"Helping" with my drinks. Because it messes up my routine and throws off my next step.

generally messy bar partners. i was solo DT today and i had to wipe EVERY drink they handed me because it kept getting put into a puddle of melted sweet cream foam. like we have a sani bucket for a REASON. i get not wiping up one little drop of milk, but don’t leave a fucking grandes worth of milk on the counter!!!! it’s the worst when i take over for these baristas bc i can’t bar until it’s clean. i don’t care how busy it is, i can’t work in a messy environment. if i ask them to wipe it up they’ll use a soaked rag that looks like it’s been through the dirt outside, which cleans absolutely nothing. 🙄

I have a few coworkers that say "Expresso" and it really bugs me

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definitely not cleaning up after themselves. 80% of the people I work with just leave milk on the counter, sometimes open, they leave blenders dirty, they leave lids everywhere, tea bag wrappers, empty syrup bottles, like come on! I don’t mind helping clean up but when you’re on hot bar and tell me you’re going on break and I look at hot bar and there’s an open oat milk container, two dirty steaming pitchers, and a whip just sitting there, do better!

Got some cliquey ones. One in particular who's very chatty towards certain people, while ignoring others (I'm in the latter category). She never shuts up and half the time I just want to punch her in the face. She's also good friends with another staff member who got her the job in the first place. Whenever that person goes in the back she follows just so she can "hot gossip" about whatever.

I've clashed with her on multiple occasions in the last month alone. Just yesterday she had a go at me all because I moved a box off the floor that I was about to mop. And the one time I actually called her out on her cliqueyness (how she prioritises certain people over others) which I believe was at the beginning of April, she's like "I don't know how to respond to that". I then ask if her problem with me has anything to do with me being gay and if she has issues with gay women (I can't accuse her of being homophobic in general as her friend is a gay male and obviously they're best buddies). She then goes "no" with a p!ssed off look on her face and then walks into the back to snitch on me. Yay.

I honestly don't get what her problem is, but I hate people like that.

ppl on till who expect cs/support to get their coffees & warming. if it's busy then i'll grab it, but why are u standing there with no line and 12 missing pastries

1. not cleaning the oven. there literally only two of us at my store who cleans the oven properly. like ik you ain’t letting your food go inside that nasty thing right? it’s not even that hard to turn it off. i get it it takes a bit of time to clean up but at least turn it off and let someone else know that it needs to be cleaned.
2. pasting labels on my back 😃😃😃

When people have no food and don’t clean the oven area and leave it ALL crumb-y and not restocked

Not cleaning up after themselves :(

When they're working DTO/DTW and come over to my station to wait for something they need. When I'm done, I'll put it in the correct spot. You standing over me as I have 8 things at warming or 6 drinks at bar, is not going to make anything go faster.

As an SSV, I’d say people not staying in their planted positions. I was often the closing SSV, and I’d figure out where everyone wanted to be and make a plan accordingly for where each person would be for the shift so I could get SSV tasks done and focus on staying on track for closing. This was after navigating through the complaints of baristas about not wanting to be on POS or bar. The way I saw it was, there’s 3 of us and I have to get SSV things done, so I can’t be on bar or POS the whole day and get all of that done. However, each shift this was always treated like a new annoying surprise to the baristas. Later in the day I’d take over bar or POS for breaks, and I did what I could to change it up.

I’d usually put myself on CS so I could get everything stocked and cleaned while also fitting in SSV tasks during a down moment. The majority of the time this never worked out. I’d be on CS restocking, and then somehow found myself alone on the floor, so now I’m trying to handle POS and bar. Eventually the partners would come back from playing around/gossiping in the back, and try to takeover whatever task I was now doing. That annoyed me because it’s like, you’ve decided to come back out and work and you’re now taking the cup out my hand as I’m making a drink? Not how that works. OR even worse, they would move to CS so now I’m stuck on bar, totally lost the CS/SSV routine I had going and was in the middle of doing, and now they think they’re gonna be on CS and asking me what needs to be done when I had been in the middle of doing it.

I got irritated enough to the point that when people would pull this with me, the moment they’d walk back out to FOH I’d say “can you get on bar/POS please?” I got so sick of this crap. I never understood it because as a barista I was always trying to help the SSV, but with these baristas I constantly felt like I was losing a battle trying to close with them. It felt rude, and made me feel like an annoying and “not fun” SSV. I’m all about having fun at work, but constantly disappearing off the floor and preventing things from getting done got old.

I find this had a lot to do with the partners at the store. Before the influx of new partners that brought this environment where they did whatever they wanted whenever they wanted and treated work more like social hour than work, I never had this problem. Gotta love when I’d be doing dishes and they’d come to the back to play around, and it’d hit me that no one was out on the floor and this was somehow now my problem. Started to feel so much more like babysitting than work 🫠 I’m sorry for the long rant, just had to let it out

people using the wrong color trash bags especially for compost bc it means we cant even compost anymore with the wrong bag. leaving ice bins open. leaving like 10 milks on the counter. LEAVING THINGS ON THE VOLCANO the water just keeps running and the sinks fill all the way up 😭

>Not putting the stickers over the little order boxes

Why? I can’t even fathom being anal retentive enough to care about that.

My biggest pet peeve is people like you that get upset over shit that literally doesn’t matter at all. I HATE being micromanaged.

Please clean up after yourself. Especially if you come to my station.

Right now being at corporate store Definitely messy partners, don’t mind the here and then cleaning up after them but rise your stuff and put things away where they go.

