Saturday, May 21, 2011 3:52 PM
so much for happy hour.
10.52pm
imagine happy hour.
imagine being the expediator.
imagine a horde of people
crowding around the hand off counter.
imagine these people
each with receipts of 15, 20 drinks
(due to the limit set by starbucks).
imagine say, orders of 5 grande caramel frappes.
now imagine the drinks being passed to you.
1pump-mocha mocha frappe, non-fat coffee frappes,
soy green tea frappes, 5 tall caramel frappes,
anything except 5 grande caramel frappes.
i'm really not kidding about
the wrong sized caramel frappes srly.
and there you are with a bunch of random drinks,
calling and calling and calling for a caramel frappe,
and no one answers or acknowledges.
and then you see more caramel frappes coming in.
and the customers get angry and frustrated.
they end up taking any random drink,
and they ask for bags for their 20 drinks or so.
but we've ran out of bags long ago.
big bags, small bags, pastry bags,
any carrier of any sort.
and trays and java chips
and green tea and tall flat lids
and whipped cream for that matter.
its a living nightmare.
as if work wasn't chaotic enough,
the customers weren't making things any better.
being the office workers that they are,
they think they're smarter than me the f&b dude,
and they try to tell me what to do,
as if i were their coffee boy in the office.
"don't call out the drinks;
check their receipts instead!"
thank you very much mr and mrs obvious.
if they had taken a step back to just
observe what they were doing,
they'd have realised that it was
impossible to say the least.
the initial battle plan was to
check the receipts beforehand,
but when most customers just throw
3 or 4 receipts onto the table,
then walk off to somewhere else
cause they think its too crowded and stuff,
its just impossible, i gave up halfway.
i don't know who's receipt belongs to whom,
and sometimes they don't too.
some don't even know what they ordered.
"check their receipts,
they probably don't know what they ordered."
and they have the cheek
to say it as if its my problem.
seriously, they're 30plus,
and they expect me to spoonfeed them their drink.
its so pathetic.
i know starbucks provides legendary service,
but if christine the district manager
was in my place instead,
i think she'd have done the same.
i just gave my most dulan face ever.
don't tell me how to do my job seriously.
its not as if they're students or what.
living on a budget, fine.
queueing for these kinds of discount
are at least understandable.
but all these guys were like
well into their 30s,
office people earning big bucks,
and they're willing to queue for 20mins
just to save up on the $3.
and its really just for the discount,
not as if they like the drink or what.
most don't even know what they ordered.
like this uncle who ordered
3 venti white mocha frappes,
no matter what drink came out,
he'd start waving his receipt in my face
and just keep going
"is this mine, is this mine, is this mine"
even if its a green tea frappe,
or dark mocha, or raspberry or mango.
seriously pissed me off.
quite obvious white mocha isn't green,
or brown or purple or yellow.
he just kept bugging me.
as if i weren't flusterred enough.
or the times where i call out for say,
a grande mocha frappe,
call and call and call for a few minutes,
and they just stand there and look at me.
and when i ask them what they ordered,
they look at their receipts and go
"i ordered a... grande mocha frappe. ya."
and i just give the wtf-is-wrong-with-you face srly.
once or twice is fine i guess,
but when its for half the time, really.
is it that difficult to just acknowledge,
get your drink and get lost.
but i guess its only by meeting people like these,
do we then get to appreciate the patience of others.
like this nice indian lady,
who ordered a tall soy strawberries and cream frappe.
and instead of bugging me like the whole world does,
she sat patiently by the side,
before she came to v politely ask for her drink
at like 5.15pm after the war was over.
you really appreciate people like these.
i upsized her drink to a venti instead.
at the end of it all,
i just stood at the corner,
and waited for my world to resume normalcy.
just stand there and let the feeling
of being slammed for 2 hours subside.
more than 500 frappes sold within that 2 hours.
that's less than 15seconds per frappe.
friday was the worst day of my starbucks life.
given a choice i'd switch back
to making drinks without hesitation really.
thursday was awesome, i didn't have to face customers.
i just make drinks as fast as i can.
i actually enjoyed happy hour before that.
but oh well.
thank god its over.
like a marathon,
its a once in a lifetime experience,
but just once is enough dammit.
because cider is the elixir of life