Barista Hell: When Doing Your Job Goes All Kinds Of Wrong
From abruipo, TalesFromYourBarista
When I was in high school I used to work for Starbucks. I was probably 15 or 16 at the time, and I live in a crowded southwest city. The high school I went to was public with over 3,000 kids. I dealt with a lot of crazy. This happened within the first three months of me working there. Every single corporate barista knows the drill of making friendly, appropriate small talk with customers, especially if you are working a drive-thru and customers are waiting for their drinks and you have nothing else to do.
Well one night, a couple in a car pull up and order typical date night/family adventure drinks. Sugary fraps and a lemonade or some shit. They come up to the window and I see they have a little girl in the backseat. She couldn't be more than two years old and she was definitely the daughter of the woman on the passenger side.
They come up to the window and I go through the motions of asking them about their day and if they all have any plans--making eye contact with both of them and smiling and nodding etc.
All of a sudden the woman in the seat starts screaming at me with loudest, sassiest, thickest Mexican accent I had ever heard, "EXCUSE ME?! Why don't you get back to your work you little slut? Stop flirting with my man and back the fuck off. Get back to your work. Just turn around and do your job. Go. Go away. Don’t look at him! Turn around and GO!!"
The driver, a young man, has the widest apologetic eyes I have ever seen. The little girl in the backseat? Still there, silent. The customer still proceeded to spew her insecure nonsense on me for I don't know how long.
I was flustered, since I was fucking 16 years old getting yelled at by an adult woman for no reason, and replied, "I literally have no idea what you're talking about. Talking to you guys is my job. this is what I do. but OK."
I gave them their drinks and that was that. I told my coworkers what happened and went about my night.
But then, one hour later, a car pulls into the drive through and it's that same young man from before but in a DIFFERENT car WITHOUT his woman or his child. He starts apologizing to me etc. and I laughed and said it's okay...
Aaaand then his voice changed. He got all ASMR (aka that shivery feeling down your spine) on me and started asking me for my number.
Me: "Uhhh I don't have a phone."
Then he said, "We should be friends. Maybe you could show me some cool places around the city. Do you know of any cool places?"
Me: "Uhhh I have enough friends." And then I turned around and left.
I hated them both but I also ended the night kind of feeling a bit sorry for her.
--abruipo
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