I work at a rival coffee shop directly across the street from the big green monster. I hate our customers.... But I hate Starbucks customers even more. We have normal names for our sizes. Small, Medium, and Large. If you order a "grande" from me and going to give you the biggest cup I have because I assume you mean large. But I can usually sense a Starbucks regular even before they open their mouth. I detect an aura of ignorance, even greater than our patrons. They try to order things that don't exist, sometimes attempting to pay for these things with a Starbucks gift card.... What the hell is a white mocha? Mocha indicates color.... How can it be white and mocha?!?! It's white chocolate! But the worst part is that the Starbucks closes one hour before us, so we go from slow to super busy because of all of the fools who decided that they need coffee at 10pm. Don't people drink booze anymore?
Please keep complaining about working for Starbucks. Your customers suck.
(21 posts) (15 voices)-
Posted 1 year ago #
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Posted 1 year ago # -
I agree our customers suck but you are wrong on mocha. According to Miriam-Webster, mocha is not just a color but indicates a combination of coffee and chocolate, there for white chocolate and coffee are a white mocha.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Our customers still suck, regardless of the color of the mocha.
Posted 1 year ago # -
mocha is chocolate -___-
Posted 1 year ago # -
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mocha
"Mocha" has multiple meanings. Aside from that I fully agree.
Posted 1 year ago # -
You know, as much as I hate our customers, I hate baristas at rival coffee shops just as much. Why? Because you know DAMN well what grande means but you decide to take some prissy stance and act like you don't know. When someone says medium I don't freak out and say "grande!" I give them the middle size. Duh.
I used to work at an independent coffee shop. I didn't glare every time someone ordered a caramel macchiatto. Or a frappuccino. You know what it is, they obviously want it and are willing to pay whatever for it, so give it to them! Grow the eff up. Maybe you're just not made for the customer service biz.
Posted 1 year ago # -
splashofsoy - I used to work at an independent coffee shop and I swear I had NO idea what a caramel macchiatto was until I started working at Starbucks 3 years later. I'd charge people for our macchiatos (like an EM) plus vanilla plus caramel. It never occurred to me to go across the street to Starbucks and order one...
The funny thing was at my shop we only had sizes equivalent to short, tall and grande which made it funny when people tried to order venti.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Sidenote - WTF is an actual macchiato? I have heard so many different things.
Posted 1 year ago # -
@IAmHuman: macchiato means "stained or marked with." In the case of an espresso macchiato, it's marked with a dollop of steamed milk foam. For a caramel macchiato: you mark the steamed milk with the espresso shots, then add caramel sauce.
Posted 1 year ago # -
So is it something that starbucks made up, or is it pretty well known?
Posted 1 year ago # -
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caff%C3%A8_macchiatoFrom Starbucks:
http://starbucks.co.uk/menu/beverage-list/espresso-beverages/espresso-macchiato
http://starbucks.co.uk/menu/beverage-list/espresso-beverages/caramel-macchiatoPosted 1 year ago # -
I used to work in another coffee place... a block away from a Starbucks. We had the lost Starbucks customers come in pretty frequently. Both stores were on the corner, in similar buildings... so the Starbucks customers genuinely confused the two and went into our place accidentally.
But anyway, I can concur... I had absolutely no idea what the Starbucks sizes were. And though it happened regularly, I had no reason to try to remember. So yeah, every time someone ordered a "grande" or a "venti" I had to ask... "And what size is THAT?"
One time, someone ordered a macchiato... then asked if we could make it "upside down." I could not wrap my brain around this concept. I had never in my life heard of a caramel macchiato, so I was thinking of what Starbucks calls an espresso macchiato (known everyone else simply as a macchiato). I just stared at this guy like he was insane... "uh... okay... we CAN make it upside down... I guess?? So... you want... a little bit of foam at the bottom of your cup... and espresso shots poured over it????" This transaction took a good 5 minutes or so to get on the same page. :P
And the customers at that place were actually pretty decent, especially by comparison of what I deal with now. Our customers consciously chose our brand over Starbucks, which made them typically more well informed about coffee... with better taste and manners to boot. It was a much classier joint than Starbucks lol.
Posted 1 year ago # -
unsweetened! get on the chat!
Posted 1 year ago # -
Hmmmmmm. I think you may work at my old store.
I worked at a coffee bean directly from a starbucks. But I think then the starbucks closed an after hour us.Posted 1 year ago # -
Today I had to make a venti zen, light ice stirred in, and then had to make sure I cut the strings off the bags.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I used to have this customer who would get FURIOUS over the way the tea bags were put in the cup. I forget how. And she explained it differently every way. I tuck the bags in between the two cups, and she would be like, she doesn't want them in the cup, she doesn't want the tea bag in. It was confusing as ****.
Anyways, when I was in your position Hesitantevil, it wasn't the size or the white chocolate that **** me off, it was when people ordered any size of capp. Because coffee bean only offers tall (single or double) and i'd have to explain to them. And people who ordered Caramel Macchiatos Upside Down (which no matter how you put it, is just a Caramel Latte. When people asked for Sweetened or Shaken tea, because Coffee Bean only had brewed Green, Black, and Herbal tea, all unsweetened, not watered down, not shaken. Cause for me, it was like if you like it that way, go the **** across the street, but we never had a line, and they had one out the lobby.
Posted 1 year ago # -
When I worked at another coffee shop people used to order caramel macchiatos and of course I'd make them the way we were trained to make espresso macchiatos (caramel+espresso+dollop of milk foam) and people would complain, and I'd be like well this isn't Starbucks, this is how we make macchiatos here. Eventually I just gave up and started doing them because people asked for them so frequently.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I've worked at a few coffee places. back around '96 people started ordering "caramel macchiatos". The coffeehouse I was working at made all lattes as latte macchiatos. Someone explained the ingredients and I started charging for vanilla lattes with caramel on top.
And the word mocha... The Yemen port Mocha (Mocca in older books) had excellent coffee traded by the Dutch along with coffees from other ports, like Java. The Dutch also used the term Mocha to describe the skin color of the people at the port of Mocha. These days people use it as a synonym for chocolate.
Posted 1 year ago # -
@eyeadapt You've convinced me.... I think that we have both worked at the same Coffee Bean. It would be funny if we knew each other.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I worked at other espresso establishments before starbucks, and I just loved when people would order a "macchiato" really wanting a caramel macchiato...and then you give them an espresso macchiato and they look completely shocked.
Posted 1 year ago #
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