Just Say VivanNO.

Though I recently stressed the annoyance of Frappaccinos here (which I apparently didn't stress enough, judging by how many I made this weekend. Thanks a lot, guys), there was one very special blended drink that I wanted to talk to all of you about today. Not many of you have probably heard about it. It's called...
(dun dun dun)
...The Vivanno Smoothie.

This seemingly innocuous beverage is made with the flavor you specify (strawberry, orange-mango, or chocolate), the milk you specify (2%, skim, whole or soy), a whole, frozen banana, ice and a protein/fiber powder.

The specs of the drink are as follows:

Calories 270	Calories from Fat 40
	% Daily Value*
Total Fat 4.5g	7%
Saturated Fat 2g	10%
Trans Fat 0g
Cholesterol 15mg	5%
Sodium 140mg	6%
Total Carbohydrate 48g	17%
Dietary Fiber 6g	24%
Sugars 30g
Protein 18g

(260 cal, 2 g fat for orange mango, 280 cal 1.5 g fat for strawberry, and of course changes in milk or other modifications will change the facts) src

Sounds awesome, right? It's a delicious and tasty meal replacement that is way, way better for you than that venti Java Chip you were getting. Plus it'll help you poop better! Whee!

Two minor points: it only comes in a grande. Oh, and when had the way it's supposed to be had, it tastes bland and awful.

We tried to like this drink. When it first came out, we had a box of recipes just for the Vivanno so that we could (try to) like it. And we did, after we took out the protein powder and added white mocha and caramel or extra strawberry with classic. Or took out the banana and the protein powder and the milk and just blended ice, strawberry syrup and classic syrup.

Of course, the way we have to make it is a big factor too. It's a multi-step adventure, all of it completely inconvenient. We start with the flavor, then the milk (unless it's chocolate, then we reverse those steps), then the banana (which can only be out of the freezer for four hours before it become a sad and soggy disaster), and blend once on #2. Then we add eight ounces of ice and two scoops of protein powder, and blend again on #2. For a store that was built as convenience personified, with its frappuccino dispensers and its cup sticker labels, the Vivanno is a hair-ripping masterpiece of drama and angst.

The end result of all this was a product that sounded great on paper but was bland, lifeless, and was, above all, incredibly annoying to make. It was impossible to get behind but we were forced in one summer to sell more of them than household toilets across the world could possibly take (lulz, potty talk, fwee!) (speaking of, remind me that I want to tell you all the fun bathroom stories I have.)

And yet. People really do buy them. The ones who buy it to lose weight or to bulk up for football camp or whatever, I don't mind making the Vivanno for them. The people who are genuinely interested in getting more fiber, protein and potassium in their diets, good for you! We should all be crazy people riding to Starbucks on our bikes and writing jog blogs while sipping on our coffee in said Starbucks that we've just biked to.

However, in middle-middle class suburban Pennylvania, outside of Pittsburgh, there are so few of those type of people it's...it's a little sad, actually. And to those people, the word "smoothie" is a magical word that promises unicorns and fairies and size 0s and Aslan. They get it, and they hate it. They get it for their kids, and their kids hate it. THEY PUT WHIPPED CREAM ON IT. And I hate it.

Summer is coming up. Smaller bikinis with less cellulite peeking through probably sounds amazing to you all. But if you decide to diet at Starbucks, and think that the Chocolate Banana Vivanno will replace the double chocolatety chip you've been drinking, just know that it won't, and that we are all very disappointed in you.

Dear Sirs

To all the henpecked husbands of the world:
We understand that you hate your wives, your lives, your kids and your jobs, but could you maybe next time not agree to drive her through the Starbucks drive thru to get her skinny cinnamon dolce?

Oh No, Frappuccino.

Fifteen years ago, Starbucks hit the coffee shop lottery and changed the way people drink coffee all in one fell swoop. In 1995, a California Starbucks began blending coffee, ice and milk together for their customers, and to everyone's surprise, they liked it. The Frappuccino was born, and that year Starbucks began selling Mocha and Coffee flavored blended beverages to the public.
A mere decade and a half later, and these became a phenomenon that would sell in the millions daily, and would make almost every barista sob quietly into their blenders at the mere mention of the word.

