Starbucks Baristas: The daily grind
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Trying to tell me there was “less” foam in her drink last time she ordered. (self.starbucksbaristas)
submitted by hopelovepeace33
Today I gave a woman the drink she ordered, a venti iced caramel macchiato. When I handed her the drink she proceeds to look at the drink then back at me so I ask her if something was wrong, she says “That’s a lot of of whipped cream” I say “Oh no that’s foam, you ordered the caramel cloud right?” She says yes & so I say “Yea that’s what it’s suppose to look like the cloud is foamed milk with espresso shots poured on top” she continues to claim the last time she ordered it wasn’t that much foam, so I asked if she was mistaken at wanted just a regular caramel macchiato & she said no then her friend says “she doesn’t know what it looks like”. Basically KAREN if you don’t know what the fucking drink is then DONT FUCKING ORDER IT! Get your regular basic ass skinny vanilla latte & get the FUCK out of my drive thru lane because I know what a cloud looks like & it’s exactly what you’ve got in your damn hand KAREN 🙄🤦🏻♀️
Assiqtaq 112 points 3y ago
So I honest to god had a customer tell me once they wanted a vanilla latte with one less pump of vanilla and caramel sauce on top and when I told her it would be cheaper to just order a caramel macchiato if that's what she wanted she proceeded to tell me I didn't know what I was talking about.
hopelovepeace33 [OP] 35 points 3y ago
Ohh my goodness! Yea we don’t know what we are talking about even though it’s literally what we do all fucking day long 😂🤦🏻♀️🤣
NOTcreative- 22 points 3y ago
Flip side of this, when I was just a customer I loved the hazelnut macchiato (come back to me precious hazelnut sauce) but it ended up getting to sweet for me. I didn’t know what was in it I just knew I liked it but the stuff on top was too sweet for me. Asked the barista for the hazelnut macchiato and she rolled her eyes at me and said in the snarkiest way imaginable “that’s just a vanilla latte.” Immediately embarrassed and just said “okay that then”. She made the drink then called out, louder than any other drink she made “I’ve got a hazelnut macchiato without sauce AKA VANILLA LATTE for -notcreative”. I was embarrassed and somewhat humiliated at the time, Starbucks was still new to me as a customer and I had no idea what all the beverage ingredients were or how drinks were made.
I try to remember this and other experiences from my own customer perspective now that I’m on the other side of the bar and remember that people don’t know, they feel intimidated, and baristas rarely take the time to teach them and more often than not are probably met with same eye rolls and snark , shamed for not having all the knowledge of baristas.
I try to remember this and other experiences from my own customer perspective now that I’m on the other side of the bar and remember that people don’t know, they feel intimidated, and baristas rarely take the time to teach them and more often than not are probably met with same eye rolls and snark , shamed for not having all the knowledge of baristas.
hopelovepeace33 [OP] 7 points 3y ago
I didn’t do anything like that at all to the lady this is just me venting because she kept trying to tell me THE LAST TIME I ORDERED IT WASN’T ALL FOAM which is an out right lie because if you order a cloud it’s all foam with espresso shots poured over so she very clearly ordered something totally different then what she thought. I was not rude at all to her & even tried to suggest maybe she thought it was a regular caramel macchiato that she had ordered before but she kept saying NO IT DID NOT HAVE ALL THIS FOAM THE LAST TIME and it was frustrating because that’s literally what a cloud is & I explained it to her multiple times & said it may have also been the way the foam was made or whatever. Anyways I was NOT shaming the person at all for not knowing what I know but when I say this is what you ordered & you say yes then I’m going to hand it off to you because it’s your drink & you confirmed it to me & don’t try to argue with me about how it didn’t look like that the last time because I don’t know how it looked the last time because I see literally 100’s of people within a shift so I have zero clue who you are & I don’t know what it looked like the last time you came through.
rachelsmall 3 points 3y ago
Early when I started working at Starbucks I was still getting used to the taste of coffee, and had developed an obsession with half sweet blonde pumpkin latte and white mocha; and had gone to a different store and ordered this drink. The barista that made it did it with only regular espresso, no white mocha, and no whip which was part of the build and argued with me that she had made it exactly to the sticker and I just wasn’t tasting it right. It made me pretty embarrassed to be told off from a barista, so I’ve always been pretty careful to follow special details to the T.
thehornynun 16 points 3y ago
Don’t you love it to have people coaching you on HOW TO DO YOUR FUCKING JOB? Peak of being a barista!
[deleted] 2 points 3y ago
So many times I want to be like look “I’ve made more of these in the last week than you’ve probably EVER had, I know what I’m doing”
potterlyfe 2 points 3y ago
I had a regular order a tall caramel macchiato with no vanilla. It tried to tell her just to order a vanilla latte with caramel drizzle because that’s what it is and it’s cheaper but noooooo. ‘It’s not the same thing!’ Ok crazy lady.
