Stories filed under Complaints about Customers.
This highlights an interesting customer attitude I have observed whilst being a barista. Some people buy into the Starbucks marketing and have faith in our abilities (even when we are new to the job) including doing the seemingly impossible while others see you as a problem, a liability, an obstacle in their way.
Read article →Something which baffles me a lot is the amount of people that aren't aware that Frappes and Refreshas require ice too.
Read article →Picture the most standard of transactions with good interaction and communication between customer and barista, only for the customer to freeze and go unresponsive when asked for payment.
Read article →I am good at determining who is ordering and who is window shopping, so although I am always ready and alert, I don't go out of my way to communicate with people I am pretty confident is just going to rudely walk off without responding having given eye contact and acknowledged an attempt to speak with them.
Read article →How could someone be so well mannered, yet so vulgar immediately upon being politely informed with an apology about the ice machine being non-operational?
Read article →Sometimes the second till isn't working so when a shift finishes the next barista has to wait for the current barista to count the till before they can take over and accept orders. We communicate this clearly with a timescale. If this isn't satisfactory, the customer is free to leave. It is regrettable and we try to undertake this outside of a busy period.
Read article →He clearly wanted the latte all along but having seen the sign thought it was funny to ask for an Iced Latte. Erm, why? If he had charm and charisma, it could have ended up as funny banter, but instead just a minor annoyance to add to the rest of the people doing similar.
Read article →Some customers REALLY hate being asked for their name.
Read article →A customer approaches counter, gets card out of his wallet, before finally realising the coffee shop is closed. Instead of being humble realising it has been closed for some while, the customer reacts as if the unit was suddenly closed as he was walking up. Letting adults join the dots rather than a forced 3 minute conversation with everyone (which could yield a bad review if I seemed too dismissive, annoyed or rude) seems reasonable here.
Read article →We ran out of Grande cups so had to use Venti cups for the rest of the day. Everybody understood - some a little confused at first, some thought they were getting a free upgrade - but not Helena from Hell (not her real name) who really couldn't compute the concept.
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