there's a reason why coffee shop workers have an attitude... (long)

[marasbaras]

Customers that attack employees like that need to be taken down, hard, and held for the police. I can almost understand if someone just lost thousands and thousands of dollars and they get angry ... but, we're talking about a few bucks on coffee here. There's ZERO excuse for such behavior.

[Tutorgal]

but, we're talking about a few bucks on coffee here. There's ZERO excuse for such behavior.

Most of the time they wouldn't be out anything, anyway. Usually what happened was that someone ordered the wrong drink by accident (ex: not saying iced coffee, so getting a hot one). All they would have to do is say excuse me, blah blah and they would get it replaced, no extra cost. But nooooo, instead that was the source of a lot of the coffee throwing. Much easier that way, I suppose. And there were a lot of people who would fling the coffee of the day at us because they didn't like the blend. People could get anything they wanted, really, but instead they would just throw the coffee.

One lady was just a scammer. She didn't throw coffee at us, but she did manage to drink about 3/4 of a venti frappuccino before coming up and telling us that she had actually ordered a latte. Oh, she got her latte, we had no choice but to give it to her, even though we knew she was scamming.

When people hear this, they always assume that I was working in a bad neighborhood, but it was the total opposite. I worked at a store in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country. An astonishingly large number of the people who (I swear) stuck their hands in our tip jar because they only had a dollar and didn't want to use the debit card had net worths in the tens and tens of millions (and loved to brag about it to us peons).

[Eric the Grey]

Liar. That sentence is properly spelled, capitalized and has some semblance of punctuation. NONE of which exists in the Barrens.

Depends on who's doing the yelling....

I also got attacked many times, and I know that a long time ago on here I read about someone else who had gotten attacked by customers. I was lucky that I only ever had iced drinks hit me full in the face when thrown by customers, a few of my coworkers got hit with hot coffee and had some bad burns. Somehow I managed to duck the hot ones. Yes, it did happen to each of us at least once or twice a month. Really. I also got hit twice and tripped more than once. Corporate was less than impressed by this and just never bothered to get back to us about our complaints.

Someone would go to jail if I even saw something like that happen. There is no excuse for crap like that.


Eric the Grey
[who absolutely refuses to stoop to net-speak, for the most part]

[thebelljar]

thanks for the welcome, everybody... *waves* glad to be here.

I've never heard of so many people getting hit by drinks, that's horriffic... I think
if corporate cared about people at all we'd be treated better...we should have a union, eh?

I think the only times we've had people throw things was in the drive-thru (again...easy to get away with) but it was mostly garbage, and only a few whole drinks....a lot of people will get to the window and ask us to take their empty cups and food packages and things (for eff's sake?) and, as we've been instructed, we say "Sorry, that's a health code violation, I can't take it." (It really is...but what I'd really like to say is "No, that's rude and I'm not a wastebasket, if you would get out of your car for once in your life, you can easily walk 10 steps and find a garbage can"...although our demeanor usually carries that feeling across Anyway, a few determined people take the opportunity to chuck whatever it is through the window or onto the ledge just as they're driving away...unbelievable!
We do have a garbage can on the way to the speaker, but people usually stuff the chute with entire bags of crap they've been keeping in their car (a week's worth of white castle, diapers, etc...) I went to change the can today and the chute was CRAMMED with slimy fast food garbage, and frozen stiff in a big block, but...the can itself was empty. How did people manage to do that?
The same people will then come around announce to us "YOUR GARBAGE IS OVERFLOWING, you'd better have someone take care of that right away...it's disgusting." Sure, I've got half a second to go do that before I make your drinks.

I think about two years ago I started giving everybody extra caramel, whether they asked for it or not...it seems to make people shut up about it. So far we haven't lost too much money on caramel...I guess they expect us to use a lot, cause we're kind of a "double store"...so I'm used to going overboard by default.
A lot of times, the people who DO ask for "extra extra caramel...on the sides and the bottom too" on their frappuccino will get a big pile of nasty. I'll usually take it off to the side, muttering "I'll make you wish you'd never been born!" and they end up with a shell of caramel on all sides, nearly. My coworkers love to watch this. Some people are totally nauseated, others are happy as a pig in poop. We got into the habit of soaking the bottles in hot water and then snipping the tops off so the holes are bigger, so we can pour more faster...I guess we're too tired to nitpick about caramel when there are people stealing whole cups of milk all the time (and the milk is why our prices went up last time!).

[KMCA]

I worked a year and a half at a Tim Hortons... Got fired, why? Because I refused to fake our production sheets. She wanted us to double batch, for those of you who don't know what that means it means she wanted us to write down our throw outs (expired product) as production (fresh product) and leave them on the shelves. I told her that she could go to hell I wouldn't fake them... 1 month later she failed me on my review. 3 months later same thing, anything less then 80% is a fail by the way. 2 fails in a row you're fired.

