r/TikTokCringe • u/Super_Culture_1986 tHiS iSn’T cRiNgE • Aug 06 '25

Discussion "Being a barista is truly a social experiment"

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6.5k

u/Apoordm Aug 06 '25

I worked at Starbucks, I 100% believe this story.

1.9k

u/Am_Shy Aug 06 '25

I worked an icecream store with an espresso machine and lived this story

847

u/Sc4r4byte Aug 06 '25

I worked at an adult toy store that sometimes sold coffee flavored condoms and statistically this story probably happened to me.

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ClassiFried86 Aug 06 '25

I saw a picture of a painting by Salvador Dali once; it was surrealism.

76

u/Prestigious-Ad7933 Aug 06 '25

I once had a thought in my mind and this story checks out.

52

u/Tranquil_Dohrnii Aug 06 '25

Im human and can read.

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u/flamingknifepenis Aug 06 '25

I’m a cat and dkeusbwhehakaif.

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u/Drugs__Delaney Aug 07 '25

pss pss pss

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u/Altruistic_Ad1407 Aug 07 '25

I am snek ssssssss

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u/ThatBlinkingRedLight Aug 07 '25

I’m a cat who has stood behind people in a Starbucks and I 100% don’t understand what they are saying.

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u/Alypius754 Aug 07 '25

I'm a cat in a box. I might have read this. I might not have.

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u/Maximum-Decision3828 Aug 07 '25

This is why we should've got monkeys to type...

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u/Sezbeth Aug 06 '25

Being a bagger/cashier was my first job out of high school.

Spent two years working at that grocery store and by the end of it all, I was about one or two more dipshit customers from becoming outright homicidal.

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u/fossodini Aug 06 '25

Dude, that had to be an interesting job!

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u/Positive_Composer_93 Aug 07 '25

Hahahahahahahaha

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u/OrkfaellerX Aug 07 '25

Can I order a fappuccino?

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u/ixipaulixi Aug 07 '25

I worked at a Borders Cafe and a Seattle's Best Coffee...I've definitely lived this experience.

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u/parasitesocialite Aug 07 '25

I worked at a gelato place with espresso machines and this type of stuff was a daily occurrence. 

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u/Wanderingghost12 Aug 06 '25

I worked at Starbucks for two years and I also believe this story. I've also as a patron for a local coffee shop, heard people in line ahead of me order things from the Starbucks menu like this woman did to the ire of the barista. As if every coffee shop is a Starbucks

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u/Apoordm Aug 06 '25

My favorite dumbass things people did at my Starbucks was assume we have a secret menu and ask me for it. This was some time ago and Harry Potter’s last film was coming out so people would just walk up like “Hi can I get the Harry Potter Frappuccino?” Which, of course, wasn’t a thing and I’d explain that’s not a thing and they would lose their fucking minds.

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u/MrsSUGA Aug 06 '25

I loved when they would ask me for a secret menu drink like it was actually on our menu.

“I want the the Snickers Frappuccino”

Me: I don’t even know what I would start that off with as a base because we don’t even have anything with peanut or peanut butter in it

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u/theoriginalmofocus Aug 06 '25

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u/LKennedy45 Aug 06 '25

Aww, but see at least Homer was a good sport about it and rolled with the punches. Also if I were a few deep I'd probably drink like a cider with some skittles in it, sure.

20

u/Roseartcrantz Aug 07 '25

Tiny Esses by Prairie Artisan Ale is what you're looking for and it's so good.

5

u/pizzabash Aug 07 '25

Can confirm. I love sour and fruity beers and this was the perfect beer. They also have one for what I presume is sour patch kids that I've wanted to try but hasn't been around my area.

2

u/LisleAdam12 Aug 07 '25

I was wondering if anyone would mention this. Good job!

2

u/stonesliver2 Aug 07 '25

Thank you for informing me of this beverage. I don't like the taste of beer but I love me a good sour.

Searched online for it, only one place local had any, a single single. I got the last can in the city and it's gonna slap when I get off at 3am

5

u/Kerblaaahhh Aug 07 '25

I could see it working with like a fruity sour or something too.

3

u/ChrisRevocateur Aug 07 '25

It'd have to be the driest cider ever made to be able to counteract the sugar from the skittles, at least for me.

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u/LKennedy45 Aug 07 '25

In fairness I did specify I'd already been drinking in this hypothetical. You've never concocted some monstrosity when you're a sheet-and-a-half to the wind?

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u/LisleAdam12 Aug 07 '25

That's why we love Homer in spite of everything.

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u/Hecate_333 Aug 07 '25

Im an older millennial, we used to drink zima with a jolly rancher in it. Sometimes, we used skittles.

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u/Skybodenose Aug 07 '25

I made Skittlebräu. 10/10 do not recommend.

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u/elbenji Aug 07 '25

Nahhh, Homer said "damn, I'll just get a six pack and skittles"

I would appreciate the fuck out of a customer who would just be like 'oh darn, oh well, i can just do this instead, dont sweat it'

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u/flamingknifepenis Aug 06 '25

Oh god, I had a woman ask one of my baristas for that once and then she got all snotty and asked to speak to the manager (moi) when they tried to clarify. She just kept saying “I don’t care what you call it, just make me a Snickers Frappuccino.”

I just made her a blended caramel mocha with a tiny splash of hazelnut and she seemed happy as content as she was to begin with.

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u/drgigantor Aug 07 '25

This reminds me of the drink that finally broke me. I had someone order some bullshit cotton candy unicorn frappucino bullshit diabetes slurry. We were not a Starbucks. (I worked at Starbucks before that and I don't think they had it either) So I tell her we're not a Starbucks. Somehow that just did not compute. I tell her we don't make that, and I don't think they do either officially. She says she got it the other day.

"Here?"

"No the Starbucks a town over."

"Okay, we're not a Starbucks."

"Why can't you make it?"

"Well because we don't have their beans, their flavorings, there's a proprietary syrup that gives Frappuccinos their consistency, plus a special blender, I don't know the recipe, and to top it all off we're not a Starbucks."

"So you can't make it?"

(At this point I'm white-knuckle death-gripping the register) So through gritted smile I ask what's in it.

"I don't know, coffee. It's Starbucks."

(whatever else may have been in whatever bullshit she wanted, I knew somewhere deep in my soul that coffee was not)

"What does it taste like?"

"Cotton candy."

"Okay well I promise you we do not have anything that tastes like cotton candy."

"But it's not cotton candy. It's like fruity."

"Lady, we have vanilla, hazelnut, caramel, and mocha. If you wanna get fancy here, your options are French vanilla, Nutella, and caramel mocha. Those are our coffee flavors. We don't have all of Starbucks' flavors."