I'm not going to tell you here to stop drinking frappuccinos. If you like them, by all means continue to drink them. In fact, that goes for everything I whine about here--caramel macchiatos, cappuccinos, using sleeves, etc. If it's something that you like to do, and it's something that not doing anymore would make every Starbucks visit a lot less fun, then please, don't let my whining scare you from continuing. The only thing that we ask is that you be nice while you do it. Nice, friendly, and maybe even thoughtful.

My biggest peeve, or at least one of my biggest peeves, with frappuccinos is the fact that there are almost no ways to cut down on the time it takes to make one. On the hot bar, we can have milk ready, we can have shots ready, and almost every ingredient is independent of the others. If I find out after I've started making the latte that a syrup has been added, the world is not going to end. I can add it on top of the shots, on top of some of the milk, or I can start it again in a new cup without wasting a lot of time. Same goes for shots and, to some degree, milk, and the whole time I'm working on one drink, I'm also working on two or three others at the same time.

Frappuccinos don't allow this. If someone changes their mind on the syrup or the base halfway through, the entire drink needs to be dumped and restarted. We only have three pitchers in our store and two blenders, so if I have a line of four different blended drinks, I can't even get started on the fourth until I finish at least one. At the hot bar, I can put the syrup in and get the milk I need ready and eventually steamed even if it's the eighth or ninth in line. When you're in a hot bar stride and you get a line of frappuccino cups, well, if you're lucky someone will help you out, and if it's too busy for that, then that's about the time your entire day is ruined.

It wouldn't be such a bummer if you didn't know the types of people that were ordering, too. Like take, for instance, vanilla bean, double chocolatety chip, and strawberries and cream. You know when you hear that that you're making it for either a small child, a make-up obsessed teenage girl, or a bro. If it's a caramel frappuccino, it's for a female student or a middle aged woman. In fact, of all our customers, those that get frappuccinos are USUALLY the most annoying.

Take, for instance, the people that persist in calling them "Fraps." As was beaten into me when I was first trained, Starbucks has a trademark on the name "frappuccino" and is almost terrifyingly proud of the word that has whored itself away so much for them. Our first week of training they brainwashed away the urge to say anything else but Frappuccino, and whenever I hear a fellow barista say "frap," my first instinct is it grab them by the nape of the neck and pound their face into the counter over and over again until they utter the last three syllables of the word.
But beyond that, the word "frap" just sounds annoying. It's like the word "ranch." No matter what a pleasant voice the orderer has, as soon as they say "frap" it sounds like they're a middle aged lady who lives in a trailer chain smoking cigarettes with her cats. You can't sound intelligent and use the word "frap," it's scientifically impossible. Try it. It's not working, is it?

Free Pastry Day!

This past Tuesday was Free Pastry Day at Starbucks. I would have mentioned it earlier, but I was too busy a-tucking in my white napkin and getting ready for the joy that would be my free cinnamon roll.
Just kidding, I had class and missed it. Luckily, this also meant that I wasn't at work at the time of said riot-inducing free handout day.

For those of you that couldn't guess, any day that Starbucks decides to give you people something for free, it leads to pants-pooping terror for those of us at the register and behind the bar. Free stuff means that you told your friends, and your friends told their friends, and their friends told their coworkers, and that hordes and hordes of people are going to be charging the register in angry mob-like fashion ready to bludgeon to death the first person that gets in their way or denies them the sweet nectar of the freedom of free stuff, usually the barista who, due to circumstances not their fault, has run out of whatever was free.

And aw shucks, I missed it.

Yesterday, from what I've heard, was no different, though at the very least it wasn't advertised as widely as it could have been and it ended at 10:30am. We weren't even allowed to talk about it until Tuesday, which is why I actually forgot about it until I read the misery-filled Facebook statuses of my coworkers. And lol'd, because I mean, sucks to be them, amirite? Or at least that's what I'll say until Starbucks decides to have free tall vanilla bean day or free caramel macchiato day and everyone else has had the foresight to call off in advance.

Then I'll probably be the first one with a pitchfork in my eye, tied to a pole, and burned.

Mmmm

Opening a brand new bag of coffee and breathing deeply into it has to be one of the best things in the universe.


