Do you guys like when the person on drive comes over to help? When I’m on bar and I’m overwhelmed I love the help. I used to go over to help make drinks from drive when I realized the other drive barista was being swamped. I got called annoying for trying to help lmao. I got told that I need to be aware of my position and stay at the window and connect with the costumer. Usually I’ll grab food and refill syrups and replace bases and inclusions.

I think if I'm solo bar and the solo drive is just waiting on drinks, I wouldn't like if they came over and helped with drinks. It does bother me that they can't find anything to do though. I'm an opener and if I open food side, I'm solo drive + food + finishing my opening stuff (food rotation, pastry case) and it's pretty busy right at open for us.


Not that I expect anyone to do more than like two positions (I don't mind because that's just how my brain works), but at the very least they should stop hassling you for drinks if they are just going to stand there.

at my store everything goes for nights. basically all of us struggle every day and our SSV is fine with us changing the positions she listed us as. it really frustrates me too when people in drive just stare at me. like girl help me make drinks why are u standing there. we're an incredibly busy store, we're right next to a busy train station 5 stops away from chicago, and get thousands of sales each day. like please help me on bar

Cafe only here, but at my store typically one person remains planted-ish at bar and is responsible for pre-closing and closing tasks on bar as well as their own stocking, while one person is on register/warming/MOP. That leaves 1-2 people to flex between other tasks - whether their SSV tasks, other closing tasks, or support as needed. It also means breaks can be run one at a time, but there's lots of flexibility in what we do outside of keeping one person responsible for reg/warming and one person primarily responsible for bar. We also have a pretty strong store culture of asking before doing if you're flexing into a spot so we're not stepping on anyone's toes (eg, asking bar 1 "is there anything I can do to help?" or "where do you want me?" when the situation calls for it).

I absolutely hate being asked about drinks in any case, though. All throughout peak whoever is on MOP will appear and ask the closest person at the bar if they're getting to \*insert name here\*. How would I know? We don't have an iPad down here, but there's one in your hand, and there's a line out the door to order in cafe, two dozen at the mobile handoff plane, and another dozen waiting on cafe orders while I'm making four drinks at once and there's three of us on bar moving as fast as possible. Why are you asking me when you know I don't have time to memorize any of the names on the eight drinks I've made in the past three minutes? You know it's coming and if you already know where we're at in the queue, it's just distracting.

I’ve been told by my asm that i couldn’t help on bar if i was doing solo drive because I was in contact with money