The Bratty Barista

Salad. Everywhere.

This morning, as I waited for a bus to take me to my store at 5:45 AM, I noticed that someone had left a half eaten salad, fork and all, on the bus stop bench.  I don’t know why it struck me as funny, but it did.  It was almost as if the person eating the salad had been raptured while eating. 

Then my bus came and I climbed on, forgetting all about the abandoned salad.  When I got off the bus a few minutes later and started walking toward my store, I swear to you on everything that is holy, I saw another, identical salad, also abandoned on a city bench.

I wanted to stop and take a photo of this most recent salad, but there were people around and it felt a little weird.

Today was insane.

We had a line of 10 - 15 people without even a single momentary break from 7 AM until after 10 AM.  It’s by far the busiest I’ve ever been since starting at Starbucks, and even the some of the other baristas said it was the busiest they’d ever seen it, aside from the days preceding and following Christmas.

For the most part, I kicked ass.  The only two drinks that I screwed up and had to remake weren’t even my fault.  I had another barista expo-ing (filling steaming pitchers with milk per each cup for me, up to 4 or 5 drinks ahead, so that I don’t have to stop after each drink, rinse a pitcher, grab the corresponding milk and pour into a pitcher, as well as pumping shots of syrup in the cup.  This makes my life much easier during a rush because I can just look at the cup and figure out what the customer is getting, start steaming the milk and pulling the shots, cap it and hand it off, and then move onto the next drink / pre-filled pitcher of milk…lather, rinse, repeat).  She called one drink off as an Americano with white mocha, so I started pouring hot water into it before realizing that it was…a white mocha.  She also confused two venti iced coffees - one with an added shot, the other with cold soy - as one drink.  It slowed me down a little bit but I feel like I recovered pretty well.

The highlight of the morning was a woman who yelled at me “I HAVE TO BE BACK AT MY DESK IN LITERALLY 30 SECONDS.  I CANNOT WAIT ANY LONGER FOR MY DRINK”.  I asked her what her drink was (grande nonfat Cinnamon Dolce Latte no-whip) and told her I was pouring it and capping it RIGHT NOW, and that I was very sorry for the delay.  She snatched (and I use that word very deliberately) it from me and stormed out of the store.

Lady, look.  I’m sorry that we were super slammed this morning.  But the fact is, you’re an adult.  You knew you had something important going on back at work that you had to be on time for (if you didn’t actually, you’re an even bigger bitch than I already think you are).  You can SEE the enormous line at the register, and the hoard of caffeine deprived zombies waiting at the handoff bar.  IT WOULD STAND TO REASON that it may take a few extra minutes to receive your handcrafted specialty beverage (haha!), which is honestly not my fault.  I only have two hands (four if you count the barista expoing for me) and I’m not a fucking coffeebot.  If you didn’t have time to wait a few extra moments for your precious coffee, you should have bailed before you ordered.  And let’s be real…you may have waited an extra minute.  Two, tops.  I was cranking those bitches out every 30 seconds or so.  So Ms. Grande Nonfat Cinnamon Dolce No-Whip Latte: 

Go fuck thyself.

Damn you, Isaac Newton

We have a crazy-ass homeless guy that comes in to our store almost every day who.  Drives.  Me.  Insane.

He usually comes in pretty early and buys a cup of drip coffee.  He then moves around to the bar and rudely demands a cup of ice water, almost always when I’m slammed and have a line of 8 or so cups to make beverages for and a line that twists all throughout our lobby.  I’ve finally started to tell him that he’s going to have to wait for his water when there is a line.  Would it kill him to ask for his ice water…you know…while he’s ordering his coffee? For an added bonus, once he gets the water, he stands at the bar and plunges his filthy hand into the cup to retrieve the ice so that he can cool off his coffee, slopping 8 ounces or so of water all over the handoff bar where other customers have to pick up their drinks.  Nice.

Today, he really pissed me off.  He came up to the register for a refill and then, of course, came straight around to the bar where I was furiously working my way through a line of drinks.  When he asked for his water, I played dumb and just gave him a cup of ice, trying to prevent another epic mess.  After a while, he tells me he needs a new lid for his coffee because he “can’t use the same lid”.  Fine.  I tossed him a new lid.  A few minutes later he asked me for water (for his ice, ha), so I stopped what I was doing AGAIN and gave him water.  Then, a few minutes later, he tells me he needs a lid for the ice water.  Jesus Christ.

Later when, mercifully the store had calmed down a bit, he came back up to the register for another refill.  The barista at the reg rang him up and set his coffee down on the counter in front him and when he handed his fistful of change over to pay, he dropped a penny which fell…straight into his coffee.  My co-worker started cracking up uncontrollably, especially when the crazy guy started complaining about how gravity had somehow conspired against him to make the penny fall into his coffee.  My co-worker took the coffee over to the sink and dumped it, still laughing, and handed him a new cup of coffee.

As he stormed off in a huff, my co-worker chirped “Have a great day!  And sorry about all of the gravity!”

We had an ex-partner come in today while I was on bar, who told the barista on register that he “may want to write this down, because it’s SUPER COMPLICATED”.

His order?  An iced double grande, two-pump mocha, two-pump white mocha, four-pump toffeenut, 8-second ristretto shots pulled over ice and a splash of breve (half and half).

When I handed him his drink, he commented that it “looked a little thick”.

Yeah?  Well, it’s half fucking syrup, shitbird.  Go away.

Also?  It’s amazing to me that someone who used to work at Starbucks wouldn’t have the self-awareness to realize that you, sir, are a barista’s worst nightmare.  You should know better.

Thank you, and have a great day!

You know what’s awesome?

Waking up at 3:00 AM to catch a 4:11 bus to get to work by 4:30, and walking by a Starbucks cup casually discarded in a concrete planter two blocks from my store which I’m 99% sure, based on the markings on the cup, contained a drink that I personally made the day before.

Enjoy your diabetes

There is a regular in my store that orders a venti extra-extra-extra-caramel, seven-pump vanilla, five-pump caramel, caramel macchiatto with extra-extra-extra-extra-extra-extra-extra caramel drizzle. 

I wish there was some way to calculate the number of calories in this monstrosity. Also, please don’t come crying to me when you lose a foot.