Listing the sins at Starbucks

First, I really do apologize that that's been no Stabucks Drama for a while. I've been working on a major project at my real job, following the backstage comings and goings of a theater group as they rehearse the musical "42nd Street." You can read that at http://www.naplesnews.com/42

My Starbucks time has been limited to running in, grabbing a raspberry passion tea lemonade and then fighting for a downtown parking spot in time to make it to rehearsals. The time I used to spend at Starbucks, I spend interviewing, writing and editing.

Anyway - I got lucky tonight. The stupidity was falling like drops of the summer rain - big, fat drops that splat against the windshield and make you think that hail is coming.

I'm already running late for rehearsal when I hit the parking lot, but I see I guy go into the door ahead of me waving a piece of paper. That invariably means "a list."

I pray that there's no line and that he's got it together and it isn't something like six complicated frappuccinos.

Well, there's no line at least.

I get inside and he's got what looks like a credit card slip from a restaurant with some spidery writing on it slapped on the counter. Two baristas are peering at it and he's arguing with them. This ain't good.

Being of curious mind, I leaned in. This was one of those yellow receipt tape piece of paper, with what could have been hieroglyphics or Sanskrit on it. I was four feet away and I couldn't make out anything.

It looked like the sort of writing you do when you're desperate to take a message and you grab the first piece of paper you can find - and then the last, dried-up, nasty pen that's been standing upside down, without a cap in the 1984 World's Fair coffee mug on your desk. It sort of works, sort of doesn't and you get this scratchy, half-ink, half-line impression on the paper that the person who wrote it might understand - but no one else does.

They're trying to decipher what the hell he's asking for - "Does this mean they just want three shots of espresso?" or "Is that a white chocolate mocha or a white chocolate frappuccino?"

The boy, who's wearing swim trunks and flip flop and is tracking sand all over the place shrugs once and goes "That's what it says. I don't know. I don't drink Starbucks."

They try to help - quizzing him - "Did it sound like they wanted a mocha? A frappuccino? Do they usually get this cup? What?"

He just stands there and looks dumb. Probably is dumb. Whoever sent him is dumber a) trusting him and b) for not being able to write clear instructions. They probably don't even know what THEIR drinks are either.

Whenever I send someone to get Starbucks for me, I either text it to them, or write it out VERY CLEARLY on a Post-It. I take no chances. I've never been disappointed.

Sending a chicken-scratch note with a half-witted himbot who doesn't know mocha from moo juice is buying a ticket on fast train to Unhappytown. And these folks sure did. I heard later that they called to complain.

What the hell did they expect?

1) You don't know what you drink.
2) You can't take the time to write it down in a fashion that normal people can read
3) Said messenger has zero familiarity with the product
4) You don't bother to confirm that the messenger even comprehends the order
5) The messenger you sent isn't even bright enough to use a cell phone to call and confirm
6) Yet, this failure is somehow the barista's fault - because they can't read your mind? (if said mind exists!)

Sigh. Just another night at Starbucks.