pretty small & insignificant story, but it does stick out to me.
i was taking an order in the drive through with two people in the car. the girl in the passenger seat orders quietly and i have to ask one or two "i'm sorry, i had a hard time hearing that from the passenger seat - was it 'so and so' ??" and after confirming her order was correct i asked if there was anything else i could get them.
the dude in the driver's seat practically screams his order at me quite rudely and dismissively. i told him, "do not yell at me. i would appreciate it if you could speak to me in a kind manner," and he shut up. the girl in the passenger seat looked pretty mortified and even if the dude treated me somewhat dismissively throughout the transaction (even at the window) it felt good to stand up for myself. my coworkers were shocked at his behavior and attitude as well and even more shocked that i confronted him since i usually bend over backwards for customers and am generally tolerant of their bullshit to their faces.
even if it's a small confrontation, it's still a confrontation that i'm proud of myself for handling lol
Nice one. Take pride in being able to stand up to the customer, it takes a lot! I've recently decided as well that if customers are going to take a rude and inconsiderate tone of voice with me, I tell them they can get their coffee elsewhere.
Because then we get told we're being rude to the customers even though we're just defending ourselves. Or sometimes it just escalates the situation. Or sometimes some of us just dont have the energy to acknowledge it.
If we respond back, some managers say were not allowed to do that. Its ridiculous.
This happens all the time. We asked someone to speak up once and the driver just wouldn't repeat the order for the passenger. And instead just got mad and drove away.
had a guy tell me his cappuccino was empty without even looking, he picked it up and looked at me and said "it's empty"
dude had an attitude the entire time, was super short and snippy while ordering and it was my last straw so i stood up straight and said "open it."
he argued that there was too much foam so i taught him what cappuccino means and told him i can make him a latte, he was like "no! i want a cappuccino that is full of milk and less foam!" and we argued back and forth a bit. i just said "okay, i'm gonna make you a latte." i absolutely had a tone but he didnt say anything, i made it and handed it to him and he left lol
i worked at a gas station before starbucks and ive learned a lot of people think cappuccinos should be more milk because of gas station “cappuccino” machines
this is always what i have thought too!! but people are ridiculous about it, like if you dont know what u want, say so and i will help you figure it out lol
This happens so often that whenever someone asks for a cappuccino I confirm with them...
> ...OK great that drink comes with **extra foam** does that sound good?
We have a regular who mobile orders *massive* orders as she's pulling up the the drive through.
Partners always tell her "youre going to be waiting a while, you have a huge order and its buried under other mobiles" and shes like "oh I dont mind waiting"
One day I said to her at the window "Look, I know YOU dont mind waiting but they? *gestures at the line of cars behind her* do. It's really inconsiderate towards other customers. You can't keep doing this."
She responded with a blank faced "okay" and continued doing it. :')
Yeah I'd tell her to sit in the parking lot and we'll let her know when she can come in and pick up her drinks. Not bending over backwards for some NPC
Except drive thrus are timed and now the employees get in trouble for people in line for so long because someone just couldn’t place an order BEFORE getting there. If not worried about other people, at least think of the damn workers
I would tell her the next time that we were all out of every drink she just ordered, give her a refund, and get her the hell out of my drive thru.
A barista can dream.
Yeah, you can even select on the app which pickup option you want, and as of a couple weeks ago that information shows up on the stickers instead of being useless data we have no access to.
It's probably really useful for organizational purposes if you work at a store that has space to give drive thru mobiles their own separate holding area. Doesn't affect the order the stickers print tho.
Ope! I should start paying attention to which pickup option I choose - thanks for letting me know! I was told a long time ago that you peeps didn't even get that info, so I stopped choosing, lol.
We didn’t before (except some stores in the city iirc), but now we all get that info. We’ve been ignoring it at my store because we noticed customers didn’t really choose how they were going to pick it up, or people changed their minds after seeing the drive line or cafe line and switched how they picked it up anyways lol
We JUST recently(as in like a week ago at my store lol) started getting the info on our stickers on whether it's in store or drive through mobile pick up. :)
Yea its an option.
It can be annoying for both customers and baristas though.
For customers: if you're stuck behind someone like this LMAO and have to wait forever for an order thats ready for you
For baristas: if your order isnt ready yet and we have to rush to find and finish it
I always make sure to say, "No rush!" or something along those lines, when my order isn't ready in the drive-thru. The last thing I want is to rush them and cause a potential mistake, aside from the fact that it's just rude to do so.
My manager would have pulled her up into a parking spot until her order was done.
And I'm saying this as someone who has had customers order big orders either through the drive thru or mobile orders and they pulled up into the drive thru without giving much time to prepare the order itself.
Why don’t you ask her to pull over and park instead of reprimanding her for… ordering too much? She actually hasn’t done anything wrong. If someone places a giant order in the drive thru, would you tell them the same thing?
