Ladies. If I can GET my drink BEFORE you finish ORDERING yours, then you have issues. More issues than Newsweek. More issues than any shrink could sort out in a year of sessions. HISH-SHOE-Z.
Firstly, I apparently hit the Starbucks at EXACTLY the wrong time. Every parking spot in the strip mall is filled and I wind up parking by the Target and hiking over. Fine. I need to work off the donut I'm going to eat. The drive through is pumping like an oil derrick and I nearly get run down by a woman in a purple subcompact with a baby in the front seat and a frappuccino in her paw. She's not looking at me at all. Good thing I'm looking at her ugly car ....
I get inside and it looks like there's been some sort of coffee filter free-for-all, with the whole beans heading for open revolt and the pasty case opening up a second front on the left flank and the customers going hell for leather toward Stupid-Ville.
The lobby is packed, every table is full, some adorable boy is editing video on a laptop at the comfy table I usually write at, the couches are full and three extremely frazzled baristas are trying to manage the drive-thru and a lobby packed with cranky customers. I wedge myself in line only to get bumped by a woman-child who has six inches and 30 pounds on me (yes, that is ENTIRELY accurate) who's doing pirouettes in the lobby. Picture a rhinoceros in ratty blue jeans and a stained T-shirt. No. No. NO. For the last time, NO, she doesn't look like the dancing hippos from "Fantasia." Those were cute. Big Bertha wasn't.
Obviously, it is "Take the Mentally Challenged Out for Coffee and Donuts Day" or something. Because this Big Bertha is just downright insane. Crazy or not, I wonder if she's a pickpocket and feel for my wallet. Still safe.
But the real drama starts to go down in front of me. At the register. Where all dark powers are conspiring to keep me from getting an iced mocha.
There's a ... I dunno ... "fiend" is suppose the best word. Although it is later revealed that she's either a barista or sleeping with one, because she has a partner discount. Call her Bridget Barista.
First, she rattles off a fifteen word drink order in a mumble. I'm standing right behind her deliberately trying to overhear the conversation and I can't pick it up. The barista trying to ring in the order, who has a drive-thru speaker in one hear, some crap-o-matic jazz and two blenders and assorted other noise, certainly can't.
So Bridget Barista heaves a *heavy* sigh, gives him a nasty stare and starts to speak slowly, but not any loudly. Tall. Double chocolate. Chocolate chip. Frappuccino. Add. Two pumps. Vanilla. And. Extra. Whipped. Cream.
That was only the first one.
The second one was just as complicated. Venti. Iced. Caramel. Macchiatto. With. Three. Pumps. Vanilla. And. Two. Extra. Shots. Add. Two. Pumps. Raspberry. Syrup. And. Extra. Caramel.
And she told the boy. "No. You don't need to ring in all those shots. Or the syrup. They never do that."
And when he kept doing it, then she played the partner card.
That receipt, for just two drinks, had to be at least a foot long. It looked like somebody bought a week's worth of groceries at Publix or something.
Fortunately for me, while this was unfolding, and I was shifting back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, with her mumbling something and him asking her to repeat it, and her looking at whatever came across the register and say "THAT'S NOT RIGHT" and then "YOU DON'T NEED TO RING IN THE SHOTS" when she'd see that there was a charge, another barista came on duty.
For the record, I don't think that the guy on register was a newbie. He seemed competent enough the rest of the night. This girl mumbled. I also don't think she was a real Starbucks barista - she just didn't have "barista" feel. Who tortures co-workers like that? Unless you hate them, of course!
So. This new girl hops on a register, takes my order, grabs my pastry and rings me out. The alleged Bridget Barista is still mumbling her "partner numbers" to get her discount to this poor guy and bitching about having to pay for vanilla syrup and extra shots. I'm staring at her extremely short denim skirt that's not nearly long enough - and the garish blue toenail polish and wondering what street corner she crawled in from when the tall dude that's making drinks calls my mocha.
Yes. I ordered, paid, got a pastry and then got a drink before she ever left the register. Wonder of wonders. She left with Big Bertha too - I think this was weird people night at the Starbucks.
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