Opening a brand new bag of coffee and breathing deeply into it by an open window when it's spring and the flowers have just started to bloom and someone just cut the grass right before it rained on asphalt has to open up a door to Narnia.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday.

I know for a fact that all of my coworkers would agree with me when I boldly declare that Sundays suck.

I don't know if it's a Starbucks Phenomenon or if it's one that spreads across the entire food/retail span, but I have never, once, in my entire working life enjoyed a Sunday that I spent whilst at work in Starbucks. This goes from the mall to the drive thru to my brief stint downtown and back to the drive thru. They are all pretty much terrible.

I'm not sure what does it. Almost every customer that comes into the store that day will act like they've been caged for the past 15 years and have finally escaped into the wilderness, unused to human contact and reasonably disgruntled at the world for keeping them locked up. We get the most socially inept, awkward, idiotic, and bizarre people that decide to come to Starbucks on Sundays. It's like every Sunday is a full moon and it gives them all teh crazees. Even our normally crazy customers (here's looking at you, Soy Latte Guy) are extra crazy on Sundays.

Crazy customers are pretty much the feed and fodder of a typical coffee chain, though, they're the lifeblood that keeps the espresso flowing, so it's not just the fact that they exist and love coffee that makes Sundays so completely miserable.

Sundays lead to awkward orders in the drive thru, with weird pauses and screams from the back seat, with the yellers and the people who order their drink and inexplicably drive away before they get it. They lead to bizarre and unjustified complaints, like the woman who squeezed herself under the half-closed gate into the Starbucks in the mall at 6:01 (when we closed at 6) and proceeded to berate us and leave threatening messages for days afterward because she was "disabled" and didn't appreciate having to duck under the gate. Sundays lead to unexpected and usually time consuming and day ruining disasters, like this Sunday when apparently the pastry case exploded. Or the day that all of the drains decided to back up because someone had dropped an overturned iced venti cup into the drain some weeks previous. Or the thousands of times the espresso machine has done something unfortunate, usually involving water and drinks taking much longer to make. Sundays also invariably lead to a usually competent manager doing that day's schedule with their eyes closed and their fingers in their ears screaming Bowie lyrics while they punch in the information with their elbows. There will be insane conflicts and under scheduling and lengthy gaps between one shift of people and the next, leaving rushes to be taken care of by two or three people.

I mean, to some extent it is understandable. Sundays at the mall meant old people and harassed mothers squeezing in 3 extra hours of panic and anger into a shopping trip that had to be cut short by 6. Sundays at the Market Square meant that all Point Park dancers would come to our store because the school's was closed, ordering their nonfat sugar free caramel macchiatos and vanilla beans (for the ones that will soon no longer be dancers) which was more painful than what I imagine childbirth to be. I can't explain the drive thru's Sundays, but I'm guessing it's built over an ancient burial ground or something. On Sundays, too, most clever thinking employees have claimed unavailability, citing "homework" or "religion," so managers are left with very few people to work with, and every Sunday it's always the same people. I understand it, I just don't like it.

Every Sunday, I stand by my post at the bar and I dream of one day in the future when I, too, can work in a tiny cubicle doing very unimportant work for a boss that will underpay and under appreciate me, just because I know, I know, that then I will have Sundays off.

It's True

There are some days that I can't get the smell of coffee off of me, no matter what I do.

There are some days that I don't want to.

Sleep > Caffeine

So, as many of you should know, this past Sunday was the day that we turned our clocks forward an hour. Those of you that don't know, I hate to break it to you, but you're late.

A post like this would probably, I'm sure, have been more relevant three days ago, but my sleep schedule has been so off that I've been wandering around in a nap-like state since Sunday, which would have made for some bizarre and hilarious writing.

Why, you may ask (though you probably wouldn't), has my sleep schedule been so torn apart? Because on Sunday, on the day that we lost an hour of precious, beautiful sleep, I was scheduled to be at work at 5:30 ay em. Five. Freaking. Thirty. In. The. Morning. I didn't even know that was a real time. Apparently it is, and it's a lonely and dark time, a quietness into which only the saddest of people dare to venture out into. What helped a little more was the fact that it felt like 4:30, and, indeed, the clock in the car still read the real time. What helped further was the fact that the entire night had been spent doing sleep math (you know, when you lie there and do the math on how much time you have to sleep and how long you'll be sleeping if you fall asleep right then instead of actually sleeping) and, all in all, picked up about two hours of sleep.

