*Editor's Note*
In January, 2006 the last "Starbucks, the Untold Stories" blog was posted. Even though I never told anyone what location I worked at, or the real names of any of my co-workers. I was sat down by my boss, who had a copy of all my blogs (yes, Mr. FOCUS BEN RICHARDSON face), and was told, quote, "If I wanted to continue to be employed by Starbucks I would delete the blogs immediately and post no further blogs of this nature". I was also told that my site would be watched by corporate for the next month. Just to make sure I was complying... Just a little sketchy huh? Oh the price we pay for art.
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Well hello again. After the long and painful wait…of waiting. A new Starbucks blog dealio has been created for you, the public!…or private…(I guess that would depend on where you are sitting and/or standing when you read this…) *Ahem*…Anyways, this time around it’s all about the stories…of the customers…and the co-workers… and co-workers that happen to be in the stories with the customers. Like in the first three parts of this blog saga, be prepared to read about stuff…crazy stuff. Stuff that you thought only happened at IHOP at 2am in the morning… (you hear *gasps* in the background) And the craziest part is…they’re all true...I promise. So… sit back, take off your shoes (if you’re wearing shoes)… and be prepared to chuckle… to yourself…moderately. As before the disclaimer below is there to protect the identities of the dumb, dimwitted, and the down right stupid…Not to mention the smart, nice, and really, really good looking cool people… so read it. And without further ado I present to you, “Starbucks, the untold stories…Part 4”
DISCLAIMER
The following customers and co-workers identities in the following stories below have been changed to pretty much keep Ben from getting fired, and to keep from hurting the feelings of his fellow co-workers should they find this material offense, and know it’s about them… But if that’s not good enough for you…The following names below have been changed to protect the people we loosely call customers, and the people I call co-worker, friend, and bip. (Bip: A French word meaning roughly good…j/k)
Man of Action?
Now I haven’t quite figured out why, but I have found that people persist on being in a big fat hurry where ever they’re going… It doesn’t matter if they’re on their way to work, on their way to school, on their way to prison…they’re in a hurry, and they want their drink yesterday! Oh, and they’ll make you aware of that fact too, “ Hey buddy! I’m on my way to work, could you speed it up a bit?! I’m running late!” Well, for one: two words. leave sooner… then you won’t be late. Second: umm…well, no… I can’t go faster. So…just sit in your car and… wait… patiently… because crapping at me will do you no good. Another one of my pet-peeves are the people that can’t wait two seconds for you to take their money…no, they have to put it on the little ledge thingy and roll up their window before you can talk to them, because you know all Starbucks employees have a certain decease that if you talk to them for two seconds or more your face will fall off, or you’ll catch “The Ugly”… Now, when customers try to pull such a deed on me I do not allow it to go on. I simply just look at the customer, then I look at the bill (like it has a decease) and wait for the customer to roll that BMW window down and talk to me. Usually I get some dirty looks but it works…But sometimes a bill will… well…shall I say, “spread it’s tiny wings and fly away”…I mean what did they except? It’s
So that brings us to the story at hand for the title “Man of Action?”… This particular event happened earlier in my career at Starbucks…I remember it well… It was a busy, sunny, weekday morning. I was running register in the drive-thru. The next person in line drove up to the window and pleasantly handed me his debit card…But I dropped it! I told him I would get it…but I didn’t have time to run all the way around the building…that would have taken too much time! And I couldn’t let him get it, I mean after all it was my fault it happened! So, without much thinking I did the only thing I saw fit to do… dive… out the window. With my top half near the pavement, and my bottom half still in the window I tried with great passion to reach the card I had dropped…finally I reached the card! Just one thing, the sharpie that was on my apron fell off…farther under the car then the card did…I reached, and reached and finally got it!…I felt myself slipping. I turned around to find out not only am I half way under the guy’s car…but that I’m more then 80% out of the window. I tried to push myself back up, but it was no use…I was stuck. I tried calling for someone to hoist me back up, but obviously not anyone had noticed an entire employee not in the building anymore. After seconds, that seemed like minutes… the guy in the car called out to the Gentle Giant saying, “Man over board! Man over board!” …no joke. The Gentle Giant then hoisted me back up and all was well again in the realm of Starbucks. Well, except for the fact that everyone was laughing at the mental picture of me hanging out of the drive-thru window during the rush-hour rush…Oh well, what can you do, right?
The Man with the Iced Venti Americano
Like I stated in the aforementioned story above, people are in a hurry… no matter what time it is, no matter what day it is…And this goes for the café too. Not as often as the drive-thru, but believe me their there. As such, a Starbucks employee gets used to the demands of the hurrying customer; and tries to get them on their way as quickly as they can. With that said let us dive in to our story.