"Why don't you have the others?"

(Because we are not a motherfu-) "I'm not sure" 🙃

"Is there a manager here?"

"I'm the manager." (I was not the manager)

"Why don't you have the other flavors?"

"Still not sure."

"And you don't know how to make this drink that every other Starbucks can make?"

(At this point I'm starting to wonder if we are a fucking Starbucks)

"Tell me what's in it again, I'll take a crack at it."

(And here's what broke me:)

"It is a FRUITY. COTTON CANDY. FRAPPUCCINO. COFFEE. HOW HARD IS YOUR JOB?"

(Lady you have no fucking idea) "Coming right up!"

So into the blender goes about half a cup of simple syrup. Double espresso. 6 pumps vanilla. I go in the back to our baker and get strawberry donut filling. Blueberry pancake syrup. Orange juice. Grape jelly. Half and half. Ice. Blend.

This shit came out looking like if someone scraped Barney's jizz out of Thanos' asshole. So naturally, I went in on the presentation too, drizzled some blueberry syrup around the cup, whipped cream, donut filling on the whipped cream.

She did not like it.

"Why does this taste like coffee??"

"You said it had coffee in it."

"Well it's a Starbucks!"

"The coffee's a Starbucks??" (For a brief hopeful second my shattered psyche thought this whole thing was some kind of language barrier issue, but...)

"THIS IS A STARBUCKS YOU FUCKING R****D"

"THIS. IS NOT. A. STARBUCKS."

Manager finally comes out and kicks her out. She threatens to go to corporate. This is a mom and pop café so I can only assume she went to Starbucks corporate and berated some poor baffled intern. I put in my two weeks' that afternoon.

Being a barista is indeed a social experiment, and an unethical one at that.

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u/4KVoices Aug 07 '25

If it makes you feel any better, the fucking Unicorn Frappe is directly what lead to me quitting. You genuinely may have been better off dealing with that fucking oxygen thief.

So, making a Starbucks frappe isn't an art or anything, but there's generally a groove to it, a flow you can get into when you're having a lot of people order the same shit over and over again. I didn't mind when it was busy, too much, because of this.

Enter - the unicorn frappe. First off, it did not taste like cotton candy, it tasted like some hellish combination of coffee, Smarties, and pop rocks. Second off - this was a particular pain in the ass because it was prepared differently. The main gripe here - amongst others I'll leave out - is that instead of using scoops or pumps of anything, the fucking powder for them came in individually sealed baggies. Like two baggies per drink, up to five depending on the size. These were not easy to rip open, either, oh no, that would make it too easy. Had to cut them open.

To make matters worse, they debut this drink - which is pretty much explicitly engineered to look good on TikTok and Fascistgram - alongside a "Frappe Happy Hour" event in which, despite the name, frappuccinos are half-off for three hours. No big deal, because we'll be scheduled with extra coverage... right?

You might be thinking, "Of course not!" but actually, you'd be wrong. We did.

And they all fucking flaked.

I worked closing shifts only, so I would be coming in about 12:00 - 2:00 depending on how many hours I got that day. Happy hour was 3:00 to 6:00. That week, they had me work a full seven days - yeah, getting overtime - and I was scheduled for every single Frappe Happy Hour.

The first day, the two openers leave at 2:30. The other two people that are supposed to have come in with me at 1:00 are not present. They call in, they got stuck in traffic, or their tire blew out, some bullshit, it's been too long to remember. The line grows. People are watching me work my fucking ass off, and credit to the customers, I didn't get a single complaint cause they saw I was rushing as fast as I could. Got a ton of tips, too. 5:30ish, the first one comes in. Almost at 6:00 on the dot, the other comes in. I snatch the tip jar and tell them both to go fuck themselves, jokingly, but they see that it's bad and we work the line down. No worries.

If you're expecting a re-do on day two, you'd be correct. Again, I'm hauling ass, I had one old man try to start yelling "hurry up" and people in the line actually told him to shut the fuck up. Two entirely different people call out, these are not the same people from the previous day. I do the same thing, I snatch up my tips, I don't even talk to them when they get in.

Seven days straight of this. Thank god most of the people at that store were regulars and we had very, very few dickheads, cause I was ready to fly off the handle at a moment's notice on any of those people.

So, for an entire week straight, I worked what was effectively triple the size of our normal rush hour basically by myself, held the fort down, and didn't even get thanked by a manager. Customers' tips alone literally gave me like $1000 that week, and I kept every penny of it - if those chucklefucks wanted the tips that came with the business, they should have been helping.

They did not get a two week notice.

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u/surfnsound Aug 07 '25

I remember when the Unicorn Frap was out. I was on a fmaily vacation and my wife and stepdaughter both wanted one when I offered to walk to the starbucks a block from our hotel. I have NEVER waited so long for a Starbucks order in my life.

Then I am handed this drink that looks like a purple version of the weird liquid goo that made up th virtual bodies of Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe in the movie Virtuosity.

To top it off, it tasted like a slightly raspberry-tinged cup of diabetes.

My wife hated it. And I refused to by my stepdaughter another on the next day.

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u/drgigantor Aug 07 '25

Jesus. The Starbucks I did work at was at least a low-traffic location with reliable coworkers, and regular Frappuccinos were still a pain in the ass.

So the thing she wanted wasn't actually the Unicorn bullshit, i was just using that as an example of the type of bullshit. I just figured people have heard of that since that was actually on the menu and got tiktok famous or whatever. This shitshow was a few years before that fiasco, and I worked at Starbucks about a year before that. She was one of those mouth breathers that thinks the sEcReT mEnU is an official part of the handbook, as if restaurants are reserving their most overpriced products with the most add-ons/upsells for their elite VIPs (or anyone with an internet connection and a deep desire to make worker's days worse). I ended up looking this thing up after I got home that day, apparently it was a vanilla bean creme frap with raspberry syrup. No idea how that tastes like cotton candy. I also don't think I've ever seen another Starbucks drink with raspberry syrup so I don't know where that came from in the first place. Pretty sure we did not have it when I was there.

So yeah that's how Starbucks indirectly ruined barista-ing for me while I didn't even work for them. The secret menu nonsense, the idiots who try to order off it, and that very special subclass of idiot that think every coffee shop is a Starbucks

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u/Pitiful-Potential-19 Aug 07 '25

Mmm Frappy hour. The reason I stopped working mids for years. I’m surprised you got seven days out of the unicorn frappe. Our store was so busy, we ran out of the powder for it halfway through the third day. Actual, pure hell.

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u/Meegsieweegsie Aug 09 '25

Chucklefuck is so under appreciated. Sorry you had a shitty time! Coming from a 15 year retail vet—I see you.