And whine. It was terrible. I may never recover.

Of course, it was proven to me early that shift that I wasn't the only one miserable to be alive, since the second customer I had that morning rolled down her window, handed me her money, and said, "I don't like you," and nothing else.

It's Drizzle, Fo Shizzle.

So the last time I ranted and raved and whined like a little bitch, it was about whipped cream. And yes, I do still hate whipped cream with all my heart. At least, in the hands of other people. Not neccessarily in my drinks. And yes, I can be a hypocrite, I'm the one who makes my drinks.

However, as it turns out, there is a sickeningly sweet and sugary topping that makes me sadder than whipped cream ever will. Because not only is this topping more annoying to apply than whipped cream, the fact remains that while just about everyone loves whipped cream, for the most only people who should be skewered demand the one that I am enigmatically referring to.

Caramel drizzle. Specifically, extra caramel drizzle.

This is actually a poorly colored picture of the blood of my enemies
(read: those who get extra drizzle on their drinks)
raining from above.

Caramel drizzle is a staple of air-headed hair-twirler drinks, like caramel macchiatos and caramel frappuccinos. Since this type of person is really into brands but not so much into coffee, the drizzle is pretty much the sole reason for the purchase of the drink. So, rather than just order something that they'd enjoy (like a Diet Pepsi, or a solid meal for once), they just ask for extra (or extra extra, but in a grating, high pitched tone) of the one thing that they like.

Good ol' Caramel "Gouge Out My Eyes With A Spoon" Drizzle.

So why so terrible? Let me just says that there are several things that throw a wrench directly into the well-oiled machine that is our Starbucks dream team. Emptying out a frequently used ingredient is one of them. Having a customer add details or beverages at the end of the bar or at the window is another. Running out of clean milk pitchers is a third.

And making me stand over your freaking cup while I use every ounce of my strength to pour a thick, syrupy and by all means reluctant to leave the bottle substance by the boatload into the bottom while I neglect the line of drinks piling up around me and knowing full well that despite the fact that you paid no extra to get the gallon that you're demanding you will complain to my superiors if it is lacking will do it every time. Not only that, but, for whatever reason, my normally reasonable manager (what's up, Haylee!) poops herself if you try to make it easier to pour the caramel (like cutting off the narrow tips of the drizzle spouts or warming the caramel) and since it is still winter, caramel is a frozen and angry beast. It pretty much makes for a terrible two minutes making a drink.

As if that weren't enough, most people, when they want extra caramel (usually in a frappuccino) they want to see the evidence in a caramel mosaic on the inside of the cup. If it's not making a beautifully untidy pattern around the sides, then it's not been extra caramel'd, and oops, someone's driving away gwumpy. But. Caramel on the inside of a cup has no effect whatsoever on the flavor of the drink. Unless you stir it in (impossible) or melt it in (you got a frappuccino, buckaroo), or wait until the drink is gone and turn the cup inside out and lick off the sides (ew?) you're not going to experience the joy. So Starbucks is out whatever it cost to put two thirds of a bottle of caramel into your drink, we've got carpal tunnel syndrome from squeezing our little hearts out, and you're getting about the same effect as you would if we'd just taken a scented brown marker and scribbled on the sides. Everyone loses.

So please. Please. Just say no to extra caramel saucing. Remember kids, everyone gets hurt when you get extra caramel.

Whip it, please. And whip it well.

The most popular thing we have at Starbucks isn't a drink. It isn't a pastry, either. And it's free.

Our most popular item is whipped cream, and omg. Whipped cream. About 95% of the beverages we make have some whip-specific detail in the custom box. Whipped cream leads to some of the most baffling and frustrating scenarios we have at Starbucks.

The devil.

I guess I should start with a basic run down of our whipped cream. We have the carbon dioxide whippers and we "make" it with our vanilla syrup and 16 oz of heavy whip. It really is delicious, like creamy manna from the heavens, but the amount of whipped cream that goes on a grande hot beverage adds up to 120 calories and 10 g of fat. One hundred and twenty calories for what essentially adds up to less than a condiment, one that melts almost immediately into the beverages and, with how much sugar is already in most of our drinks (particularly those that get whip), is never tasted.

