Starbucks Purgatory

Starbucks cup  © Shutterbug

It never ceases to amaze me that people whose sole job it is to make coffee and provide customer service are so often capable of doing neither.

I try to avoid the Starbucks located nearest to my house as much as possible, because it appears to be staffed entirely by idiots. Today I had no choice but to get my coffee there, since it would have been beyond the scope of my lunch hour to get to the location slightly further away with better service.

Throwing caution to the wind, my wife and I opened the door to find no lineup at the counter. Feeling encouraged, we approached the young girl at the cash wearing the friendly enough smile, and I carefully spoke our order. I try to speak slowly and clearly so as not to be one of those insufferable yuppie types who rattle off their complex orders at top speed.

"I'll have one decaf, triple tall, nonfat latté please," I said, pausing in between each word. I waited as she wrote the order on the cup, then added when she looked up again, "and one decaf grande nonfat latté". She grabbed a second cup, began to write on it, then picked the first cup up again. She looked at the cups, looked at me with a confused expression, and asked with a heavy accent "Ahh….tall nonfat latté?" I repeated the first order, whereupon she nodded vigorously and wrote more things on the cup. Then I noticed the second cup she'd grabbed was the same tall size, so I pointed to it and said, "That one is supposed to be a grande." Again the look of confusion as she held both tall cups in the air, then she shook her head and began crossing things off the first cup. I started to repeat the order for the third time, at which point she said, "Ohh, two grande, two grande," and reached for new cups. I decided I was not going to be able to complete my transaction. "Never mind, I can't deal with this today," I said, and we walked out coffee-less.

How is it possible that this is our experience each and every time we frequent this location, regardless of who serves us? I'd complain to the "manager", but he is often there, busy chatting on his cell phone while his staff gets weeded.

The best experience in that particular store happened a little while ago, when I found myself in line behind a distracted mother with a young boy about 3. She was so busy trying to select an item from the bakery case that she hadn't noticed her son wander over to the milk station and actually climb on top of the counter. Next thing you know, he is STANDING on top of the counter - you know, where people put their FOOD and DRINKS - and looking pretty unsteady on his feet. Worried for his safety but also appalled at the behaviour, I tapped the mother on the shoulder and said, "Excuse me, your boy has gotten up on the counter over there." She looked over at her son, then back at me, and replied with obvious pride, "I know, he's just so ATHLETIC!"…and turned back to the cashier. I'm still speechless.

But I digress. Today's lunch hour ran into overtime as we rushed to the other location after the service fail above. The service was much better, and we returned to our car with coffees in hand. We'd taken our two dogs with us just to give them a change of scenery, and when we returned to the car we found our labrador retriever had jumped in to the front seat as usual. She slunk to the back seat when told, and we drove home making conversation and jokes to one another. Right as my lovely wife made a raunchy joke, my eye caught sight of my cell phone, which was sitting on the console between us. On the screen was my mother-in-law's phone number, and a clock counting the elapsed time of the current call. It took a moment for the situation to sink in…the dog had speed-dialed my mother-in-law's phone number during her foray to the front seat, and there was now a five-minute recording of our conversation on my mother-in-law's answering machine.

And we think we're ready to have kids…

Gotcha!  © Shutterbug