invisible friends

this weekend has been slightly less busy. i think it must have something to do with the holiday weekend.

to drum up excitement for the new banana frappuccinos we've been sampling them like mad. two straight hours out of each day are spent making about a billion tiny cups of frappuccinos to hand out to people in bux, outside of bux, in the shopping center, at the movie theatre and at the mall across the street. i guess the great minds in corporate figured our customers wouldn't be able to keep from ordering the damn things if they just got a taste of them.
well, i'm here to let them know that their marketing strategy backfired.

instead of people buying a frappuccino after taking a sample, they're just coming back for more samples. yup, they're coming back three or four times to "taste" the new drinks. and if they happen to stop by at a time when we're not sampling, we've been instructed to make samples anyway. oh joy. every ten minutes some freak comes in asking for a sample and we have to make them. all friggen' day long.

today we had a guy literally load up on samples. he drank two of them right in front of us and then grabbed SIX more.

"uh, they're for my friends outside." he said while he tried to figure out how to balance two more.
"well, your friends can come in and get their own samples." my fellow barista brat informed him.
"what?" he asked, sensing the barista was annoyed. "it's not like you're not going to give them all away anyway!"
"it's not like you're going to give them all away, either." i chimed in.

i hope he gets the runs from his greediness.

barista rant: just because you had the "brilliant" idea of adding blackberry sauce to your vanilla bean frappuccino doesn't mean you can talk my ear off everyday about how bux should offer your version of the drink. guess what? i'm not interested. i don't care and i'm not going to call corporate and suggest your recipe to them. nor am i going to try and sell this drink to my other customers. basically, if you want to see your drink on the menu board, then you can open you're own coffee shop.