Our store was closed today (along with all 7,100 stores across the country) to retrain everyone on what exactly a good espresso shot and good steamed milk should be like. Might have seem like a waste of time (training went from 6-9) and money (i got paid!), but its totally going to improve the drinks - esp in the ny area. People here don't get trained b/c there simply isn't time to do so. Its way difficult to have the trainer and trainee on one bar for 25 min steaming and resteaming milk to get the perfect cappuccino while you have a line out the door, and not enough people to get things done. This one guy has been working at my store since early December, and he's never made a drink before in his life. b/c he doesn't know how. hes always assigned to only do things liek deep cleaning, and on the rare occasion he'll be on register. Its sad, but he talks like theres no god damn tommorow, so I kind of am okay with him scrubbing the back room. Thats real bad of me, but whatever.
SO yey, I'm for this training but the worst thing was that we had to close the store on a Tuesday night. On Tuesdays we always get a group of 10 or so homeless/handicapped people who ask for 1826353 venti waters, a tall hot chocolate, a tall vanilla steamer with whole milk (after we answer her bajillion questions about how many calories are in the coffee, mocha, hazelnut latte, carmel aple spice, americano, rice crispy treat, oven, whole milk...), a grande milk with ice put in first!!!. This one guy is s freaking loud and he reminds me of fat albert. He says things like "heeeeaayyyy can i geuuhht a ven teeee waataaahhh." At Christmas time he came up to us when he was leaving and said that he wasn't going to see us next week b/c of christmas, so he wished us a merry Christmas and he would see us in 2 weeks. Another guy who always wears a hat cleaned everything the mess that they made on night and came up to proudly tell me that he did it & I wouldn't have to. They're just really sweet people and we treat them like every other customer or just human beings, which I don't think that they get a lot.
Last night, they all came to the (locked) door together and didn't understand how we could be closed. It was heartbreaking, and if it wasn't such a big deal that all us starbucks were closed, I'm sure we would have let them in.
From now on (or atleast until we can fade it away in the next few days) we have this pledge to ask every customer if their drink tastes exactly how they wanted it, and if not, we'll do it over. We always have this policy, but the whole asking everyone thing is either going to bring out the pain in the ass customers or the ones that are really genuine (like the one who tasted is grande mocha and said "yummy!!"). Whatever, I'm just so relieved that I'm not working till Thursday