If you go into a service oriented food supplier (AKA Starbucks) and you order something should the employees question you on your order? If I went into Burger King and ordered a squirt of chocolate milkshake on top of my fries and was fully willing to pay for a small milkshake to achieve the nasty sugar-salty-soggy conglomeration I’m after… then squirt the stinking milkshake on top of a basket of fries and send me to my grave. Quietly. Once I leave your whole store can roll on the floor laughing at the weirdo. But wait until I’m gone.
This morning as a treat to my bride I went to Starbucks and called her from there to ask what she wanted. She told me that she wanted a Pumpkin Spice Mocha. Which, as you may know, involves a large quantity of chocolate syrup, and a smaller quantity of Pumplin Spice syrup followed by a smaller quantity of coffee. Its kind of like a coffee beverage, but more like a sugar beverage. This is the drink my wife requested and so with confidence and certainty I ordered one. And the gal who took my order was shocked. How dare I order my wife a booger and scotch coffee drink. Was I sure? Yes, I did want a pumpkin spice mocha. But what she heard sounded like the worst coffee choice possible. Begrudgingly she wrote on the side of the cup the order.
So I’m pouring in heart stopping amounts of half & half into my large plain coffee and hear, “Mocha… pumpkin spice?!” As if someone had ordered that the froth be generated by beating the dairy with a used rag. For goodness sakes, this is Starbucks. The place took off as a national chain because consumers discovered that they could have what felt like infinite customization over something as simple as a coffee. And they coudl feel snobby and proud of it. They liked their fat-free-decaf-sugar-free-vanilla-latte and Starbucks was proud to charge them $4.53 for it. But I guess that’s changing now. Soon I will have to go in with a bag over my head, and once the employees calm down from thinking its a robbery and realize that I’m embarrassed by their conjectures and so I hide my face like the Phantom of the Coffra.
Oh, I always did love the my “partners’ that couldn’t figure out how to make anything out side of the standardized drink recipe box. It’s coffee folks, not rocket science. Put in the stuff the customer wants.
The old adage “The customer is always right”, (which, by the way, was never right) has been revised to say, “The customer is always right, unless they are insane.” I am not saying it is insane to order a Pumpkin Spicy Capparito. I am saying that the clerk thought it was insane to do so. Hence, the too-good-for-her-frock clerk treated you with utter barista derision.
Case closed.