ReEliseYT 28 points 3y ago
I love it when people say they don’t know what the drink they ordered is, then try to tell me their drink is wrong. That’s like me saying I can’t read Arabic, then telling someone that they misspelled a word in Arabic. If you are completely ignorant of what you ordered how the hell can you tell it’s wrong?!?
hugeneral647 6 points 3y ago
“It doesn’t look like what I imagined it would look like, therefore it is wrong. No other facts or considerations are relevant. Remake it to fit what I imagined. No I won’t describe it, it’s your job to know!”
Herry_Up 22 points 3y ago
Her friend tho 💀💀
flappernapper69 14 points 3y ago
I had a lady TODAY (and the other day) order a venti iced Carmel machiatto, I had her check the screen and everything as usual, she says its right, gets to the window and we go to hand her what she ORDERED and she tries saying its supposed to be a cloud. She's done this twice with me already and who knows how many other times to other baristas. But she's like manipulative and acts nice about it, saying stuff like "oh its okay, I can take this one, its fine" but being the Starbucks baristas we are, make her a whole venti iced caramel cloud. So she gets two drinks for the price of one.
Alicat-and-Quasar 18 points 3y ago
I ask for the "wrong" drink back. Especially if they are a repeat offender like this. If it's this one lady that always comes through and have time I'll do a refund and charge them the price of what the wanted because it's always more expensive.
hopelovepeace33 [OP] 7 points 3y ago
Omg that’s beyond infuriating! I hate when people do crap like that to get over on us because they know we will remake it if they call it a quote on quote mess up. We’ve got a lady that does this with some drink she orders & she’s come through at least 4 times at the most that I know of claiming her drink is “wrong” or not made right when it’s a million percent right. I don’t know what happened with the lady today cause this all happened at the time I was leaving and I was just done with her ignorance in trying to tell me & my other co-workers that what she has is not a cloud because it’s all foam when that’s literally what a cloud is 🤦🏻♀️
bbun223 10 points 3y ago
“I want a caramel macchiato BUT PLEASE NO WHIP” no worries Karen IT DOESNT COME WITH ANY.
hopelovepeace33 [OP] 3 points 3y ago
I don’t know why people have been coming through and asking for no whip on caramel macchiato’s, it must be a local cafes that are putting whip on them. I don’t have this one woman that comes through at my store though and someone has seriously scarred her because everything she gets her drink she ask for 8 Splenda then proceeds to say every time after finishing her order PLEASE MAKE SURE THEY PUT THE 8 SPLENDA IN THERE and it makes me laugh every time 😂🤣
bbun223 3 points 3y ago
Hahaha we have a crazy 8 sugar latte lady who always shows up during peak and orders 4 other venti lattes. I’ve accidentally dropped a sugar packet into the cup so many times and have had to dump it and restart. I just end up putting her sugars into a short cup first. She comes so often we have a partner who jokingly puts 8 sugars in a cup and labels it “8 sugar demon” so we are ready for her
hopelovepeace33 [OP] 2 points 3y ago
LMAO my store has a lot of those people who come through and they are always usually older ladies. There’s the 4 venti nonfat blonde vanilla lattes, the 8 Splenda lady, ughhh and this one lady who only likes two people at my store and it’s two guys & it’s because 🙄they flirt with her and when anyone else makes her drink she comes through at least 3-4 times complaining it’s not right, then this espresso macchiato who gets extra 2% milk in it but wants the “extra” to be light. It’s like why can’t you just be simple & nice because every single one of them have been rude just about every single time they come through.
bbun223 1 points 3y ago
Oh it’s always the rude ones who have the most complicated or annoying drinks to make! I never usually mind making a heavily modified beverage if the customer is nice. We have a hell of a woman who gets 2 or 3 venti coconut milk cappuccinos BUT wants her foam to be 2% milk. Now let me tell you..... I wish awful things on this woman.
AveryLuster 7 points 3y ago
Deadass had a lady come in one day, she was pregnant and asked if she could still have the caramel cloud even though it has “AN egg” in it. I told her I didn’t know food restrictions for pregnancy and that it was just a small amount of egg white powder not an entire egg. It took 10 mins and getting my manager to explain the same thing before she believed me. She really thought we put a whole egg in the cloud macchiatos..
crzyshiba 4 points 3y ago
Hahah this happened to me yesterday she wanted a brewed chai with heavy cream, I tell her we have no heavy and the she says ok then I’ll have it regular I said ok so then just water “ NOOO THATS NOT HOW YOU MAKE IT IT COMES WITH MILK” I said no that’s a chai latte that comes with milk, you want a hot chai just water NOOO I THATS NOT HOW YOU MAKE IT, . So irritated I’m like wtf ,,, and she was an elderly lady
Ninjachibi117 3 points 3y ago
To be fair, the distinction between brewed chai and chai lattes can be kind of hard, since most places only have a single chai option, usually a latte. We also actually used to sell boxed chai mix, which meant people automatically assume that's the chai we're using, which means they assume chai latte. I can see where the mistake was there, and I would take the few seconds to just be like "the brewed chai is a teabag in water, while the chai with milk is a latte with chai mix".
