thank goodness for a relaxing day off because i will not have another one until christmas day.
more tales from this past weekend:
- a customer brought in his travel mug and asked us to rinse it out before filling it with coffee. when my fellow barista brat peeked inside the mug her stomach turned. stuck to the bottom of the mug was a dead cockroach. a friggen' COCKROACH! i don't know what grosses me out more: that the roach was in his cup or that he was still willing to drink from it when the barista pointed it out to him.
- a woman was shopping for gift packs but refused our offers to hold the merchandise for her at the front counter. instead she was content to carry it all herself, adding more mugs and pounds of coffee to the mix. so, while she was was examining the ceramic mugs and matching saucers, she lost her grip on the merchandise and it all came crashing down, knocking over the display of ceramic mugs and saucers. in the end three sets were broken. did she apologize? no, she blamed us for not better securing the display.
- a regular customer who is known to be a complainer handed out ten dollar bills to all the baristas. he even gave us a big smile as he wished us "happy hanukkah - or christmas - or whatever it is you celebrate".
- a man admitted he'd made a mess in the bathroom and asked us for a toilet brush because he didn't feel right making us clean it up.
- a customer held up the line while buying fifteen gift cards. he ended up adding on four more cards (each for five dollars) to give to the four customers that had to wait in line behind him.
i'm mentally preparing myself for the craziness of the next few days. i have to close christmas eve but i'm working with a great crew so hopefully it will be happy and not horrendous.
partner rant: i'm busy at bar, so quit trying to talk to me! you see i have a line of ten drinks - and it's true i kicked you off of double barring with me because you actually slow me down. but that wasn't an invitation to hover around me and talk about what you hope your parents will get you for christmas! earn your paycheck and do something useful!
16 comments:
Ew, the roach thing is just waaay too much YUCK! Unfrickin believe that lady that broke the mugs. I would have been morified! It kind of sounds like the bad was balanced out with a bit o good tho hey :)
All in all it looks like the good balanced out with the bad. We got our power and internet back so Yippee.
"a friggen' COCKROACH! i don't know what grosses me out more: that the roach was in his cup or that he was still willing to drink from it when the barista pointed it out to him."
High in protein and they add that special something to the coffee and...I can't do this bit anymore...
"no, she blamed us for not better securing the display."
Customers knocking over displays?
Get the heaviest cups in the store and make earrings out of them and the next time somebody takes out a display, they have to wear the cup earrings for as long as it takes for their order to be ready.
Either that, or they have to stay and Crazy Glue the cups together (even though you're going to throw them away).
FYI: The average American Cockroach can live for two weeks without its head. So with a little coffee and suger from the bottom of the mug, you can guess it was in there for a good month, maybe longer, before it finally let go.
I threw up a little with that cockroach thing....unacceptable...[shudder]
Bet the lady didn't pay for what she broke, either, did she? Don't you wish you could ban those people...?
Bravo on the the other two that balanced the day! Yippeeee!
Dont' work too hard or let the jerks get you down!
Hugs
Here's hoping you have a mellow Christmas Eve.
Cheers!
haven't written for a while and thought i might as well wish you and everyone who reads this a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS... and a happy productive/prosperous/lucky/lovely/blah blah blah new year!
i like the warm fuzzy feeling the warm fuzzy stories give me... and then there's the cockroach... gross
although i do admit that i leave coffee in my flask for a whole day and sometimes forget to clean it out at night because i'm so bloody tired... so my flask smells like old coffee which is kinda gross... might have to soak it in hot water for a loooong time to get it back smelling neutral again...
anyway, after that yuck story, gonna go now...
oh, and there's a promotion in malaysia that if you buy a certain amount of 'festive drinks' (5) and 5 more normal drinks and then 7 fraps (i don't even drink fraps) that you get a free coffee planner for 2007... bargain... almost rm200 for a diary. whoop dee doo.
Maybe the dead roach is one of those alternative East Asian medicine or something, I meant, ever get into a traditional chinese medicine shop? They have dried roaches there for sale, said to prevent or cure cancer or something. But I never thought someone would actually eat that stuff. Nevertheless, eww.....
Happy Holidays, though. I won't get a vacation until Christmas either :D
I love the stories of the sharing of $ and gift cards! And I don't think the bathroom cleaner can be topped! What a great present!!
You have amazing stories. As a barista myself, I tend to laugh quite a lot while picturing all of these events in my own shop (not a bux)! I've been reading for awhile, and finally decided that instead of posting comments with all my own stories, I'm just going to begin writing about my own experiences in the barista world. I'm not perfect yet, but I hope to catch on. You, however, will always be the original!
feel free to check mine out at www.latenightcaffeine.blogspot.com
Brat -
Really enjoy your blog. Best wishes for a Merry Christmas, and hopes that your store visitors will lean toward normal (although those crazy ones sure make great stories). Thanks!
Shannon
haah people are so nice.
someeetimes.
Coffee and scathing wit are two of my favorite things, and you have them both in spades. I've been reading your archives and there isn't a boring or dud entry anywhere to be found. Please keep writing, you've made a loyal reader out of me.
Merry Christmas and hope your holidays are cockroach free.
Yeah, that one sounded better before I typed it.
Just out of curiosity, what are Bux's rules regarding piercings/tattoos? I just started at a coffee shop and was kind of surprised at how conservative they were. You can't have any visible tattoos, and only two piercings in each ear (they didn't specify that it had to be the earLOBE, so hopefully I can slide by on that one... :) )
i'm a seven year partner.....I feel your pain. I've seen the some crazy things to.....heart attacks in the cafe, car driving into our cafe (guess she wanted to make our store a drive thru)....A lesbian love triangle between a district manager and two store managers (which ended with a third manager getting punched out by her district manager in front of her store). keep up the great site.
barista rant: How does corporate expect us to fit one more thing in the little fridge at the bar. we already have way too much stuff in there. I'm at a small core B store (the little ones that have the bar, frappuccino (R) station and sanitizer all right next to each other.)Although we still do 30,000 per week. No separate fridge for frap stuff. No way to fit everything. And they keep sending us more stuff.
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