Dough in your face!

Yesterday was a day full of horrible customers. Usually you'll get roughly about 4-5 rude customers a day if you're unlucky but for some reason (my mum thinks its due to the sudden onset of very hot weather making people crazy and irritable) it seemed almost every second customer would be rude and have a go at us for no reason. For example a woman ordered a caramel coffee frappacino light. It was made for her and the drink got called out. She didn't come and pick it up. This was at a busy time when other frappacinos were being made. When she eventually came over she took someone elses mocha frappacino. 3/4 of the drink later she walked over to me and started to shout. She went on about how she now felt really sick, that the frappacino was disgusting and that i'd ruint her day. We pointed out that she had actually taken someone elses drink. We offered to remake the drink she'd ordered and not taken but she just went on about how sick she felt and reiterated the fact that she thought the frappacino was disgusting. Funny how she managed to get through 3/4 of it before complaining. She ended up getting a free drink voucher from us which I personally think was her sole reason for causing the scene but what can you do.

One of my fellow baristas got screamed at because she asked whether a customer wanted their frappacino to have in or take away. The customer just answered, 'does it matter?' in a rude tone. So the barista explained that to put in the order the till requires you to put in whether its take away or eat in first. So the customer just started shouting. And another customer got angry because they ordered a slice of carrot and passion fruit cake (it was double checked with them whether it was actually that cake that they wanted because some people say they want this cake but actually mean the skinny carrot cake) and then when it was given to them they said they'd asked for the skinny carrot cake and started shouting.

But yesterday wasn't all doom and gloom. In the evening, having won the 'cleanest store in the district' prize and having got a lot in the way of tips, our Starbucks store went out for a meal. It was also a goodbye meal for one of my fellow baristas (although she happens to also be going to Leeds in September so i'll be seeing her then) and a birthday meal for another (although this barista didn't know this and so got a surprise but i'll talk about that later).

The meal was fun. We ate in La Porchetta in Muswell Hill. They had the Poland vs. someone match (i'm short sighted so couldn't see who the other team was but I knew Poland was playing because two of the baristas in my store are Polish and so that fact got pointed out) projected onto a wall and we all were just chatting away for most of the night. There was also 'discrete' birthday card message writing going on. I happened to be sitting right next to the birthday girl and so did the most blatant 'i'm just turning away from you so that I can talk to the other person sitting next to me, really I am'. Amazingly the card was signed by everyone without the birthday girl catching on. There was one point where she almost did, having noticed some very blatant movement of the card under the table. But when she questioned it a couple of us instantaneously questioned her on what she was going to have to eat.

We also gave the barista who was leaving her large leaving card (which had been signed throughout the week by everyone so there wasn't any under the table message writing going on this time) and then we moved onto stuffing our faces with pizza and pasta....................well I guess I was the only one to stuff my face since I was the only one who managed to finish the whole pizza. Then there was the sound of banging followed by the birthday girl getting the 'happy birthday pizza dough' on her head. We all ate chocolate cake (mmmmmmmmmmm chocolate cake!) which had been brought as a birthday cake for the birthday barista. When one of the other baristas went to the toilet she got happy birthday pizza dough in the face (we had given the happy birthday pizza dough to some children to play with and they'd proceeded to go to the toilet and have a dough fight. The barista had then entered the war zone just as some happy birthday pizza dough got chucked in the direction of the door).

After the meal most of the other baristas/supervisors/manageress had to go home for various reasons. So that just left me and the barista who will be going to Leeds. We went to a pub where we bumped into some of her friends and so we spent the evening chatting to her friends, drinking and generally just having a good time.

Today was just spent working. I did the afternoon shift and we were expecting it to be quiet since England was playing during the shift but it wasn't (it seemed all the woman had come to starbucks to escape the football). And then in the early evening it went frappacino crazy. I hate frappacinos..................unless its a chocolate chip frappacino and i'm drinking it.