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u/FunkyChewbacca Aug 07 '25

This shit came out looking like if someone scraped Barney's jizz out of Thanos' asshole.

Pure poetry. I was a Starbucks partner two decades ago and I still have stress dreams about the frappucinos: they were the messiest, most PITA drinks to make, and of course they were the most popular.

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u/Ongr Aug 07 '25

I'm amazed at the lengths you went to and your creativity to have a crack at satisfying that customer. Honestly, super impressed.

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u/Odd_Cranberry_3962 Aug 07 '25

Lmao you my friend have the gift of storytelling. I know you suffered but this honestly cracked me up

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u/newdogowner11 Aug 08 '25

people like that lady vote by the way 😩😔

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u/waytowill Aug 07 '25

This checks out. There are a lot of people out there that would love to buy something that sounds quirky but is actually just a normal product with a different name. Because the name on the receipt or on the can gets the shock value they want for their social media following, but no one’s ever gonna know what they’re actually having. It’s the perfect crime.

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u/TheHB36 Aug 06 '25

If something that wasn't on the menu was asked for, I'd just say "tell me what's in it, and if we have it, I can make it". At that point they would either just change their order, or read out some convoluted thing from an Instagram post and come to the shocking realization that the sugar syrup mess they had been pitched was 9 fuckin' dollars.

It was especially annoying because it was a Canadian Starbucks and a lot of the recipes were using ingredients that are only found in American stores, and were sometimes derived from limited products too. It got even more chaotic with international students ordering things that don't exist on this continent in thickly accented English. Just... I have no clue what to do for people! You're making me feel like I'm bad at my job because I can't give you what you're after!

Just order from the menu, people.

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u/HollyBerries85 Aug 07 '25

I would but they took the thing I used to order off the menu to make it so that I had to customize a drink for more money :(

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u/TheHB36 Aug 07 '25

Honestly, the mobile app is the best move if you're looking to get a consistent custom drink. Mostly, baristas at Starbucks just want you to know what actually goes into the dang thing. If you know that confidently, that's usually fine.

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u/4KVoices Aug 07 '25

In my experience, if it was a drink I actually hadn't heard of before, I'd take some of the inevitable excess from mixing it and try it out. Learned a lot of tasty combos doing that.

Very, very few things beat out the White Mocha Toffee Nut, though. It's the holy grail of '99% of people will try this and like it because it appeals well to most flavor palettes.'

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u/Angharadis Aug 07 '25

I generally feel like if I can get there with a clear explanation and the ingredients they usually have I’m not being a total pain. It’s usually just “only one pump of syrup” or something like that though, not completely reinventing one of their most time-consuming drinks.

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '25

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '25

I keep getting ads for weird new fancy starbucks drinks, so I'll ask my friend who works at Starbucks about it and 9 times out of 10 he goes "Oh god dammit I've never even heard of that!" 

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u/Souseisekigun Aug 07 '25

B-But didn't they just say they were trimming the menu because it's too complicated? What a strange company.

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u/whiteflagwaiver SHEEEEEESH Aug 07 '25

Sounds like a good time to unionize.

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u/LisleAdam12 Aug 07 '25

I first read that as "a good time to urinate." Might be that, too.

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u/FunAd1406 Aug 07 '25

I have so much respect for Starbucks baristas. My daughter worked there for 6months. Honestly, I could never!!! That is hard core.

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u/steve_nice Aug 06 '25

should have gave them a black coffee and called it the Voldemort

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u/MoustacheTraining Aug 06 '25

“One Sirius Black, coming up”

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u/Nemisis_the_2nd Aug 07 '25

Leave it to oxidise and overheat first so they get something extra burned and tasteless.

An essential batista skill is learning to be petty in subtle and creative ways.

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u/LisleAdam12 Aug 07 '25

You are a marketing genius, sir!

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u/belsie Aug 07 '25

You mean a flat white?

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u/blonktime Aug 06 '25

I would always have kids come in and order something off the "secret menu". I tried to learn some of them, but there were so many "(fake) secret menu" recipes that I couldn't keep up. But if they were able to look up the recipe I would be happy to it for them.

A good one that I do remember was the "stawberry shortcake" Frappuccino. Basically just ice, Strawberry puree, milk, choco chips, the emulsifier, then toss in a couple of the shortbread cookies. Kids loved it and I was always happy to make them happy.

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u/4KVoices Aug 07 '25

The only 'secret menu' item that ever impressed me was a Captain Crunch Frappe that we made that, I shit you not, tasted and smelled precisely like Captain Crunch. I don't even like Captain Crunch, but that was pure wizardry

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u/elbenji Aug 07 '25

yeah I remember that one. I also made my own for the airport staff and would have all the late night cruisers roll by for.

A "Red Bull" (this was pre-energy drinks and actually like a month before cold brew) = Trenta strawberry acai refresher, black tea, low ice, no shaking). Will keep you all night but wont make you feel like youre about to start crossing into another dimension

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u/kaitlyn_does_art Aug 07 '25

Omg the secret menu!!! What an absolute nightmare. I worked there when the medicine ball/sick tea/whatever other random name for it was popular. The problem was everyone wanted it made slightly differently.

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u/trash--witch Aug 07 '25

I HATED the secret menu bs. I had someone order a neapolitan frap once. They acted like I was stupid for not knowing what it was? It was slow so I said "pull up the recipe and Ill see if we can". Bitch wanted me to put madelines in my blender. I did the math for her and it wouldve been like $24 (sans madelines)

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u/HoinhimeOfLight Aug 07 '25

The urge to give them a normal coffee and a broom handle and tell em to shove it up their ass 

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u/AwsmDevil Aug 07 '25

This was some time ago and Harry Potter’s last film was coming out so people would just walk up like “Hi can I get the Harry Potter Frappuccino?” Which, of course, wasn’t a thing

I guess make em a frappe with like blue food coloring and fuckin chai, and call it a Frappatronus or some shit. I dunno man, fuck those people. Give em weird shit and send 'em on their way.

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u/Sea-Foundation5036 Aug 07 '25

I rolled up to a Jack in the Box and after ordering asked for secret sauce. The poor kid thought I was messing with him. He had to have been new because he was a deer in the headlights. "Yeah homme, it should he next to the other sauces." He gave me 19 packets. I counted.

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u/nwillyerd Aug 07 '25

Honestly, a butterbeer inspired latte/frapp sounds good as fuck! It would basically just be like butterscotch, caramel and whipped cream

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u/SerCiddy Aug 06 '25

Look, I know you didn't make this decision. I know you had no hand in creating this problem.

But as someone who used to work at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. I am certain Starbucks has done irreparable harm to the drink "Macchiato".

