Do you sell fans?

Thats what I spent part of yesterdays work shift asking. And no, I wasn't asking the customers if they sold fans. I got sent around my area asking in various shops whether they sold fans. Unfortunately everywhere was sold out. So I had to return to work empty handed. But when I did I was told that someone had come in from one of the first shops I visited to tell us that they had just got some fans in. So I was sent straight back out again.

I returned with two fans (one large, one small in case you were wondering). They also happened to be the last fans they had left. And so I then proceeded to put them together. Its certainly not a patch on air con but at least some air is getting circulated now (even if it is mostly hot air).

Nice Customers

I wouldn't be surprised if, from what I post, you thought we only got fussy, rude or just plain mad customers in my Starbucks but that isn't true. And this has been proven over the last few days. Our air con still hasn't been fixed and so our store is still ridiculously hot. We still have many people walking in and then walking straight back out and the ones who don't leave straight away make a point of the fact that its cooler outside than it is in our store. However some of our regulars have actually been phoning up the customer help line, not only to complain thats its too hot for them and that the company is losing business as a result, but also to state that they are not happy with the working conditions for me and my fellow baristas. Hopefully the company will actually listen to them and finally come and fix the air con since they've been ignoring our requests for weeks.

Regardless it was nice to be reminded that we have some very kind customers and to feel like some customers actually value us (unlike some who look down on us, making stupid comments reflecting their feelings of superiority despite the fact that their job consists of 'being a housewife' which in their case translates as sitting in Starbucks most of the day with another 'housewife' and bitching whilst their young child runs around and destroys the place). I think its a sign that you're becoming bitter when a blog entry intended to signal your gratitude to some nice customers so easily turns into a bitch/vent about some annoying ones. So i'll end the blog entry on a positive note. We get some very kind, friendly customers who I enjoy talking to and who somehow manage to counteract the less friendly ones.

Tips jar? What tips jar?

The air conditioning in my store is still broken. The people who said they would come and fix it on Monday still haven't come and the heatwave still isn't over. The last couple of days we've actually had regulars walking in and then straight away leaving our stores because its just too hot. We've been told our store has been even hotter than outside the last few days. And to make things worse the heat caused our ice machine and money counting machine to break (we had to rush around trying to find somewhere that sells ice and had great difficulty since places had all sold out. Luckily this problem was solved before I started my shift today). However the money counting machine was broken when I had to count my money yesterday, resulting in me having to count everything manually (which is no fun when it comes to counting and recounting the 1ps and 2ps). This therefore caused me to finish work late and so I had to rush straight from work up to the tube station and straight to the hospice.

However today the heat didn't seem to deter people from our store and it was crazy. Usually in the evenings about an hour before closing it gets quite quiet, giving us some time to start the cleaning up process. This is really helpful since we are only given an hour to clean everything and set things up for the next day once the store closes. Today, at closing time, we still had a queue of customers.

And to make the day worse someone decided to take advantage of the fact that we were rushed off our feet and therefore not able to keep an eye on our tips jar and so they stole it. It was full and was actually due to be put away for another meal out but, since we were busy trying to make drinks for a constant flow of customers, my supervisor hadn't gotten a chance to do so. So thank you thief wherever you may be. I found a key whilst hoovering the store. Maybe you'd like to steal that and go burgle the customer who left it behind.

Hmmmmmmmmmm

I had something I was going to post about but can't remember what it was.
....................
........
...............................
...............

Anyway, forgetting that (which I already did), today I served Sezer from Big Brother (ie. the one that everyone hated). He asked me if we served any coffee which he could lick off his girlfriend (well I guess it was his girlfriend) .................................
.....................
..........
..........................

I also happened to see one of my regular customers on Holby City (according to my parents she does a lot of work for the BBC) which was funny because I was just like, 'wait a second, thats the really friendly woman who always orders a soya chai tea latte!'

And today I also got confirmation of my accomadation. Its the one I asked for which is nice. Whether the accomadation actually turns out to be nice i'll have to wait and see.

I'm kind of dreading tomorrow since its the 6.45am shift in the other Starbucks store which doesn't have air conditioning. Tomorrows supposed to be 36-37 degrees. Great.

Long time no post

Well its been a while since I blogged. What have I been up to? Too much, which is why I haven't blogged. I haven't really had a let up in things to do and so I haven't been on the internet much, let alone been able to blog. And when I did have some time to blog I couldn't really be arsed to write about everything i've been doing the last month. I still can't be bothered to write about it all. So I won't. However heres some pictures from Stonehenge which I visited about 3 or 4 weeks ago with a friend from the czech course I went on last year:

Above are some strange people who were carrying out some religious ceremony dedicated to the stones. There was wailing and I thought I heard the sound of a goat (I decided they were followers of an all powerful god of stones and were making a sacrifice to him/her/it) but we never actually saw the goat so unfortunately we'll never know if there was a sacrifice.

