Honestly, I think it’s on you to communicate with your team. I never mind people hopping on, but I get it when people feel like it’s their bubble and I’m in their way. A simple “hey I’m sure you’re trying to help me out, which I appreciate, but it honestly just messes with my groove when you pull stickers when I’m on bar.” This comes down to preference, at least at my store, and I know which people *loathe* sticker pulling and which appreciate it. I respect that, but I can only know if you tell me.

I try to redirect them. “Hey I’ve got drinks but I haven’t had a chance to grab milks for awhile,” or things like that.

“I’ve got it. Thank you tho could you grab ice or check if I need ice coffee brewed”

I hate it. I have a very particular system when I’m on bar and the way our bars are set up, if one person is helping me it’s fine but if there’s more than one (say OS and DTO) it’s just a mess. Whenever I feel like I might need help, I’ll just say “hey, can you work on drive drinks while I catch up on mobiles” (my preferred bar is next to our mobile sticker printer so it makes sense). This morning our CS kept hopping on bar when I didn’t need it and it literally left me standing there bc there were no drinks for me to even work on.
I literally lost it on the floor one day and kind of raised my voice a little bc I had THREE people try to help me and I just broke down.
Like people at my store know that if I feel I need help, I will ask for it. I don’t mind drowning (I thrive in it) but because of my weird system I have (its sequencing but tweaked to how I learned to be a barista (I was a barista manager before Sbux)) when people help me, it just confuses me way more.

Nothing grinds my gears more than when you assign a barista a position and instead of doing that job or stocking during downtime, they just pull a ton of stickers trying to “help” on bar when it isn’t needed.

If it's any of our baristas and one specific sm, I don't mind, anybody else including other sm's who I know don't know bar jump on, I ask them to kindly step off, unless it's one specific sm who won't listen no matter what and gets offended even though they don't know any bar specifics and quite literally hinders my progress of getting drinks out and slows everything down.

i normally don’t mind the sticker pulling especially with the new sticker but when someone tries to help me when its very slow (it’s always the same SSV) i have to remind them that i’m good i don’t need any help. usually i start by redirecting them: ice, cups, lids, beans, brew coffee. if they keep doing it, like in my case just say it straight up: “hey i got this don’t worry about me”, “i’m okay on making drinks solo”, etc.

I smack their hand. Sometimes harder than I mean to, but yeah it’s worked for me.