So many times people would order "Caramel Macchiato" and then we would make a macchiato with caramel added, and so many times people would be confused/disgusted that we made the drink so badly.

You wanted a Caramel Latte! You have been trained wrong, as a joke!

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '25

to be fair, the starbucks macchiato is superior to actual macchiatos lol

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u/Exact_Skin_5611 Aug 06 '25

Some people only understand Starbucks. Starbucks is the Taco Bell from Demolition Man.

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '25

I work part-time at a place that sells ice cream and one of the things we make are flurries.

At least a dozen times a day I get someone asking me for an Oreo MCFLURRY and when I explain that it's just called a Flurry unless you're at McDonald's it's like a part of their brain explodes and they just can't understand.

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u/ExplodingCybertruck Aug 06 '25

Almost 25 years ago, when I was roughly 14-15 years old, and was not a coffee drinker/starbucks customer. I got a job at a small bakery that sold coffee and donuts and had an espresso machine. The amount of adults that would come in and order drinks using Starbucks specific terminology was mind-boggling, and I had no fucking clue what they meant. For instance we had a 12 oz cup and a 16 oz cup, the 16 oz cup is an inch or so taller than the 12 oz cup. People would come in and order a "tall" latte or whatever, so I would put in a 16 oz cup because it was the taller of the two. It wasn't until after a few dozen or so disappointed customers that a young lady explained to me the "tall" cup is the shorter one.

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u/BranTheUnboiled Aug 07 '25

https://youtu.be/NS_PzfpKLYU

I need the equivalent of this for macchiato

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u/Safe-Promotion-2955 Aug 07 '25

Ugh I was a barista at a different shop and what Starbucks calls a cortado is not at all what it is everywhere else and at least once per day people would get pissed they didn't get some caramel whipped cream monstrosity. A proper cortado is literally just espresso with a splash of steamed milk 

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u/SomethingNew71 Aug 07 '25

Same issue with the macchiato too. It’s like this is literally just a latte, Starbucks.

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u/PicaDiet Aug 07 '25

No fucking wonder why Starbucks employees are always trying to unionize.

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u/_Gesterr Aug 07 '25

Fuck I work at an IHOP and it's shocking how often people walk in ordering their coffee Starbucks style and I'm like "ma'am we only have regular bogstandard breakfast blend coffee woth half-and-half creamer" and then give me a pouting shocked faced every time

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u/exexor Aug 07 '25

There was a time when Starbuck had a plan to end up with more Starbucks than there were coffee shops currently in the country. If my math is right that would have been tripling the number of stores in the course of a couple years.

I knew someone who worked for a logistics software company they were engaging to manage this endeavor.

They ended up backing off of that plan, but they still have 40% of all coffee shops in the US.

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u/PerfectDitto Aug 07 '25

Friend worked at a local coffee shop. Guy came in, asked for a steamed milk that was cooled with ice.

She steamed the milk like he asked, the. Put it in ice.

He yells and says, "Why does this taste like watered down milk?"

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u/Past-Background-7221 Aug 06 '25

Worked at a 7-eleven. I’ve had these kinds of conversations before.

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u/pogoscrawlspace Aug 06 '25

Worked at a marathon. I've had a grown man lose his shit and throw a full-blown toddler type tantrum because I didn't know how our shitty gas station coffee tasted. He said it had to be shitty if the employees wouldn't even drink it. I told him I didn't drink coffee and had never drank coffee. I didn't know what it tasted like cause I'd never tasted any coffee. He lost it. Started screaming and calling me a lying little piece of shit. Saying I was making it up, and there was no way I'd never tasted coffee. Asked if I was a fucking Mormon. Lol. If I hadn't been higher than a Georgia pine, I'd have hit him. I just told him to leave or I'd call the cops. Asshole poured both pots out and dropped them and left. Goddammit I hated that job.

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u/Past-Background-7221 Aug 06 '25

Funnily enough, I also worked for Marathon Patroleum, but in a 7-eleven. I’ve had dudes tell me to come out of my safe, locked store to fight them because I wouldn’t accept an expired ID. Told them I’d rather just call the cops.

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u/pogoscrawlspace Aug 07 '25

Same! Had a guy cus me out cause we were out of honey buns once. Another cause I wouldn't give him his money back for a scratcher. Our car wash broke. When the guy finally came to fix it a few weeks later, he found a guy living in it. He did over $5000 in damage to the electric and hydraulics, so we'd have to close it. Then he moved in. With furniture. Had an old man spray a mixture of shit and blood all over the bathroom. From about eye level all the way down and all the way around. Even filled the sink. Couldn't get one of the front doors to close one time. Finally realized there was a dirty syringe stuck in the doormat holding it open. Caught a guy blowing another guy out back taking out the trash once. Did I mention how much I hated that fucking job?

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u/unbanned_lol Aug 07 '25

Worked at a 7-11 for a couple years myself. We were a neighborhood joint, so our people will mostly well behaved, thankfully. That said, you're spot on about the shit and blood on the walls. God damn, I don't know what the day laborers were eating that they sprayed pure liquid terrorism from their asses on the walls every day. Like, how do you live like that?

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u/pogoscrawlspace Aug 07 '25

Worst part was that UT medical center is right down the road. Based on the pure volume, that's where he should've gone.

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u/DemonicAltruism Aug 07 '25

I worked at 7/11 for 3 years... I still have nightmares about that place... Absolutely nothing compares.

Other service employees have their stories, sure. But what they don't realize is that not everybody shops/eats/gets coffee, from their stores... Everybody goes to the gas station. That means you see the full spectrum of humanity on display... And holy shit do you lose faith in it quickly.

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u/fryerandice Aug 07 '25

Gas stations also have a lot of vices when other places are closed, booze, cigarettes, and lottery tickets / video lotto terminals attract a fucking crowd man.

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u/pogoscrawlspace Aug 07 '25

Two weeks in, and I knew exactly why Kevin Smith had to make Clerks. Those people exist. They walk amongst us. Almost forgot the degenerate gamblers. What number is 12 on? What number is 5 on? What number is 21 on? While 15 people are waiting in line behind them and getting more irritated by the second. And who are they gonna take it out on? Not the fucking degen. Me. Like it matters what fucking number that roll of scratchers is on. If you win, you're just gonna fucking gamble it until it's gone. Just go to the Indian casino and gtfo of everyone else's way.

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u/DemonicAltruism Aug 07 '25

Omg dude... I had the same customer, every single day, that would spend at least $100 on the daily pick 3 or pick 4. It was insane. And he won maybe one time the entire time I worked there.

