What's the strangest thing that has happened to y'all while working at Starbucks?
Here's mine:
"Your hair is like... a cartoon character! Like... Like... UH... PEANUTS!"
The very next day, I received a peanut shell from a person that comes in to say hi and never purchases anything.
Note: If anything, my hair looks like a Sephirothified Cloud Strife.
o.0
I've quit Starbucks a month ago and I've successfully repressed my experiences from there. SantaCon in NYC was definitely a strange experience.
This was the strangest encounter I've had with a customer...
During bad weather sometimes we're asked to stay open overnight... because we'll have thousands of passengers stuck in the airport with cancellations blah blah blah. Anyway, I did this a few months ago. So around 3am I had this weird old hispanic guy come up to the counter... probably in his 70s, he's in a red suit, wrapped in a blanket, pushing his own wheelchair. He barely speaks a word of English... and I really do not speak any Spanish.
Him: "Cafe....!"
Me: "Uh, what can we get for you?"
Him: "Cafe.... cafe... smoke?"
He starts mimicking the act of smoking, and shrugging his shoulders. I tell him that there's no smoking. He seems to understand, and sighs disappointingly, shaking his head "Cafe no smoke, no smoke..." He comes up closer, looking at the menu, and starts pointing... "Cafe?" So I ask him if he wants coffee. He says, "Cafe!" and nods his head. I point at the cups and ask him what size. He's confused. I make hand gestures to try to indicate big or small... he understands, says "Cafe!" and pinches his fingers together slowly to mean "small".
So I go and get him a tall coffee, come back and discover he's learned a new word. "Tea." That's all he says. I ask him if he wants tea... but this goes nowhere. He's making hand gestures and just saying "tea" and... I don't get it. I gather he was trying to ask something but I don't know what. He gives up and I tell him the price for the coffee.
He doesn't leave. He stands there at the counter, sips his coffee, and then proceeds to mime a story about (so I gather) how his daughter in Mexico knows English, and how a lot of people in Mexico know English, but he doesn't. This goes on for a good 20 minutes. Then he just stands around silently, sipping his coffee. I didn't have any other customers for a whole hour, so... that was fun. :/
I called 911 in the middle of a huge rush this afternoon. I don't know all the details, but I know the customer was having a seizure at one point.
I stopped what I was doing, dialed 911, and handed the phone to a customer. Went back to cranking out Frappuccinos at a record pace.
I kept my **** together. MUG AWARD. Boom.
<3
Geez, I hope that person was okay, KDH. o.0 I think we had an ambulance come to my last Starbucks once, but it was just a customer freaking out. It was not as serious as that was.
I had a middle aged guy come in the lobby and sit in a group of people who were having a meeting, then he unzipped his pants and started masterbating. Cops took him away. He had already been in jail and was a sex offender.
I'm sure we'll never heat anything else about it. As long as I didn't make his drink, I'm good.
@backwarddsrko - There's a community college in Illinois where something quite similar to that occurred to women in their library. I can't imagine witnessing an event like that, or what has happened to them to allow them such ... uh, 'game.'
A regular customer at my location is becoming my new 'strange' moment of the day, though.
Yesterday? She had me read the ENTIRE nutritional label off a off a yogurt.
Today? She had me print out her old receipt and list individual prices to her for 5 minutes because she couldn't do math and wanted another oat bar that I didn't ring her up for. She also takes 5 minutes after each order to grab her purse and walk away.
*headdesk*
I have no idea how I stumbled on this thread, and I know this is late, but I'm gonna post anyway. One day, a high school girl came into my store and told my bar partner that she was walking home from school when some of her friends offered to give her a ride. She accepted, they kidnapped her and fed her some sort of drugs. She managed to break away while they stopped for gas (gas station is right across the parking lot) and told us she had been kidnapped, so we called the cops. She locked herself in the bathroom and those dudes kept coming in to look for her, asking if we'd seen her, etc. They took off when the cops finally showed up, but she still wouldn't come out of the bathroom, so they had to take the door off to get her out. Bonus: she had puked all over herself, and guess who had to clean the bathrooms that day :/ Another bonus: called in our manager and she had us close the store early ("in case those teenage gangster hoodlums came back for us") soooo that was fun.
Let's see, during a rush, DT bar was busted, Cafe and DT drinks together in one bar, some guy in the Cafe was throwing a fit because his drink was about the 6th drink in the line. SS says she's refund him, only to be told "I don't want your **** money!" and they stormed out. He got into his car and backed up into a customer walking to their car :T The cops were in the lobby, so they were quick to arrest him. The customer that was hit walked away only shaken.
A few times a month this strange lady comes in to tell me that I am the princess of Jesus and that i'm making her so proud. o.O
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