We all love a fun and refreshing coffee drink every now and again, and thanks to various videos on TikTok, there is plenty of inspiration to be found from others who have come up with their own versions of secret menu drinks to order at Starbucks.
While these can drinks can seem like a delicious idea, we sometimes forget that there is someone on the other end that will have to make them for us. Some of these complicated orders can actually make life for a Starbucks barista extra difficult.
We often forget that life for a barista can be demanding, especially now with the increased pressures coming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Many workers found that their jobs doubled in terms of demand due to pandemic safety protocols that were put in place.
But alarmingly, many also found that there was an increase in verbal and even physical abuse from customers who were not happy about certain policy changes because of the pandemic.
As a result, there are many who believe that these workers are not being paid enough to satisfy the demanding workload that has been placed upon them by the added pressures of working through a pandemic.
One Starbucks shift supervisor from New York said to The Guardian, “The labour hours we get are not enough for the sheer volume of orders that we have to produce. They’re asking way too much of us and a lot of the time I don’t have enough people on the floor to do all the things that Starbucks asks us to do.”
As for the TikTok videos, the shift supervisor said that complicated orders are steadily on the rise and they’re making life that bit harder. They have caused workers to struggle to keep up with orders and quotas since some of these recipes are very lengthy and specific and require much more work than what should be done for a single drink.
But more so, the shift worker said that they’ve reflected how some members of the public view Starbucks baristas and expect them to be these overly efficient “robots” that are always on the highest speed.
Another Starbucks barista with a Maryland branch said that a lot of people seem to still believe that customer service should be prioritized over the health and safety of workers in the middle of a pandemic.
According to The Guardian, the barista said, “With mobile order or delivery, we can’t always clarify what they want and people will get very mad over sort of little stuff when you’ve made the drink almost perfectly, and it’s frustrating to feel like you can’t say we can’t really make it that way, so people treat us like coffee-making robots.”
A third barista echoed these claims, and shared that they wish people would be more mindful about the amount of work that goes into some of these drinks.
So, maybe think twice next time you’re going to order your coffee and just remember that the person serving you is still a person and they deserve a little patience and respect…and maybe a less complicated order to make.