crzyshiba 1 points 3y ago
She ended up getting brewed chai with 2 tea bags and the rest with almond milk
The_9_month_lurker 1 points 3y ago
Also possible she wanted a brewed chai tea latte, half water and half steamed milk, like a london fog latte.
kattsmeow17 3 points 3y ago
When it first started people kept asking me to 'float the shots on top of the foam'. At the time I was like uh that's not physically possible. Turns out a bunch of stores around mine didn't have their blender programed right so it wouldn't foam right making it so the shots would float.
hopelovepeace33 [OP] 3 points 3y ago
LOL So it was like a caramel macchiato just with egg white milk.
sholbyy 3 points 3y ago
I worked in a store with a bunch of new people (I was a 7 year partner at the time) for a while that weren't making drinks correctly, and then I'd show up and be on bar and make drinks and sometimes it would be the first time a customer received it and got it made correctly. So they'd think I was the one not doing it right because it was different than they'd had before. It was very frustrating. Also, sometimes customers just don't know what they're ordering lol. I always enjoyed explaining things to them *if* I had the time (which thanks to high standards and like, no labor, is basically never)
That's one of the big reasons I quit tbh. They expected us to give this stellar experience and coddle customers but also we're supposed to have incredible dt times and an immaculately clean store without a full staff?? Fuck that.
That's one of the big reasons I quit tbh. They expected us to give this stellar experience and coddle customers but also we're supposed to have incredible dt times and an immaculately clean store without a full staff?? Fuck that.
kattsmeow17 1 points 3y ago
Yep, that used to kill me.
hopelovepeace33 [OP] 1 points 3y ago
Yea the drink being made wrong wasn’t the case because the partner who made it has worked for SB for like 10 plus years. I fully believe she didn’t know what she ordered and just saw the caramel cloud and was like OHH THAT SOUNDS GOOD not knowing what the drink was at all. I always do my best to explain drinks to customers in the easiest & fastest way possible when they don’t know what’s in the drinks. Granted I don’t always have time to do that due to needing to keep DT times but luckily as of right now since we are the only store in my distract open DT times aren’t major concerns so when people do ask questions I’m happy to answer.
sholbyy 2 points 3y ago
Haha gotta love it when customers just order something they know nothing about and then proceed to argue about it with the baristas, who know the menu like the back of their hand.
flappernapper69 3 points 3y ago
Yeah for sure, but in the covid times right now as soon as they touch it we can't take it back haha
hopelovepeace33 [OP] 3 points 3y ago
Yea I didn’t take it back & as I was leaving she was still trying to claim there wasn’t that much foam the supposed last time she ordered it. I don’t know what my co-workers ended up doing to appease her, but she clearly had zero clue what the drink was suppose to look like because at first she called it whipped cream & after I told her what the drink was she started saying foam.
robaco 2 points 3y ago
These people dont even like coffee and have no idea of what they are ordering
GymLeaderFlame 2 points 3y ago
A lady earlier today ordered a non fat skinny vanilla latte but wanted Ex Caramel drizzle, toffee nut syrup, and whipped cream like what’s the point 😂😂
hopelovepeace33 [OP] 3 points 3y ago
Omg this drives me crazy! It’s like what’s the point when your going to have it made with heavy whipping cream, whipped cream, 10 splendas, extra caramel drizzle, white mocha & a BUNCH more of other crap in it that NO longer makes it “skinny” then what’s the actual freakin point in getting sugar free anything.
growinginnyc 1 points 3y ago
Try a NO FOAM cappuccino. Karen was dead serious. She insisted that she gets it all the time. 🤦🏻♀️
hopelovepeace33 [OP] 1 points 3y ago
Ohhh we’ve got a lady that is the exact opposite! She comes through and gets an almond milk cappuccino bone dry! We use at least 2 pitchers of milk to get just straight up foam for her grande cappuccino. She’s honestly super nice though it’s just like what’s the point just get 2 espresso shots with a drop of foam cause that’s literally all you’re getting, but to each their own.
growinginnyc 1 points 3y ago
Never understood the concept of a dry non-dairy cappuccino. I could see why you would need 2 pitchers of almond milk to get to that level of dryness
cat-lily 1 points 3y ago
Reminds me of the time I made a Karen a nitro 4 times because it was the wrong color. She insisted i put cream in it even after I asked her to watch me pour it. Then she said our nitro machine was broken and putting cream in the cold brew 🤦♀️ I finally gave her a black cold brew (not nitro) and that was too dark! I had no idea how to help her.
[deleted] 1 points 3y ago
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