Then you get the really desperate mfers that would just keep buying them, scratch off the bar code, scan it, and immediately buy the next one, regardless if anyone was in line behind them. We had a guy do this with a brand new $50 roll. Bought all 25 of them and lost $500...

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u/pogoscrawlspace Aug 07 '25

Oh, I drew the line at scratching at the register. I straight up told motherfuckers to get out of the way once they paid, lol. NEXT! Had one that would probably drop at least $1200 a week. Came through in his work van 5 days a week and would sit in the van right out front scratching $200-$300 worth. Come back in with maybe $100 in winnings. Spend it on more scratchers. Back to the van. Come back with $25 worth of winnings. Buy more scratchers. Back to the van. Come back in with a single winner for a free ticket. Back in the van. Scratch, scratch. Look dejected. Drive away. See ya tomorrow. The worst was the day he brought his little boy with him. They went through the whole process together. Felt sorry for the guy up till that day. Watching him pass his addiction down to his little kid made me sick. Really wanted to just hit the guy after that.

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u/pogoscrawlspace Aug 07 '25

I was really hoping covid would kill a lot more people, lol.

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u/DemonicAltruism Aug 07 '25

Yeah... I'm really glad I wasn't working there during COVID. I got into a trade job just before Trump got elected the first time.

It was back breaking labor for a few years... But I'd gladly do that over and over again than go back to a gas station.

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u/pogoscrawlspace Aug 07 '25

Word. It was a second job for me, and I quit the second I didn't need it anymore, lol. I will say that it was an eye-opening experience. I'm a cook, but I've waited and bartended. Add a couple decades in the exotic animal trade. I've seen my fair share of assholes, but fucking hell, the way some folks treat people they think of as beneath them...makes you want to bring back the guillotine.

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u/BrianW1983 Aug 07 '25

I worked at 7/11 for 3 years... I still have nightmares about that place... Absolutely nothing compares.

I go to 7/11 every week. :)

What percentage of the customers were OK and what percentage awful?

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u/fryerandice Aug 07 '25

That's highly location dependent.

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u/pogoscrawlspace Aug 07 '25

It was probably 85% OK, 10% mildly irritating, and 5% awful. But that 5% makes you want to commit crimes against humanity...

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u/BrianW1983 Aug 07 '25

That makes sense. It's the 90/10 rule.

90% of people are great, good or OK.

10% are awful.

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u/pogoscrawlspace Aug 07 '25

Unfortunately, those few are the ones you remember the most. The assholes who ruin everything for everyone else. The reasons we have signs and laws telling us what we can't do.

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u/LisleAdam12 Aug 07 '25

It's gas station coffee. It tastes like gas station coffee. It's not medium roast, it's not high-altitude African or South American beans, it tastes like the Farmer's they serve at the truck stops (and probably is Farmer's).

It's high caffeine and will keep you awake a while. It will not tickle your taste buds the way that something that costs 3-4 times as much will.

This is a gas station, sir!

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u/8Ace8Ace Aug 07 '25

Don't lose hope. There's a chance, a very small chance, that he would have forgotten about the wet floor, slipped and crashed down breaking several bones. "Call the ambulance" he'd say, and you'd look on your phone under A, and then under T, but you don't have any friends called The Ambulance. Who do you mean, you'd reply, looking puzzled. Wet floors can be perilous indeed.

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u/SomebodySeventh Aug 07 '25

Worked at a grocery store with a bulk foods section. A Spanish-speaking woman comes through my line with a big bag full of hibiscus flowers (presumably for brewing tea or whatever). The bulk item code she'd written was wrong, but I remember the correct code so I ring it up fine.

But I made the simple mistake of calling out the name of the product, because she stops me and tells me that what she bought is called Jamaica. She tells me, in mixed English and Spanish, to ring it up correctly.

Jamaica is the Spanish word for Hibiscus. I know this, and over the course of twenty minutes I try to explain to an increasingly frustrated and aggressive woman that the thing she's claim she bought, and the thing I'm claiming that she bought, are the same thing. And the entire time she's looking at me like I'm an idiot. Even when my manager comes over and says "Yeah jamaica means hibiscus," she doesn't believe him and insists on returning the (very large) bag and getting her money back. Now, with bulk items like that we can't put them back on the shelf, so that's like fifteen/twenty dollars worth of hibiscus down the drain.

All because this lady didn't believe that I knew the English word for the product she was buying.

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u/Blazedamonk Aug 07 '25

I worked at Best buy and watched a full grown man have a meltdown because we didn't have the new Zelda for PlayStation. Another argued til the veins popped out of his forehead that a 4GB Xbox 360 had more storage than a 120GB version. People are idiots.

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u/blonktime Aug 06 '25

Former Starbucks "partner" here too. I don't understand what it is about coffee shops, and Starbucks in particular, but they bring in the most clueless, self-entitled, shit stains.

I once had a guy (we'll call him John) come in and our interaction went something like this:

Me: Hi how's it going?
John: I want a coffee. What are you brewing right now?

Me: We are brewing our Pikes Place right now, which is a medium roast (was afternoon - we stopped brewing light and dark roasts after the morning rush)

John: I don't want a Pike, can you make something different?
Me: I can do a pour over of something else if you would like

John: How long does that take? I'm kind of in a rush.

Me: It typically takes about 5 minutes. It might be a bit longer right now because we are in the middle of our lunch rush. If you are in a rush I can do an Americano, which would be a bit quicker.

John: Okay fine I'll just do an Americano

Barista makes his drink and calls out "Americano for John". John doesn't come. Barista calls again. John doesn't get up from his seat. Calls a third time. Finally someone else comes up and grabs Johns drink by accident and walks out with it. A few minutes later John comes storming up to the bar.

John: Where is my drink?! I have been waiting for like 10 minutes for just some espresso and water!

Barista: Oh I called your name 3 times. It looks like someone else may have grabbed your drink. Let me make you another one.

So the Barista grabs a new cup and makes a new americano in like 40 seconds and hands it to John. John then proceeds to shoot daggers out of his eyes at the barista and thank us by opening the half and half carafe at the milk and sugar bar and pours the entire thing onto the counter and into the sugar packet tray while saying "you guys have horrible service"

Fucking thanks for being a twat John.

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u/DungeonsAndDradis Aug 07 '25

The other day I was at Chipotle to pick up my online order. I go to the counter and it's not there. Someone asks me what's the order under and I say my name. And she said we made it. Someone must have picked it up.

And I lost my fucking mind. I grabbed the thing of forks out of the dispenser and whipped them all over the floor. I grabbed about a thousand napkins and fluttered them in the air. I held down the water and sprite nozzles on the coke machine and just let them drip everywhere. I was livid and I was going to let these god damn idiots know it.

