Job Description

Barista

When you tell people that you worked at Starbucks as a barista expect the question of “what’s your guys’ best drink?” I never ordered Starbucks up until the point of working there, but on the rare occasion I go back as a customer I will order a brown sugar oat milk shaken espresso. Now that we have that out of the way, for all of you non-coffee addicts, the job of a barista includes making coffee based drinks, but at Starbucks add refreshers and blended drinks to that list.

For the arm and leg that customers give up buying a drink, I tried my best to make sure they leave out the door happy.

Each morning I clocked into my shift, I served three different roles:

• Opener

• Barista

• Greeter

Opener

My opening shift usually lasted from 4:30 am till about 9:30 am. I woke up at 3:30 am to get myself ready for work and the school day. On the bright side, a coffee shop and a tired worker are a match made in heaven. 

My opening shift started with prepping for the doors to open at 5:00 am. I turned on the espresso machines, heated up the ovens, stocked up on anything the floor was short on, and brewed the teas. I typically finished up this process in less than 30 minutes because customers started knocking on the door right at the hour mark.

The best way to explain this role is, as an opener, I set the store up for success during the day. Every little thing mattered. For example, you don’t want to run out of brown sugar syrup on the floor during rush hour, trust me. That’s equivalent to sending out an army into war with no ammo in their weapons.

Barista

The number of drinks to memorize overwhelmed me, but over the first couple of weeks you start to pick up on everything since a decent amount of the drinks are made similarly.

Starbucks likes to make things a bit more confusing with the naming of their sizes. The order goes kids, tall, grande, venti, and trenta. The list in simpler terms would go extra small, small, medium, large, and extra-large. I know it sounds unnecessary to explain Starbucks’ sizing’s, but I can’t tell you how many times angry customers expected their tall latte to actually be the tallest size.

Here’s an example of the similarity for two different hot drinks. Let’s say I’m working on a grande hot mocha and a grande hot vanilla latte. I fill each cup with three pumps of syrup (mocha or vanilla), queue two shots of espresso, and steam and pour the milk in with the syrup and espresso. The only difference between these two drink processes is the added whipped cream in the mocha.

Now this process changes a bit depending on the preferences of the customer, but, for the most part, the overall framework stays the same. For example, customers asked for the milk in their latte to be steamed extra dry. In human terms, this means they want their milk foamier than liquid-y. For the coffee lovers out there, if you’re thinking,” That’s a cappuccino, Marc, not a latte”, you’d be correct. But the customers demand they don’t want a cappuccino. They want an extra dry latte. For the prices that they paid, I made any drink order no matter how strange with zero issues.

Greeter

The work as a greeter is expected to be done simultaneous to the work as a barista 

Starbucks loves their connectivity. The store received a connectivity score at the end of each month on a score out of 100. Customers who paid with the mobile app and filled out the survey after their visit graded their experience. This score focused on things like experience in the store, how much we tried getting to know you as an individual, whether the baristas went above and beyond during your visit, and whether or not we were willing to give the customers the shirt off our back. Or at least that’s what it felt like at times.

Now don’t get me wrong, the best part of being a barista involved chatting with the customers, but in the morning, at the peak of foot traffic in the store, drink orders filled every possible part of our space in the bar. I want you to picture thirty plus eyes piercing at you waiting for their trenta white mocha with extra syrup, whip, and caramel drizzle. Are you going to tell me you’d still care about Debra’s day with a row of the drinks the size of a full-grow python waiting to be made?

For every five customers, you have one complicated customer. Some of my experiences include being yelled at for our blueberry oatmeal shortages, customers threatened to call corporate for having out of stock items on our menu, and, the most fun of all, I played tug of war with a random stranger who tried to steal customers' drinks. These customers made work more interesting, and they kept me on my toes. 

Passive Sentences: 9.3%

Flesch Reading Ease: 68.2

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 8.4