Yes, I think they think that. I think they think that a significant number of people come to Starbucks to socialize with the baristas. I don't think it's fair to require that we provide that to customers at $10 an hour. Also, I've been fussed at for saying negative things while connecting with customers, so it's not like you can have an honest connection with them anyway.

I do as well, for a ton of reasons. You know how some DTO baristas give their name? I used to when I was new because my trainer had recommended that I do. She wrote me a greeting which had my name in it and I used the greeting she had written. Well, one time I was saying my greeting and mentioning my name when this man interrupted me by saying, "--Yeah, I don't really need to know your name, but I heard y'all have good coffee here!" Everybody on the floor looked bewildered at how rude he was. I continued to be polite. The man asked for cinnamon on top of his drink and my shift supervisor insisted on making his drink and put so much cinnamon on top that you could not see the drink. Afterward, I laughed and said, "You made him take the cinnamon challenge. That man definitely kills people, he was humming to himself when he was at the window." Anyway, if some strange person like that comes through my drive-thru again, I'm not asking their name. Not worth bothering crazy people.

Anyway, when it comes to the asking-for-customers'-names-in-drive-thru rule, one of my shift supervisors was like, "Look, we gotta do it but we don't have to write their name down anywhere."

It's weird how they never changed the programming on their DTO computers to ask for names.

Our DM is relatively new, so that explains why he's enforcing it.

True, but it also takes more of the customer's time in that we're requiring them to talk to us more, if that makes sense.

One of my former shift supervisors would ask each DT customer who ordered a breakfast sandwich, wrap, or egg bites if they would like sriracha or avocado spread to go along with it in order to stall for time. But if Starbucks wasn't obsessed with drive-thru times in the first place, there'd be no need to stall.

I've never been asked my name at a drive-thru. We started taking names in drive-thru after reopening after quarantine because we were using a front register so that our baristas could social distance. The front register asks for a name so it was convenient to just ask what their name was. Names also helped keep orders organized since the DTR barista was not supposed to touch drinks in order to find orders. Every order was in the drive-thru at the time, so the names helped.

I don't like the idea of getting names in drive-thru for multiple reasons. Lots of people drove off before giving us their name because they weren't expecting the question. Lots of times I couldn't make out what their name was and would have to ask them to repeat it or spell it for me. I mainly think it's unnecessary and just gives us one more task to do for every single drive-thru order when we're already required to multitask like crazy because Starbucks likes to cut down on labor costs.