👋 I'm OP.

So unfortunately the maggots are in the mats, and I suspect also the dirty rags we bag while still wet.

I work with taxidermy as a hobby, and I've recommended to my boss to use white vinegar to create a too acidic environment for the flies & eggs to survive. I also know what maggots smell like, so that's why I suspect the rags are culprit, too (a weird Venn Diagram of a personality to be a coffee barista and work with dead things, lol)

I used bleach spray and boiling water since that was what was available at my disposal

We have a scrub brush type of broom, like a push broom, to clean the mats. Unfortunately, most baristas only mop the mats and return them while floor and mats are still wet. Furthermore, what I found was using the broom seems to push the maggots further into the mats.

We previously had a power washer, but who knows where it is now
I know one shift has been asking our boss to please buy even a $15 hose so we can forcefully spray down the mats

We had to dump it at least once a day but our manager wouldn’t let us just not serve it at all. That starbucks was super poorly run and absolutely disgusting and did a ton of things that were super sketchy tbh

oh thank god, so did you guys just not have malt powder for months??

Im sorry if it came off passive aggressive- I am genuinely glad that you did all of that stuff and were trying your best.

The flies came from somewhere - fruit fly larva look like tiny maggots. Just because no one saw where they were breeding - doesn’t mean they were coming from thin air…. It could’ve been a small hole in the wall behind the ice machine or something so out of sight no one could find it even if they tried.