[gunsage]

That's truly sad. Personally, I enjoy going to coffee shops, regardless of whether it's Starbucks, Gloria Jeans, Cup O Joe, Caribou Coffee, etc. Honestly, most of the time I feel overwhelmed when I come into the places because I feel almost...out of character, I guess. I really enjoy coffee in general, so I still go anyway, but I'm fairly sheepish from start to finish. I can't imagine someone who has enough up their ass to be downright retarded to a coffee shop worker. They're getting you COFFEE! YOUR LIFE SOURCE! STFU!

[Tuxian]

I worked a year and a half at a Tim Hortons... Got fired, why? Because I refused to fake our production sheets. She wanted us to double batch, for those of you who don't know what that means it means she wanted us to write down our throw outs (expired product) as production (fresh product) and leave them on the shelves. I told her that she could go to hell I wouldn't fake them... 1 month later she failed me on my review. 3 months later same thing, anything less then 80% is a fail by the way. 2 fails in a row you're fired.

Gee, I bet the local health board would have LOVED to hear about her trying to pass off expired, out-of-date product as still-in-date product... Wonder if she's still get her job?

[Rhania506]

I don't work at a Starbucks. I work at a [Bookstore Name Deleted] cafe where we serve Starbucks products. I usually say this around 40 times a shift and every day I have some idiot that gets IRATE that I won't accept their Starbucks gift card. This is the norm. Over the holidays though, I had a lady come in and get pissed that I wouldn't take her Target gift card. Where do these people come from?

Another pet peeve of mine: "Venti Cappuccino. No Foam" *snarl*

~Rhania

[chainedbarista]

Another pet peeve of mine: "Venti Cappuccino. No Foam" *snarl*

solve this problem by giving them what they ask for:

two shots in a venti cup; if they argue and want a manager, explain the situation, so everyone can laugh at the idiot.

i feel your pain; we get people who complain that stores/airports/bookstores don't take the card, but i try to get them to understand why. smart ones get it (whether or not they remember is another issue altogether), dumb ones don't and keep getting pissed over things that are not in our scope to control.

makes me wish they couldn't find their way out of their homes.

[air914]

what the crap is a cappuccino w/out the foam? Isn't it a latte then??? Or do they just want you to leave half the cup full of air?

Wow I don't think I ever had anyone throw drinks at me..... that's ridiculous.

Out of date stuff was amazing - NO ONE ever checked the stuff in the "Ready to Drink" case - where all the juices, ready to go frappuccinos, etc. were stores - those things were always WAY past their dates. I think I was the only one that ever went through those things (well at least in any of the stores I worked in).

I had a nightmare the other night - I was trying to get a venti vanilla cream frappuccino (why I have no clue). The idiot behind the counter didn't know how to make one and I told her to give me the UBB (universal beverage base I think...) and a blender and get out of my way - but then I forgot to put in the vanilla, then I forgot to blend with ice.... it was a disaster and I couldn't leave until I got the drink right...... what on earth was up with that? I haven't worked there in 3-4 years..... and I very very very rarely ever go in - and if I do, it's for a hot soy chai.

[Sheldonrs]

A long time ago, I worked in the lab of a hospital emergency room. I would see patients shrug it off if the tests they took got screwed up by the nurse, doctor or tech.
But when I worked at a coffee shop, you would think you had just eaten their 1st born alive if you didn't get the foam right in the capuccino.

[Tutorgal]

two shots in a venti cup; if they argue and want a manager, explain the situation, so everyone can laugh at the idiot.

Well, you were technically shorting them the quarter cup or so of milk that gets dumped in before the 6 inches of foam.

Seriously, your manager sounds a lot cooler than mine. If we had ever done that, oy, hell to pay. Someone was actually yelled at for asking the person if they were sure they wanted a venti cap and not a venti latte and after that the manager said that we were to just serve a no foam latte, no questions asked, with much apologizing if that turned out to be wrong.

Clearly the worst thing in the world was to clarify what the customer wanted.

Ever get the Atkins dieters who wanted venti cappuccinos with heavy cream or half and half (both will get a tiny bit frothy but neither will make foam like milk does due to the fat content, so a Starbucks style cappuccino is impossible). I worked that one summer when Atkins was everywhere and it was awful. I think the lack of carbs did something to the neural processing, because about half the people either COULD NOT understand that making foam out of half and half is impossible or would get super cranky and mean and just have a massive temper tantrum. And once I made the mistake of suggesting using heavy cream for like half the cup and then topping with a nice big dollop or two of whole milk foam. I might as well have suggested feeding a pound of chocolate to someone's dog.

[Alpha Strike]

Another pet peeve of mine: "Venti Cappuccino. No Foam" *snarl*

I will preface my question by saying that I never drink coffee, have no concept of any coffee drink beyond "Decaf or Non" and only set foot in Starbucks to buy hot chocolate.

With that in mind, why is asking for this drink this way such a bad thing?

[Broomjockey]

A cappucino properly prepared is about half foam.

[crazylegs]

With that in mind, why is asking for this drink this way such a bad thing?

A cappuccino is a shot of coffee, half milk, half foam, so basically they are asking for half the drink to be missing.