It was one slower afternoon…I was running the bar in the café when a gentleman entered the premise in a flurry of hastiness! He came quickly up to the counter and ordered an, “Iced Venti Americano, to go!”… So I made his drink as speedily as I could and handed it to him. Now usually when a person comes in, in that big of hurry they b-line it for the door as soon as they receive their beverage. But for some strange reason after he received his dink he made no effort to go. Instead, he moseyed on by the coffee beans rack and started looking at the whole bean coffee…Now I don’t have a problem with people looking at the whole bean coffee, but when you come in as fast as he did and tell me, “I want a Iced Venti Americano, to go!” something isn’t right in the state of Denmark…
So, real incognito like I watched the guy while I pretended to be making a drink…I kept this up for several seconds while the man conspicuously browsed the coffee…He then looked left, then right, then left again...Then all of a sudden…He grabbed an arm full of whole bean coffee and sprinted toward the door! Without thinking I bolted after him! I thought about leaping over the counter, but that thought didn’t go very far, so I ran as fast as I could around the counter toward the front door! In mid dash I passed by the Assistant Store Manager…she was giving me a very strange look, probably due to the fact that I was running like a mad man…So as I passed by I said, “I’m chasing a shoplifter!” and bolted passed. As I made it outside… it turns out The Coffee Master was right behind me in my pursuit, and dashed through the front door a couple of seconds after me…I looked to the left, then to the right…I had lost him. The Coffee Master said, “You go right, I’ll go left.”…so I did…because he’s The Coffee Master… and you do what The Coffee Master says, dang it. I looked to the right but there was no sign of him.
A few moments later The Coffee Master came back holding the would-be stolen coffee. Now, I’d like to tell you that there was a big fight and The Coffee Master was forced to break into some sweet Matrixy kung-fu action…but sadly that wasn’t the case...the truth is, he found the guy in his SUV, walked up to him and said, “Excuse me sir, do you happen to have a receipt I could look at for that coffee over on the passenger seat?” The guy then replied, “Oh… I must of forgotten to pay for those. You can take them.” I’m sure The Coffee Master wanted to say…Oh, gee thanks, that’s real nice of you… since it’s our coffee, jerk face!...but he didn’t. After the ordeal was all said and done, both The Coffee Master and I wondered if it was really worth the risk we took to retrieve the 3 lbs of whole bean coffee…After thinking about it for a few moments we both looked at each other and almost instantaneously come to the same conclusion…Nope, wasn’t worth it.
The Money’s Always Realer…
Now to all those who are reading this…I don’t know where you work at (or if you even work at all)… But it has been my experience that when a customer gives you a $20 bill or higher, and you check it to make sure it’s real; they are almost insulted at the very thought of you thinking that they might be a crook…but hey, I have to do my job right? right. So get over it…because we all know that people who drive nice cars can be crooks too! Ya, that’s right buddy... That brings us to the story at hand.
Now, I receive what feels like a trillion bills of tender on any-givin’ typical day on register…especially when I’m on drive-thru. As such, one gets well acquainted with his, well…money. You know… the look, the feel… of cotton-- I mean cash…*Ahem*… Anyway, one normal day (and I dare you to define “normal”) while I was doing drive-thru, a man drove up and politely paid for his drink with a $20 bill…Now, there’s nothing unusual about a man paying for his drink with a $20 bill… So I took the bill, but it felt a bit strange. I looked down to notice that it was an older $20 bill…I held it up to the light to look for the security thread that is placed in the bill…but there was one little snafu…it wasn’t there! The bill was a counterfeit! So, I broke the news to the man as politely as I could…To my surprise, like it was no big deal, he said “What? Really? You’re kidding?”. I said, “No sir, I’m not kidding…see, (I showed him the bill) no security thread…” He then reached into his wallet and pulled out another $20 bill, and said, “I wonder if this one fake too?” and then handed it to me…I mean come on, for the love of doughnuts…you can’t check it yourself? Anyway, I took the bill and held it up to the light… it too was indeed counterfeit… He then replied (in the same tone as before), “wow, that’s crazy, I just got these from the bank.”.
Now, up until this point I truly believed that he was the victim of getting some counterfeit bills…but after that statement I just looked at him like, ok buddy what are you trying to pull?…sure you got those bills from a bank. I mean banks are always letting counterfeit bills slip right passed their security. Give me a break! Did he think I was born yesterday? Alright I’m done ranting, back to the story… Obviously after that statement I was a bit suspicious... Well, more then a bit… So I took the $20 bill and passed it around to everyone, let them see it, and pointed out why it was fake…then, like a dummy I gave it back to him!…why, you ask? Because…well…umm…I don’t really know...But anyway, he still needed to pay for his beverage…so, he pulls out a $100 bill, and before he could even possibly know it was real or counterfeit he stated, “Here, I know this one’s real.” I looked at it. It was indeed real…
Now I ask you, how in the world did he know that that bill was real without looking at it? ...unless he knew the other bills were fake? (some kind of bum, bum, bum music plays in the background)… Hmm, very interesting wouldn’t you say?…So finally the drink came out and the man, driving a rather nice car, left… I decided it would be a good idea to get the license plate number…So as he left I looked at the plate…The guy had personal license plate… Now I don’t know why it surprised me, but it was “AMEN 1”…go figure. I should have known that it was some religious zealot...I’ll bet he’s one of those guys that beats up his dog then somehow says, that’s God will …what a jerkateer! Now some of you might be saying… Ben, you just gave us his license plate number…you can’t do that, that’s evidence… But I’m not giving away evidence, because you would have to say what state it was from, and I sure didn’t say what state it was from, OK!...gosh!
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