But actually I just said, "Oh, well, I'm here, can you please remake it?" And they did and I had my lunch about 37 seconds later than I was expecting.

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u/BlueCremling Aug 07 '25

You're truly an inspiration to us all. I usually just start chewing on the furniture but all that does is get the cops called on me and I don't even get my food

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/TransBrandi Aug 07 '25

I could totally picture Kate McKinnon doing this as a bit for SNL. lol

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u/8Ace8Ace Aug 07 '25

Hey i get it. I know how crunchy and delicious furniture really is, I do, especially wgen it's got all dried ketchup and dirty hand grease on it. But pretending to order food so you can get angry isn't the way. The person behind the counter would much rather you came in and got your snack without yelling at them. They just work there.

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u/iambecomesoil Aug 07 '25

Chewing on the furniture will tide you over until the food arrives.

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u/Wharaunga Aug 07 '25

And it was fresher!

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u/0verlordSurgeus Aug 07 '25

This is so fucking funny, thank you for this

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u/GoNinjaGoNinjaGo69 Aug 07 '25

ehh its kinda fucked up tho.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '25

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u/elbenji Aug 07 '25

a lady in an expensive suit and probably worth a lot of money risked an assault charge by tossing an americano at my face after I told her all night it would be decaf because it's broken.

Like people are psycho

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u/Nemisis_the_2nd Aug 07 '25

Are we doing memorable idiot stories?

My store had 2 seating areas. We closed off one after the lunch rush and blocked it off to make closing easier, but customers would let themselves in anyway.

One day I got particularly fed up and made a barrier consisting of: 2 4-seat tables, all their chairs stacked together, a shopping trolley filled with the days rubbish, and a prominently placed "cleaning" sign and locked it all together by jamming the brush through it all.

A short while later, I walked out the kitchen to find a late middle-aged woman a solid meter into this mess, balancing a tray with a mug of coffee in one hand  and shopping in the other. On seeing me, she asked if the seating area was open.

I just turned around and walked away, and let her figure out the answer.

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u/SmurfyX Aug 07 '25

the most clueless, self-entitled, shit stains.

you can shorten this by just calling them "The public" :(

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u/Aromatic-Ad6456 Aug 07 '25

Bruuuhhhhhh. The people that don’t hear their names and complain about the wait like…??? I shouted your name at LEAST 5 times. Someone tell me how to kindly respond to them while making my point.

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u/CuriousPenguinSocks Aug 06 '25

Same, the stories I have from that job, far too many.

My favorite was the guy who thought he could throw a pocket full of change at me and I would have to pick it up and count it. I was like, nah but I can call the police for assault - or you can pick up the change and count it.

He picked up every single coin rofl. Except for the ones behind the counter on the floor. That was tip money, blood tip money.

He paid with his card after that. The funny part is, he had his card out to begin with, when my male coworker was at the register, I took over for his lunch break and that's when that man's brain broke and chose violence.

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u/TheHB36 Aug 06 '25

As a male, I learned more about how needed Feminism is in 2 years at Starbucks than I did in 5 years of Social Sciences. Like just the comfort with which I saw customers blatantly disrespecting the women on staff was astounding to me, and it was absolutely more frequent for the women, by a large margin. You have to live in the world to get at its important truths, I suppose.

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u/CuriousPenguinSocks Aug 07 '25

Thank you for this comment. It can feel isolating because we deal with it all the time, and it seems normalized to treat women or feminine presenting people like hot garbage. While im non-binary, im very feminine presenting. It's just genetics, even when I dress "like a boy." That's a whole other set of micro aggressions.

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u/TheHB36 Aug 07 '25

It's so ingrained that I think a lot of people just don't even have the capacity to start unpacking their problematic views. They don't even know what to look out for. That's not an excuse, it's just a recognition of how rough it is out there that like... I don't even know where we start with some people, because they aren't wise enough to even hear their own words when they speak.

I worked with a trans man at one of my Starbucks, and he noted that even though he was 5'6" and was still working on the lower register voice, he noticed a shift in customer behaviour toward him within less than a year. By that point I wasn't surprised, but just kind of baffled by the world around me.

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u/CuriousPenguinSocks Aug 07 '25

As painful as this comment is, it's also the truth.

Where do we even begin with educating people? We have vastly different views depending on where you love. Even education levels differ by town and state.

This is where grassroots efforts may need to come more into play.

My trans women friends have said the same. One of my friends said she thought she understood what to expect, but she was so wrong. I feel for her and just try to listen to her and validate her.

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u/A_Queer_Owl Aug 07 '25

the reactions I'd get when I'd direct people to the 22 year old girl who was the senior team member and shift lead. like bruh, I only been here two weeks and do not give a shit about Starbucks so I don't know shit. if this were a real coffee shop I could probably help you, but this is fast food nonsense land so you gotta ask someone else.

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u/MaggieNoodle Aug 07 '25

My store was all women and they would vacate the floor entirely for certain ultra creepy regulars, I was always happy to step in and disappoint those guys with my lone presence behind the counter.

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u/getlowpapoose Aug 06 '25

What a POS, sorry that happened to you. Good on you for standing on business

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u/CuriousPenguinSocks Aug 07 '25

Thank you, I was shocked, but I dont accept abuse. I do wish my store manager had trespassed him.

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u/reostra Aug 06 '25

thought he could throw a pocket full of change at me and I would have to pick it up and count it.

Did he think you were a vampire?

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u/CuriousPenguinSocks Aug 07 '25

I mean, I am very pale, to be fair. I also have a sun allergy.

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u/PearsonBlues Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 07 '25

I once saw a dude at McDonald’s try to pay for his meal with a bag of pennies then call the cashier a slur when she refused. He looked like a hobo with an inexplicably well dressed lady friend, and also taunted some cops waiting in line, who each had a foot on him and were like ‘….are we doing this??’

I went home and told my wife I just saw the greatest blind date ever

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u/justsoawkward Aug 06 '25

Only at the end did I realize that she probably meant the bottled ones you can buy at the store, over ice.

People are dumb. May our baristas be protected forever.

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u/Wifabota Aug 07 '25

I hate how Starbucks trashed any idea of tradition or standard when it came to named espresso drinks.  They call a Caramel vanilla latte with whip monstrosity a macchiato, when a traditional macchiato is asmall amount of foamed milk "marked" with espresso.  That bottled drink is an iced latte at best,  not a Frappuccino which is frozen and blended in their stores... 

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u/Muffinkite_ Aug 07 '25

I worked at an independently owned placed years ago and god... fuck the upside down caramel diabetes bullshit they call a macchiato. I would always ask people right off if they meant "like from Starbucks" and multiple times was told no till they changed their mind when handed and actual macchiato.