And yet, when a middle aged woman on a diet purchases a drink from Starbucks, the whipped cream is where she will, invariably, crack. And if she's feeling particularly guilty about it, blush, giggle, and assure us that she knows it's silly, but she does love whipped cream so, and really, it does make the drink. To which, in response, I will lie.

It is helpful, though, because when I see the add whip line on the cup, I immediately know that the rest of the details don't matter. I don't have skim milk ready? Oh well, it's already with whip, 2% can't hurt. They wanted sugar free? Yeah, can't taste the difference with all that whip on top, can she. If you don't seem to care, why should we?

Alright, alright, I suppose whipped cream on diet drinks is almost understandable. Everyone cheats, after all. Still more inexplicable is the whip on soy drinks, which we make with depressing frequency. I like to imagine that those people go home and put bacon on their veggie burgers.

Worse yet are the subtle annoyances of whipped cream on an iced beverage. I don't mean frappuccinos. Those are pretty much sugar spun lard shakes anyways, adding a dollop of sugary milkfat isn't going to make much of a difference. I mean the drinks with actual ice cubes floating in them. Cold drinks, if I may remind everyone, are drunk from the bottom up when sipped through a straw. Whipped cream, due to its adorable whippy qualities, floats firmly on the top. Ice cubes don't fit through a straw. What I'm trying to get here is that, unless you wait for it to melt or just suck it off the top, you will never, ever get to taste that delicious whipped cream on your iced vanilla latte. It will get stuck in the ice and, once there, it is yours no longer. It is therefore a pointless addition that countless people ask for every day.

Honestly, the most annoying thing about it is the fact that it seems to be such a neccessity. There are people who will riot and send in complaints and bitch and moan if we leave it off. All for something that amounts to little less than a sugary condiment. This, I'm pretty sure, is what's wrong with our country.

And You Wanted That With No Onions, Ma'am?

If you are ever offered the chance to work at a Starbucks drive-thru, run away as fast as possible in the opposite direction. If they have you backed into a corner, take out your rape whistle, blow it as hard as you can, and spray them with pepper spray.
You want to avoid it, is what I'm trying to get at here.

Now, despite my rants and ramblings and bitchy little whinefests, Starbucks is a pretty decent pre-career job. It's fun, it's interesting, it has decent benefits, it makes you feel slightly more important than most other minimum wage workers, and it gives you the chance to mainline caffeine for free when you need it most. In fact, I enjoy it so much that, as evidenced here, I actually take it seriously.

That paragraph detailing the finer points in life, however, does not at all, even slightly, not even a little bit extend to the drive-thru.

This is the first image that pops up when you Google "drive-thru."
It's like they know.

I have never worked at another drive-thru besides Starbucks before in my life. I don't know how much more terrible it is when fries are involved. But I can say that, with coffee and forced kindness, the drive-thru really is its own circle of hell.

I've condensed most of my hatred to the bing, the accursed bing, that occurs as soon as a vehicle drives up to the box. It causes Pavlovian responses of anxiety and the sweats every time most of us hear it, and it is usually a harbinger of doom.

Stories. Stories. I'm sure you want some drive-thru specific stories. I'm sure I got some.

Like...let's see...I told you about the guys who wanted the COW (coffee of the week), were mad that we didn't do that anymore, and tipped us in cherry slushie. How about the old, old man and his old, old wife that rammed into the back of the woman in front of them whilst navigating that difficult drive between the box and the window? How about the woman who drove in through the exit, stopped at the window, and couldn't understand why we refused to take her order until she was facing the right way? Oh, and then there's the total lack of volume control. And every. single. freaking. diesel. truck. that comes through. And the fact that almost every order is phrased like a Jeopardy answer. And the cold. Ohhh the cold. And the people on cell phones, and the people who drive up to the window with a fist full of bills punching the air before you even get over to your drawer, and the people who change their orders when they get all the way up to the window so that we have to shout it over to whomever's on bar because it won't reprint the sticker. And the people with angry, whiny children who have to shout over them to order their hot chocolates.

And...and...and...everything. Every. Thing.

However, like all clouds, there is a silver lining (or a gold one, when the sun peeks through).
In a drive-thru, especially one so close to PetSmart, we get puppies.
And that, my dears, is worth 5 diesel trucks and someone who drives straight up to the window any day.

