m4ge:
i walk into starbucks and order a pumpkin spice latte with 13 shots of espresso. i tell the barista that i intend to transcend humanity and become a god. i ask for no whip cream
you say this jokingly but i had a customer actually order a pumpkin spice latte with 9 shots of espresso (also no whip) and when i asked her to verify that she did indeed want 9 shots of espresso she looked me dead in the eyes and said “i have 5 kids”
I once had a woman come in and ordered an Americano with 19 shots of espresso. The drink took ages. It held up the line. I asked her why, and she shrugged and said “I just don’t care”. We still talk about that woman. We never saw her again.
new cryptid: exhausted woman at starbucks
Actual conversation I had at register:
“Hi, welcome to [Starbucks]! What can I get you, today?”
“How much is it to fill a Venti with Espresso?”
“I- I’m sorry?”
“A venti cup. How much to fill it with Espresso?”
“Oh. uh. Well, it’d be I suppose… I only have a button for a Quad. I don’t have special pricing for twenty ounces of espresso in a single… drink.”
“Price is the furthest thing from my mind right now. How many ‘add shots’ is that?”
*deep breath of fear* “It’d be a quad with,” *clears throat* “uh, sixteen additional shots of espresso. But, ma’am, I should tell you that the shots will start to get really bitter if they have to sit and wait for us to pull twenty of them-”
“Taste means nothing to me.”
At this point I am truly fearing for my very existence in the presence of what must clearly be an eldritch being.
“Oh. Well, okay.” I put on my absolute best customer service smile to hide my terror and accept that I must face this dragon, fae, or demon with dignity. “We can certainly get that for you! The price will be _____.”
She begins to pay, I shit thee not, with golden dollar coins. We are a block from Wall Street, and this eldritch demi-being is paying for an unholy elixer with golden coins. My life will end soon, I am sure of it.
“Do you still have the ‘Add Energy’ packets?”
My heart began to race at this request. “Yes ma’am.”
“How many can I add?”
Futile though it is, at least I know the rote response to this. “For health reasons, we won’t add more than one per drink and we cannot sell the packets individually.”
“One then.”
I alter the order and tell her the new price. She pays, dumps the change and five golden dollars into the tip box. I write the order on the venti cup and pass it silently to the girl working the hot beverage station. Normally we called and pass, but this was … not something to be spoken aloud.
My fellow takes the cup, not thinking anything of the minor break with protocol, until she sees the order. She stares at me. “No.”
The woman, which I call her for no other greater insight into her terrifying being is within my grasp, simply stands on the other side and says, calmly but with a commanding tone I expect of Admirals in bad movies, “Yes.”
My fellow barista pales before her task. But we are dutiful, we are true to our task, great though it may be. She sets about clearing the two brand new Matrena’s of all distraction, and sets two tall cups in the ready position. The energy packet is emptied into the venti cup, and the shots begin pouring.
The barista was damn near shaking. This woman’s gaze felt like the fires of the sun. Finally, the shots are pulled, the cup is filled, and the hand off takes place.
Our visiting Incomprehensible takes it to our milk bar and adds a dollop of cream. Satisfied, she proceeds to down what must have been half the damn cup.
Then she smiled at us, like a benediction and I was honestly filled with joy. And horror. She left, and we knew nothing more of her after that.
When I talk with other former employees, we quickly begin talking about “The Company” as if we’d never l, perhaps knowing that part of our soul still powers that awesome and terrible corporate machine. And when I share this stroy, other Baristas at first act shocked but quickly settle and comes the chorus,
“Yeah, I had one like that.”
Fuck, this was an absolute roller coaster of emotions.
Tag: tales from retail
I work at a coffee shop and have gotten all my co-workers to start calling lattes “hot milkybois”
I also got everyone to refer to the salted caramel blended drink as “the big salty” and I consider it one of my greatest accomplishments
Oh yeah and any time someone orders a hazelnut latte with almond milk (which specifically is a weirdly popular drink) I say “one HOT NUT latte coming right up!”
My coworkers have not latched on to this one like they did with the others for some reason.
I forgot to mention I also pronounce “hot chocolate” like “hot cocklate”… because I’m awful.
please give us updates
Our largest drink size is affectionately referred to as “Texas Size” so sometimes when I hand it out in the drive-thru I like to say, “Here’s that TEXAS SIZE [drink] for ya, YEEEEHAW!”
And some people look at me as though I have just made their entire day while others look like they they could not possibly get away from me soon enough. Both reactions are equally satisfying.
I made this into a game except when I hand out the Texas-size drinks I say “Can I get a YEEHAW?” And the guests always look mortified but occasionally one of them will let out a terrified “yeehaw” and all my coworkers cheer and then we keep a running tally of how many yeehaws we each get on the back of a pastry bag.
ARE computers flammable? I feel like they’re probably not?
This depends entirely on how much uncooked rice you have shoved in the floppy drive.
…Ok I feel like there’s a story behind this.
There is, yes!
After I quit school, I worked briefly as a computer repair tech. Going to people’s houses or businesses, fixing their various bugs, etc. While I would rapidly decide that field was not for me because of the one businessman who needed multiple “cup holder” replacements (you know, you push that button and that plastic holder thing with the hole comes out … I think it is technically call the “Cup Depository Tray”? CD, right?), he is not the most memorable encounter. No, that goes to one of the nicest ladies I ever encountered on this job.
She called us out because her computer had stopped turning on, and wouldn’t even make a noise when she tried to push the button. One day it had just shut off while she was using it and stubbornly refused to come back on, and could we please see what we could do to fix it?
So I go out there expecting some wire had gotten loose and there was no power getting to the machine or something. It happens sometimes if a machine gets banged around enough, or if someone fiddles with it wrong or is careless putting it together, computers are finicky like that. But as soon as I get to the box itself, I know it isn’t that simple, because of the smell. I have smelled computers with dust all up in them, that isn’t uncommon, but this is just vile and, more importantly, entirely new.
I am now more curious than afraid, so I open it up and there is a mass of goopy off-white mush spilling all over everything, parts of it are burnt to circuits, there is almost nothing untouched by the mass. But by far the worst off is the A drive. That is the obvious source of the problem, and the thing has … not “exploded”, but more burst from the pressure of whatever this stuff was.
So I ask the woman if she had used the floppy drive recently and noticed any problems, and she says no, not until the whole machine stopped working. But I come to find out what she used it for.
Turns out this woman was a devout Shinto practitioner and believed that her computer (among other things) had a soul that needed to be respected an honored. Which, fair enough. But she chose to honor it by feeding it a grain of rice every time she had to wake it up and disturb its rest. For years this kindhearted woman had been putting a grain of rice into the A drive every time she turned it on or woke the thing up from sleep mode. And eventually that was enough pressure to break the drive and start spilling out onto the internal bits, where the heat melted it all and caused no end of problems.
After that it was a simple enough thing to explain that there are better ways to honor and take care of your computer’s needs, what with virus scans or defrags and the like, but that poor device was entirely lost.
I guess the moral of the story here is that you can try your best to be good and still wind up hurting people? Maybe? Or else it’s that even the most horrible out of context problem isn’t nearly as frustrating as one middle aged jerk who won’t freaking listen when you tell him that CD trays are not for your dang coffee cups!
The end~
ok but im so taken with the fact that she was feeding her computer to apologise for waking it up?? thats so sweet????
sparksoffandommagic 