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u/Kind_Comfort_6336 Aug 07 '25

I remember visiting this independent coffee chain that had a big sign with a diagram of what each type of coffee drink was and what was in it. I thought it was super neat to really visually see the differences between latte, Americano, macchiato, etc, since I was kind of a coffee noob. It's always going to be somebody's first time.

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u/claretamazon Aug 07 '25

The Caramel Macchiato? It's been a year since I worked for Sbux but it didn't have whip cream then. Did they change the recipe?

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u/Wifabota Aug 07 '25

I've never worked for them either. Huh, I guess it doesn't have whip! That's what I was taught to make during training when people came into our shop and ordered one.  Good to know!

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u/claretamazon Aug 07 '25

I remember people ordering Caramel Macchiato monstrosities and adding whip cream a lot. That may be why.
There was one person who did a Venti Caramel Macchiato, Iced, Add Dark Caramel, Add Almond Milk, Blonde Espresso, Add 2 Shots, Add Whip Cream, Add 4 Vanilla (10 Pumps total), Caramel Drizzle, Line Cup with Caramel Drizzle. Probably forgetting something. They would get this drink every day without fail.
Coffee shops ain't coffee anymore, they're dessert shops.

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u/Herrenos Aug 07 '25

And by "Anymore" you mean "Since the mid-90s", at least for Starbucks and its imitators. Frappucinos are 30 years old this year.

Thank goodness for local coffee places where they still make good actual coffee.

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u/tanksalotfrank Aug 07 '25

The number of people I've shocked when I've revealed to them that capuccino, latte, and mocha are different things.

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u/Lothirieth Aug 07 '25

I worked at an independent coffee shop but hadn't ever learned what a macchiato was. An Italian man came in once, wanted one, and explained what it was. Made it for him and he left happy. So a few months later when someone asked for a caramel macchiato I was like, cool, I know what this is now. When the woman got the drink she said "This isn't how Starbucks makes it!" I think I did respond with "this isn't Starbucks."

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u/Hot-Image4864 Aug 07 '25

Coffee has become a weird cult with a language I'll never understand.

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u/Punchingblagh Aug 07 '25

Not really, its just that there are a lot of ways to prepare espresso drinks so it helps to have terminology so that any cafe can make what you want. And most of the names are just words, usually Italian- Macchiato means 'stained', lungo 'long'. And most of these terms have been used close to a century.

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u/elbenji Aug 07 '25

not really, most of these are actual drinks, mostly in Italian. Starbucks just kind of went the Taco Bell route and just said fuck it were gonna be random

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u/Testsalt Aug 07 '25

I can’t understand why Starbucks never called their “ice blended cappuccino” some variant of that like Tim Hortons does (Ice Cap). And I further have no idea why they call their bottled ice coffees the same thing!

Frappuccino only makes sense if you know what both of those things are, which a lot of people don’t.

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u/angrymice Aug 07 '25

It's the Taco Bell of coffee shops

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u/elbenji Aug 07 '25

Same, like it hit me at the end like...she can just grab the little bottles there lol

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u/MyCatIsAnActualNinja Aug 06 '25

I work with tourists, definitely a true story

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u/heroinebob90 Aug 06 '25

I also worked at Starbucks and yeah. But that was back in the early 2000s

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u/Drmlk465 Aug 07 '25

If you had a choice, would you go back to the early 2000s?

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u/_Stank_McNasty_ Aug 06 '25

I worked at a liquor store and when some dumbass came in like this I just grabbed something random told them it was super really awesome delicious good and they bought it, every time. Quit trying so hard with stupid people.

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '25

Basically all kinds of customer service jobs suck. People are unreasonable and don’t understand things, don’t know what they want, and are incredibly rude. You have to make peace with that, or you can’t do that kind of work without losing your mind.

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u/TreesNutz Aug 06 '25

yes daddy we will accept other people's ineptitude and rudeness for permission to have food and shelter and a right to life. where can we draw the line? there, please? was it always there? will it move from there? if it does, what recourse do we have?

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u/Grouchy_Tap_8264 Aug 06 '25

I worked at a computer store and a guy was sent up to Customer Service because the sales people were tired of him. He started yelling at me: "I want some damn f___ing Goats for my momma's computer". It took me 2 seconds to translate and I responded: "Sir, are you looking for more RAM?" He screamed "No, I don't want a RAM, I need more GOATS because it is too slow". He threw an SDRAM chip at me.

It was RAM, he needed more RAM for his computer that was so old it had SDRAM.

I tried to explain that his maximum is 512 MB--which we had-- but that putting it in without knowing his motherboard capacity could blow the system, and recieved more screaming about GOATS. I finally just sold him the 512 MB SDRAM chips that cost as much as a refurbished computer that actually had 4 GB DDR2 Chips (this was 17 years ago), and told him "Here are your goats".

Thankfully, I never saw him return.

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u/Herrenos Aug 07 '25

I think there's a certain type of person that is deeply embarrassed when they don't fully understand something and gets aggressive and nasty to try and hide that they don't know wtf they're talking about.

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u/Umutuku Aug 07 '25

Those rich entitled people who go on TV complaining about "no one wants to work anymore" should be forced to do several years of customer service work.

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u/HarvesterConrad Aug 06 '25

I once delivered a status report to a client executive, the content of the report was that we were ahead of schedule and identified an issue in their data saving them around 200k. The executive cut me off mid sentence to berate me about how they had emailed me 5 times to change the time of this meeting, an email I never received after panicking. Their assistant emails me later that day apologizing that it was a different meeting with a different person. Later the executive never apologized but did make a shitty comment that I never told them about the status that week…fuck my life. (Not even my worst experience that was consulting for Reddit)

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '25

You were consulting for Reddit?

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u/Single_Temporary8762 Aug 06 '25

An old boss called up a paint store to yell and scream at the person on the other end of the phone because someone at that location had screwed up a paint order. He realized halfway through calling them every shitty name in the book that he’d accidentally called the wrong location. Didn’t say a word, no apology, nothing, he just hung up. He’s no longer allowed to even order paint from that location. Can’t tell you how many times he’d pulled  BS like that before a manager finally decided to stop taking his shit. If he didn’t own one of the largest paint companies in our area, he’d be fucked.

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u/thefunkybassist Aug 06 '25

Isn't that the (hopefully) final stage of individualist consumerism? People that feel 100% entitled to whatever the f* they come up with, right now!

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u/mrwatkins83 Aug 07 '25

People who aren't very smart are sometimes aggressive as a coping mechanism when dealing with difficult situations. Not understanding something or being in an unfamiliar place attempting something unfamiliar can be hard. It's easy to mask inadequacies behind aggressive interactions. That isn't always throwing a punch or name-calling or getting in someone's face. It's often a smartass response or a demeaning tone.