Taxplosion!

January 1st to April 15th is a lovely time in the United States, a time to find out just how hard the government is taking you from behind for what you've dared to do the year before.
I understand that everyone already knows this, that it comes to no surprise to anyone, and that it only connects myself and my job in the same ways that it connects everyone else and everyone else's jobs and is therefore not really worth writing about, but, well.

Argh.

For the first time in my working life, I owe money to our government. The only reason why I owe money to our government is because Mr. Paycheckwriter has been unusually incompetent both this and last year, and decided to take out only 7% of my income when a good 13% needed to be taken out. And, since I'm a dependent on my parent's taxes (I do what I can for you, mom and dad), my meager paychecks aren't twisting anyones heartstrings. No deductions for the poor college student, nossir.

I've come to grips with this. I'm ok with it now. However, in trying to prevent it from happening again this year, I came across another Argh. moment: logging into the partner page on the Starbucks website. Which I haven't yet fully signed up for. Which I was hoping to sign up for at home.

The only page I can reach, though, leads me to two sections: "I Have a Global Name and Password" and "International Partners". I don't qualify for either, but the first section seems more promising than the other. Under the log in are options for if you forget either your username or your password, which clearly I do.

But. BUT. To be reminded of your password, you need to know your password. And to change your password you need to know your password. And to enroll. To create. Your password. You need to know your password. And. And. But. I don't. I don't know it. And. Argh.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you've ever wondered what working at Starbucks is like, the above section sums it up much better than anything else I could ever, ever tell you.

/rant

Make it a Venri.

I hate our sizes.

It's not the amount of ounces I hate, or the fact that they're misleading, or the fact that Starbucks decided that "small" wasn't coffee enough for them.

It's the reaction of the entire world toward the difference in size names that really, really makes em' so irksome.

Starbucks, when they named their drink sizes back in the 70s, did what a lot of companies do: take something common, and add a creative twist to it. They changed the names of their smallest and, at that time, larger beverage to short and tall. Later, they added grande, and then again, because if Americans can't guzzle disgustingly large quantities of fattening beverages, no one can, they later added the venti.

An explanation for all? When it was just short and tall, that made sense. One is short and one is, comparatively, tall. When American appetites demanded an extra four ounces, to call it grande also made sense, because at that point, that was the large. Why spend tons of money changing the middle size's name? Then, again later, venti made sense as well, sort of. Venti means 20, which is how many ounces are in a hot venti beverage. Short was taken off the menu, because it was laughable that anyone would cut their portion sizes to a meager eight ounces.

I applaud them for this. In the world of advertising, this is brilliant. The words 'tall', 'grande', and 'venti' are now synonymous with Starbucks, and, psychologically, all of the beverages (despite short) sound big and sound like a good deal.

Unfortunately, to most people, changing that sanctity of small, medium, and large is akin to replacing Elmo with a Hitler muppet. People have been whining about it for over three decades now. In anybody's list of Starbucks complaints, the size names rank right up there with the high prices, the fact that it sucks money from ma and pa shops, and their opinion of the coffee.

(By the way, I have nothing against ma & pa shops. I think they're quaint and I like seeing so-called normal people make money doing something they love. That being said, not only are most ma and pa shops not as up to standard in milk and food handling procedures as Starbucks, but a lot of them also use Torino syrups, which are the equivalent of sweetening your coffee with cheap sugary sewage. So if saving those are part of your excuse to hate on every Starbucks employee, then...well, I'm cursing at you in my head.)

These people, who are annoyed by it, are also completely annoying when they're forced to come in. I am being paid to call them by their appropriate sizes. I repeat: I HAVE TO CALL THEM TALL, GRANDE, AND VENTI. So when I repeat it back to you, in its translated form, I am not arguing with you. I am calling them by what I am paid to call them.

So many people don't understand this. I'm not correcting you. I really don't care what you call our sizes, unless it doesn't translate to something we sell (what do you think is "regular," sir?) or unless it's something really funny. Like tall-ay.

Now I understand that there are some baristas out there who aim to give us all a bad name. All you can do with those baristas is just not argue and leave assured that their coworkers hate them just as much as you do.