at. There was a really nice little coffee shop a mile or two from the last place I lived that could only afford to stay open until 8 because of all the business the Starbucks across the street took away from it. Eventually it closed down entirely.
There are a number of thriving local coffee houses in the area, though. I’ve frequented Twiggs, the Pannikin, Milano and the Living Room (which isn’t actually local, but each location has a different style and it really does feel like a local place), and I make it a point to try others when I stumble upon them and have enough money to spare.