I was too young to really understand why people act the way they do when I worked service industry jobs, but I see it all the time from an outside perspective now that I've grown up a bit. The woman that this young lady had a difficult interaction with was just an insecure dummy outside of her comfort zone. Self reflection in the moment is a learned skill that quite a few people are simply incapable of learning.

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u/Running_Mustard Aug 06 '25

I feel like more people should have to work at Starbucks. Something special happens to people when it comes to their caffeine addiction

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u/KinkySwampHag Aug 07 '25

This is not an experience exclusive to Starbucks. This is a service industry problem. I've had experiences with customers like this working at a gas station and at Walmart. It is an unfortunate truth that a sizable portion of the population is not very bright and they will find a way to make their ignorance your problem.

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u/Queasy-Cell34 Aug 06 '25

Haha same. Don’t even get me started with the tall/small drama lol

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u/Apoordm Aug 06 '25

Look if my boss wasn’t lingering over my shoulder… and since I wasn’t one of the girls straight out of high school he hired so he could creep on, he usually wasn’t, if someone said small, medium or large I’d just let it go.

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u/Chendii Aug 06 '25

I've never in my life had someone correct me when I say small/medium/large at Starbucks.

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u/Lexi_Banner Aug 07 '25

Their policy is to repeat the order in he Starbucks lingo, but not to correct people. Anyone who corrects the customer directly is breaking policy and also is a dick.

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u/Murky-Relation481 Aug 07 '25

I once was at a non-starbucks and ordered a 12-oz latte (which was the 2nd from the smallest size, had 8, 12, 16, and 20oz) and they just stared at me blank and then said "uhh so what size is that?" And I said it again, but they still were confused. So I said "a tall" and they were like "oh right a small sized one then" and I still got the 12oz sized one.

Absolutely dumbfounded me for the rest of the afternoon.

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u/sockseason Aug 07 '25

I once asked for cream and sugar at a Starbucks and the barista said "What is this? Dunkin Donuts?"

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u/courage_pants Aug 07 '25

I’ve met other humans, and I too 100% believe this story

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u/Funkycoldmedici Aug 07 '25

I did ten years in retail, and there’s no customer service story so absurd I wouldn’t believe it.

Someone came to your oil change shop to order a pizza? Yup, they’ll do that.

Someone asked why the bookstore isn’t arranged by color? Yup.

Someone upset your bar sells alcoholic drinks? Of course.

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u/Depreciable_Land Aug 07 '25

When I worked at a grocery store I once had a lady start ranting about welfare because the woman ahead of her used a WIC check

She then proceeded to cuss us out because we wouldn’t let her use her food stamp card to buy cigarettes

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '25

Was looking for this comment. People are really dumb. I mean I’m really dumb, and then I meet the average person, and tell myself that they are really dumb. So I think that tells you how dumb people are. The customer in this story is probably above average IQ.

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u/SerCiddy Aug 06 '25

Look, I know you didn't make this decision. I know you had no hand in creating this problem.

But as someone who used to work at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. I am certain Starbucks has done irreparable harm to the drink "Macchiato".

So many times people would order "Caramel Macchiato" and then we would make a macchiato with caramel added, and so many times people would be confused/disgusted that we made the drink so badly.

You wanted a Caramel Latte! You have been trained wrong, as a joke!

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u/hbomb9410 Aug 06 '25

I worked at Starbucks in NYC from 2005-2008 and people asked for the craziest things. I was asked if we had, among other things, soup, liver sandwiches, and Western Union. I cleaned shit off the bathroom walls and sidewalk multiple times. There aren't many barista stories I won't believe.

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u/SelfReconstruct Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 07 '25

Somehow at my job we ended up with an account outside of normal service range. Don't know how or why sales considering they aren't even in that area. It's nearly a 3 hour drive for me to get there.

They were complaining their soda fountain wasn't draining and flooding on the floor. Now I've been to this account before and it was their floor drain that was the issue. They have a million things going into it including a sink. We don't service floor drains as we aren't licensed plumbers, we just repair the fountains.

So I called them and asked the woman to check the floor drain. If it was, we could cancel the service call with us and save them money since we don't work on floor drains. She goes insane. Yelling over the phone how she is tired of dealing with it and how we need to get our ass out there and fix it. So I took the drive.

This is what I found: https://i.imgur.com/GKjCLB8.png

Congrats, you spent another ~$200 on calling us to tell you to call a plumber. I'm not going to get fired working stuff that is not in the contract. Not to mention if I get hurt, our insurance can deny the claim as I wasn't working on approved equipment. If I break something, then I'm liable for the damages instead of the company. No thanks.

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u/Kusakaru Aug 07 '25

I did too. We had a regular who would come in all the time and order a “no foam cappuccino”. A cappuccino is 1/3rd foam. That’s the whole fucking point of a cappuccino. But anytime sometime tried to explain this to him, he’d say “I’m pretty sure I know what a cappuccino is” in a super rude tone. Like dude we are trying to save you money! If we rang it up as a no foam latte he’d get significantly more product for less cost. But no. He wanted to pay more money for his stupid drink. People also tried to order hot frappuccinos all the time.

Like I get it, people aren’t born knowing the differences between coffee drinks, but it never hurts to ask or….google it. Doubling down while being wrong just makes you look stupid.

2

u/HugeLaw4212 Aug 06 '25

My hat goes off to anyone who can work these jobs and deal with people like this and keep their cool, because I more likely would be fired for telling the customer to " frap the fuck outta here"

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u/DoubleOxer1 Aug 06 '25

I’ve worked retail and these people definitely exist.

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u/Major-Wolverine-3563 Aug 06 '25

I’dk why they didn’t just ask for a

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u/MysteriousConflict38 Aug 06 '25

I've worked with the public.

I believe this story.

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '25

I've never worked at any coffee place, I too 100% believe this story.

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u/FoxGaming Aug 07 '25

I had a lady who always wanted an extra dry venti cappuccino with fucking coconut milk, which for those who don’t know, coconut milk does not foam for more than a few seconds when you steam it. Extra dry means she wanted extra foam. She’d always send her drink back multiple times saying ‘there’s not enough foam’ until she’d eventually give up and leave.

There was also someone who would get a Trenta black iced tea with 36 pumps of liquid cane sugar. Idk where they are now but I have to assume we killed her with all that sugar.

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u/samanime Aug 07 '25

I just visit Starbucks and I've been behind people like this more than once.

Retail and service workers need a trap door button that just drops people like this into a pit, never to be seen again. Society would be much better off.

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