Barista Vents

For one, I can’t stand making this.

I hate tic toc.

A Trenta Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew...with 4 shots of espresso!! (For context, a Trenta is 30oz, Cold Brew is already our most caffeinated coffee. And the 4 shots, well a Venti Iced Latte typically comes with 3). Theres already about 320+mg of caffeine in that cold brew, plus 4 shots is about 300mg more so she is having 600mg + caffeine in one drink.

Also in the heavily caffeinated drink category we have a regular who gets a Grande Iced Carmel Macchiato with anywhere between 5 and 7 shots. It normally comes with 2. Sometimes she gets multiple a day.

There’s the guy who gets a Trenta Black Tea with 7 pumps of Peppermint and a shot of espresso.

Anyone who gets a drink at 180 degrees and drinks it right away, like, how do you not burn your mouth off and why are you getting that in the middle of Summer?

As I’ve mentioned I work in a kiosk in a grocery store, so we never closed cause grocery stores are essential. The most we did was change our hours some.

Back when it was early on. Like essential business only still big. So like, March

I think it was a Saturday morning. I just opened and my co-worker wasn’t in yet but that’s normal for Saturday.

2 Customers comes up. One orders his two drinks then turns to his friend. “I didn’t think Starbucks would be essential.” He says as he buys coffee.

Like I said, I work in a grocery store, they aren’t going to tell the 10 baristas they can’t work but let everyone else in the store work. And they aren’t just going to move us for those couple weeks to month cause like, they’d have to train us how to do that position, and they might run into the problem where half they baristas decide they want to stay cashier and then when the Starbucks can we open be understaffed. We actually did have a barista move to cashiering cause after helping out that’s what happened to her. She just decided she liked cashiering better. (She wasn’t that good anyway so i actually liked it).

But any way. This was later that month or maybe early April, before the store mandated employees to be masked.

A group of 4 teenage girls come up and order their stupid Frappachinos or tic toc drinks. When I tell them the total one girl calls over her mom to pay. Mom is wearing a mask and as she pays tells me, “shouldn’t you be wearing a mask?”

Keep in mind her daughter isn’t wearing a mask, and neither is any of her friends. When COVID was still huge I never went anywhere besides work. If we needed groceries or anything else from a store, my mom went alone. I haven’t seen my friends since very early March when we went and saw a movie the weekend before the lockdown. So this lady was mad at me for not wearing a mask, but wasn’t making her daughter wear one or socially distant herself.

Anyways, customers have been crazy. For about 6 weeks we were busy all the time cause we were the only Starbucks open in the two towns. We were pulling almost $2000 a day on the weekdays and more on the weekends. Since then we’ve settled down, which has its downsides too. We don’t get as many tips, and we no longer get the extra $0.50 bonus for hazard pay, which is honestly dumb. I think that as long as we have to wear masks we should be getting it.

I know I haven’t posted in a while, I’ll try to post more often.

I can’t tell you the number of times a customer has asked me if this drink is there’s.  Listen.  If i am on bar and my coworker is on register.  If we are busy, I’m just making the drinks, I’m not paying attention to who’s ordering what.  So if I set down a drink i call it out, “Vent hot White mocha.” 

Customer: “Is this mine?”

me: “Its a venti hot white mocha,”  I don’t have time to figure it out if its yours or not cause i have 5 other drinks in the queue to be made.  

Or the number of times I’ve had to remake a drink cause someone grabbed the completely wrong drink.  Like i get it if they are both the same size hot drinks.  But ive had people grab a completely different size and temperature drink, 

And i can’t tell you the number of times that if I’m making a drink on the cold bar and hot bar on the same time. or in some way i set a drink out that you didn’t order, but you assume its yours cause you were standing there when i put it out.  Just the other day i set out a Venti hot White Mocha while my co-worker was making a tall Mocha Frappachino.  i call out the VENTI HOT WHITE MOCHA and the guy took it cause he assumed it was his when he ordered a freaken TALL MOCHA FRAPPACHINO!!!  he took a LARGE HOT DRINK WHEN HE ORDERED A SMALL FROZEN DRINK!!!

I get all my lattes with non fat milk and typically iced, but that’s just a preference. Here’s the actual drinks:

1. White Mocha with Cinnamon Dolce

2. White Mocha with Raspberry and typically an extra shot (since it’s so much sweeter)

3. Salted Caramel White Mocha

(If you cant tell I like my white mocha)

4. Carmel Macchiato, sub Vanilla with Toffee Nut with 2 extra pumps and extra Carmel Drizzle. (It’s like a Salted Carmel Latte)

5. Very Berry Hibiscus Refresher with Lemonade.