They then walked off with the sound of more wailing, went back to their cars and drove off.


Heres me sleep smiling, standing next to my friend Lidwien in front of the henge. It was boiling hot, the sun was shining right in my eyes and I hadn't had much sleep that whole week due to many 6.45 am starts at work. Additionally, the night before, there'd been a school house get together thing after which many of us ended up in a pub to celebrate the fact that my housemaster was becoming a deputy head. So I didn't get home till some time in the early morning and then left at about 9am to make the 'not as long as we thought' journey up to Stonehenge. So thats my excuse for falling asleep mid-picture taking.

Works the same. Still get some horrible/strange/interesting customers (the 'I want an extra hot but not too hot cappacino' man made another visit recently. I couldn't help laughing when I saw him come in because I knew what was coming). Other customers who made an impression were the two women who wanted cups of hot water with a slice of lemon. I told them we didn't have any lemons. So they shouted, 'what kind of place is this that doesn't even serve hot water with a slice of lemon!' I answered, 'a coffee shop.' One of the women then said, 'well get me the hot water then! And I want it in a mug! When I brought her the hot water she told me they hadn't had a good look around the area so they were going to walk around a bit. They might be back, they might not. I'm happy to say they didn't come back.

On one of the days where England was playing in the world cup we had a 'buy one frappacino get one free' deal for about 4 hours. It was crazy. Apparently we ended up making something like 1000 frappacinos that day. I was unlucky enough to be on the bar for quite a bit of that time. After a few hours of repeatedly having to call out frappacino names (for example caramel coffee frappacino with whipped cream and extra caramel, chocolate cream chip frappacino with whipped cream and extra chocolate sauce on top etc.) I started to get a bit tongue tied (or should that be tongue tired) and for some reason couldn't manage to say 'coffee' which made calling out any of the coffee based frappacinos difficult. One customer got a colfkhfkjdhj frappacino (I kind of just gave up trying to say it). Luckily she was able to work out it was hers. And another very unfortunate customer got her chocolate cream frappacino refered to as a chocolate crap (I heard her talking to her friend saying she was getting a chocolate 'frap' and so, with my mind centred on the word frap and the fact that it was chocolate, I kind of stuck the first letter of one word onto the beginning of the other hence calling it a crap).

A couple of weeks ago my mum held another family get together thing (supposedly for my sisters 18th birthday even though that was in May). However I was only there for the last hour of it since I ended up having to work that day in Muswell Hill (it was meant to be my day off but Muswell Hill was low on staff and so was my Starbucks so I was the only one able to do the shift). It was funny, one of the customers recognised me as i'd served her daughter a few days before in my Starbucks. She'd been parked outside my Starbucks and couldn't leave her car since she wasn't allowed to park it there so she'd sent her daughter to get 5 frappacinos. I made the frappacinos but there was no way this little girl was going to be able to carry 5 frappacinos out to the car so I took them out for her and put them in the car. The mother seemed very surprised to see me in the Muswell Hill starbucks. In fact she seemed a bit confused by it all. She was just like, 'you work there.............but you work here?!'

It was so hot that day and Muswell Hill's Starbucks doesn't have air conditioning. There was also one long never ending queue (I literally can't remember there not being a queue while I was working there) and nearly everyone wanted frappacinos. I certainly got a lot of practice in frappacino making that week (it was the same week as the buy one get one free offer in my Starbucks). I was exhausted when I got back home (it also happened to be a long shift) and decided i'd rather not have a shift there again (although the people I worked with there were very nice). Well that idea didn't work out that great since i've been asked if I can give up one of my two days off this week to do a shift there since they're low on staff and I accepted. The shift also happens to end half an hour before my driving lesson starts. Can't wait to see how my driving ends up that day.

I actually started driving through parts of London in my last lesson. Unfortunately it was during rush hour. Everything went fine apart from the fact that some of the drivers were driving really badly. They would pull out last minute in front of me from a side road when I had right of way, they weren't indicating before turning into roads in front of me and at one point, when part of the road was blocked off narrowing the road to only allow one car to pass through, instead of slowing down behind me (since you couldn't see well around the blockage and other cars may be coming around the blockage in the other direction) they decided to overtake me at great speed regardless of the risk to themselves or anyone coming in the other direction. My teacher got so pissed off with them. She echoed my mums belief that the heat sends people crazy. I have to say though I did enjoy the driving regardless of these crazy drivers.