Also when I used to work at a licensed store I had coworkers that would take orders then go to make drinks. Like we kept switch from bar to register for each order. But when I was in bar they would rush ( and get in my way ) to get ice water for a customer instead of making them wait.

Not rinsing the tea shakers and lids well enough. Like, they really need more than a tap on the rinser, they need like a couple seconds at least. I get my tea unsweetened and so many times I get phantom green tea or lcs or refresher flavor and it drives me nuts!

Same thing with rinsing the blenders after making a frappuccino with Java chips. Just take another two seconds to deliberately rinse the whole blender out.

Not shaking refreshers and teas

Are you….me….?

-people not shaking their refreshers/teas
-no bar cleanliness, like bro it takes like 5 seconds you can take a quick break to wipe down the bar
-trash overflowing and NO ONE TAKING IT OUT WHY
-dto not letting anyone know what they're waiting for at the window, literally just standing there doing nothing

as an ssv I've tried so many times trying to coach some of these people who do these and they just never listen 😭

i hate when the DTO person walks up to me on bar to grab the drink i’m making it’s stupid but it stresses me out. 1) ur supposed to be making customer connections not breathing down my neck 2) i had a path in my head and now ur ruining it 3) sometimes it feels like u will never get off of bar so those 2 seconds not making a drink are just what i need to not lose my mind

Taking food out of the oven when im at the till (my store has person on the till ringing people up & doing food, but other baristas all have food as a secondary position if I get caught up with customers at the till) only to leave it there instead of packaging it up and handing it off to the customer. Like.. why? What is the reason for taking food out of the oven and leaving it there while I have 10 people to ring up? Then I have to remake it and the customer gets mad at ME when it's not my fault. It's only been one of my coworkers who has done it and they're just an arse all the time but seriously. The lack of common sense is astounding.

number 1 is absolutely something I notice, but laugh at myself for caring about haha

/but/
nothing makes me slam a fridge door and mutter angrily to myself more than when people take the last of a product and don't replace or ask it to be replaced U-U pls,, y?

When a partner gets TOO much into the “guard-dog” mentality and starts policing customers on the dumbest things. I’m all about rules and standards but I’ve had to put out so many unnecessary fires because a partner thought it was their sacred duty to suddenly start enforcing some arbitrary rule just to piss off a customer who would normally actually be one of our favorite customers. I had a partner once start arguing with a customer who just wanted four shots of espresso on ice in a venti cup and the barista started accusing her of trying to steal from the company and yadda yadda yadda all this stuff about how she was trying to order things a special way to get it for cheaper and how they’re actually supposed to order an iced shaken espresso and blah blah blah. Like, omg, I totally get how these stupid “hacks” are annoying, but the customer wasn’t trying to get something for cheaper, they just literally wanted four shots of espresso over ice, no syrup, no milk, she wasn’t going to go over to the condiment bar and fill it with half and half. That barista was just creating a hostile situation where there didn’t need to be one. And that customer was a super nice regular customer that everyone at the store liked too. Like yes, please do enforce rules when you need to, but if you’re going to do that you also NEED to recognize when no rules are actually being broken. There’s nothing wrong with ordering an iced quad espresso.

I THOUGHT I WAS CRAZY FOR PEELING OFF AND REPOSITIONING THE DRINK STICKERS CORRECTLY

When a drink is made wrong and you are on bar and they just hand you the old drink. Like what do you want me to do with it? Throw it out.

I’m on customer support a lot, so I have a laundry list.

1) Urgently demanding I restock something that can wait until the next cycle, or asking for a bunch of things at once and then getting impatient that it takes a few minutes to get to all of it.

2) Leaving ice bins open.

3) Leaving sanitizer rags on counters, or not putting the rag back into the bucket you took it from.

4) Continuing to make the drink right over my head while I’m restocking your fridge. I’ve hit my head on people’s arms, and I’ve had someone drop a full extra hot latte on me. Do you want milk or not? Move to the side a little bit.

5) Not moving out of the way when I’m pulling fridges back to do floors. Now I’m in your way twice as long. Move.

6) Moving stuff from the signal area to the back before I get a chance to see it.

7) When partners are just standing around after peak when they could like bare minimum wipe down their area. Especially when I give POS prep to work on, and I see them just standing around with empty whips. Bro I’m sweating here, help me out.

I work inside of a target, but if someone sees a line, instead of asking what can I help out with, just start doing other tasks or going to the back 🤨

Standing in my bar area and not doing anything, like I love y'all, but go stand elsewhere, you're in my way. Like yea I can manage all the drinks so I definitely don't need the help, but if you're gonna stand around, don't do it in the smallest most bottleneck area of the store.

Bitching about everything

No. 2 definitely

one partner is new(its not bad that hes new but he talks all the time instead of learning) and he sucks at drinks but he orders the most complicated drink. at my store we aren’t supposed to allow baristas to make our own drinks but i tell him, “make it you need practice for harder ones.”

hes also stuck on the fact that at his old job he was supposed to be supervisor but they jipped him bc hes literally 17… like… hmm maybe bc legal reasons??
(this isnt said unkindly but trust me i think it. i mean he messes up the refreshers.)

Partners who complain.

"helping me" and not having any urgency. One I forgive because she has a condition but the other.... She just wants to talk and it's always about her. I don't mind talking, I like chit chatting and everyone does it but we are also punctual at the same time and efficient. my co-worker just wants to ear r*pe you and be a sloth. doesn't matter if the line is short or long, she always wants the attention to her and doesn't have the urgency to get the drink done efficiently and out. Also she "helps me" and messes my whole routine and mood by inserting herself when I explicitly asked her not to because "I had it in order".