Here's a little life lesson (for those who already know it, feel free to stop reading or just have a refresher.) I'm combining two into one so just bear with me.
Don't be an asshole and don't fuck with the people who handle your food and/or beverages.
You would think this would be a given on both accounts, that no one would have to say it. However, there are people wandering the earth who are under the impression that their asshole behavior is entirely justified and furthermore they take it to another level and direct it toward people who handle their food and/or beverages, which just is not smart.
Let's address just the asshole part first. A certain person writing this blog, who shall remain nameless unless you look above her picture, lost the job she'd just gotten after four days of 3 1/2 hour shifts. It took her 4 months of job searching to get said job. This person got a job in a coffee shop and has worked in other coffee shops before, including the mighty Starbucks (the drive-thru in a college town even!) While working at Starbucks, she was also working another full-time job which kept her on her toes in a different way. Basically, working with the elderly who had memory disorders, which isn't all glitter projects and gin rummy. These people are slippery and will be down the road in about two seconds if you don't watch them. But I digress. My point being that said person lost the coffee shop job after just under 14 hours on the job, being fired over the phone at work by the owner who was in Salt Lake City after having had knee surgery. She apparently, after just under 14 hours, several of which not being around the owner, had come to fit the profile of past baristas who, after four months or so, just didn't work out. They, ("they" being the two people who had trained said person so far, one of which was just promoted to manager and "still unsure in her position" and the other being a Jehovah's witness who happened to show up at her house on her day off and then make a snide remark the day I she was fired about her laptop) all came to a concensus that said person fit this profile, despite praising her extensively and saying, "Good Job!" and "You're doing great!" at the end of each shift. The big characteristic of this profile? Not being able to keep with the busy pace of the summer crowds.
Yes. That's right.
Okay. If you haven't figured it out, said person is me. At this point, you can imagine it's probably best the owner is not standing in front of me. After telling her how ridiculous everything she is saying is and that she's giving me the shaft and that "the person she interviewed and the person she hired are not the same person" is a bunch crap because it takes more than 4 days of 3 1/2 hours to get used to a new environment and the people in it, who were less than welcoming, by the by. Trying to crack into this circle of people was akin to the time I had the grand idea to become popular in school by trying out for cheerleading. The only difference is that I eventually came to my senses and realized the cheerleaders would laugh me out of the tryouts. Unfortuntely, in this situation you can't see being laughed out of a coffee shop.
As for keeping up with their pace? Again, try working at a Starbucks in a college town where there are constantly five drinks to make, two blenders running, the drive-thru lined up, etc. All that and from the day I walked in there to the day I left, I was the top-selling barista, beating out employees, managers and shift leaders who had been there for five years and more. Furthermore, the manager of the store when I worked there, upon my leaving, told me to come back whenever I wanted and he would rehire me on the spot.
This all blends into the second part of today's life lesson of not fucking with the people who handle your food and/or beverages. If you are you are a) stupid and b) an asshole. I put stupid first because the people who handle your food are working harder for less money and if you piss them off they may or may not have a "spitting" problem that tends to activate around asshole customers' food and/or beverages. Trust me, if it's spit that makes it into your consumables, you're lucky. I've seen some pretty nasty things put into food in my time but frankly, each time I turned a blind eye to it. Some people just deserve to eat piss soup.
On my last half-day at the coffee shop, I was still under the delusion that I had a job and was getting a handle on the coffee bar, which timed its own shots but had a nasty habit of pulling a ton of bad ones for some reason or another (an espresso shot should be pulled between 18-22 seconds otherwise it's bad) and constantly needed adjusting. I was wishing for the machine I initially learned on where you ground and tamped your own espresso and timed your own shots and actually had to know by sight and smell whether the shot was good. Things were going pretty well, though, and I was getting more familiar with the drinks, etc when the trendiest, most blonde woman I have ever seen sidled up to the area where you pick up your drinks. She had ordered some sort of drink that had a thousand notations on it: the "I'm a control freak" drink as I like to call it. Aforementioned awesome manager was steaming milk for me and I leaned over to ask her a question when the woman started shaking her head like she was terrified and said, "No...no..I don't...I don't..want TRAINEE COFFEE. I want it...how I like it." As soon as these words left her mouth, it took me a moment to process it. My brain went through an "are you a human being?" scan and then my eyes looked over to the uber manager who was saying nothing but I could sense gears moving frantically in her head and then out of her mouth came this: "Wendy, could you go toast that bagel?"
Now we are back to being an asshole.
Nothing else was said to me about this interaction. The fact that I was demeaned by a customer and further demeaned by super manager, which I brought up to the owner over the phone during my long distance firing and nothing was said in response, was so beyond my grasp that I think I put too much cream cheese on that fucking bagel. I'm sure whoever ate it will live with my trainee bagel.
There is no moral to the story because these people have no morals.
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