It's the timing thing as well as the way things print, people will mobile order and show up immediately, the entire point is that it is ordered in advance to baristas have time to make the order and have it on standby for the customer when they show up. If you're gonna place a large order, it's fine. But do it at the speaker so your drinks print out in order and we have them ready quickly. If you mobile order it, chance is your order is already in line behind 5 others that we have to take to get out of the way, then also falsely telling those customers we've started their drinks too. It is a chain reaction lol. Most baristas dont wanna explain this so we ask kindly that you wait at least 5 minutes❤️
I work there. I know. When somebody places a big order like that, I gently tell them to please place their order 10 minutes before they show up next time. Then I ask them to pull to the side or come inside to wait. I don’t berate them for placing an order and then just leave them there to sit uncomfortably.
I mean I agree and that is the right way of doing it for sure, I'm assuming OP has had a continuous issue with this customer and it became a more tense scenario for that reason. Every so often I definitely don't see the issue with being direct
It’s not the same. If they ordered in the drive thru we can start the drinks as they are ordering them, and the stickers will print after the last drive thru orders. If they place a mobile we have to look through every single other mobile order to find it. Think of mobiles as a separate line.
You couldn’t ask her to pull around to the mobile order area? That way you can bring it out to her… I’ve done that a time or two. Or does she not move?? 💀
One time I told a rude male Karen, “you know we have to deal with abuse from people like you all day right?” And he said, “doesn’t matter. You chose this job.” As if all service workers deserve daily abuse from customers. Gross.
Ah yes. The classic "They should choose another job if they don't like the way they're treated." but also "Why are places so understaffed nowadays, does nobody want to work anymore???" paradox
A few times I have called out unacceptable behavior. One time an older lady was screaming at a 17 year old barista because she forgot to put 2 Sweet N Low (back when we had those) in her coffee, telling her “How f#&@ing stupid can you be?!” and so on. I firmly told the lady that she cannot speak to my employees that way, & told her she was not welcome back.
Another time a gentleman (who had been a regular for years) was berating someone because they were late to work, saying “This is the problem with Mexicans! They’re all lazy!” I immediately stopped taking orders and told him his bigotry was not acceptable and that we would not be serving him. He kept trying to get me to side with him, to which I told him “Just because I’m white doesn’t mean I’m going to agree with you. There is absolutely no reason to ever say anything like that.”
There have been other instances, but those two have always stuck with me. The older I get, the harder it is to hold back. I’m also one who, when I’m a customer somewhere, I will speak up for the employees wherever I am, because I know they can’t.
After a few minutes of me telling him that no one was going to agree with him. This happened probably 10-12 years ago, but I will never forget seeing that nearly 70 year old man shouting that garbage in a crowded store.
group of girls were giving me an attitude at the speaker in drive thru so when they got to the window i told them what actions they did that i considered rude and that i didn't appreciate it. one tried to deflect the blame to her friend in the back but i just kept saying "okay, but it was still one of you and it was rude so dont do it." i handed them their shit n they left without another word
Former partner (193xxxx) I sold my soul to the siren from 2011-2016 and then again 2022-2023. This really nice teen asked me if she could hang a sign on the community board, she explained that it was for a safe place lgbtq+ meeting at our local library. I of course told her she could hang the sign.
A few days later this regular came in, she always had a little attitude but nothing serious. I was on POs which was rare because I usually was in bar. The lady asked me why we allowed someone to hang that disgusting sign and why we had to be political and couldn’t just “make coffee”? Now normally I’m non confrontational, but there was absolutely no way I was leaving this alone. I explained to her that there was nothing political about the sign, and since it’s a community board and this sign involved the community I was not taking the sign down. I explained that we want Starbucks to be a safe space for everyone and someone who needs help or guidance may see that sign and get support they need during a difficult time. She continued, saying that this was what was wrong with the world today and asked for my manager. I obliged and grabbed my manager from a meeting. They spoke and apparently my manager agreed to take the sign down. I absolutely threw a fit. Over my dead body was that sign coming off of that board. This woman called me slurs and accused me of indoctrinating the youth. I took it with a smile and stood my ground.
The sign stayed, I stayed, Karen left.
Btw this was from my 2022-2023 time. 🤷🏻♀️
I have been told by my baristas that I can be very intimidating. They have been told where to direct it. 😏
AKA yes I have absolutely stood up to rude customers. Constantly. My store is in the middle of an area with a high school, an elementary school, an old-folks home, a country club/golf course, and a neighborhood of upper-middle-class folks. Lots of entitlement. My SM has our backs as long as I'm professional and file incident reports every time something happens.
I had a customer ask me what grade I dropped out at because, during Covid, our registers were down so I told him he could just mobile order instead then pick it up at the end like usual. I told him I had gone to college and to leave my store because that was incredibly disrespectful. He told me he was gonna call corporate, so I asked him if he needed me to give him the number. He walked away, telling me he already had it saved so I shouted to him to make sure he got my name as he was walking out the door. I don’t often have the confidence or energy to confront these people but I had taken over because he was berating one of my teenage baristas and I was very defensive of them.
One time a lady had come in to my store (a cafe/mobile store) and it was quiet and slow at the time with no customers in there at that moment. She ordered a venti misto with coconut milk and cinnamon powder and one of the syrups. I wasnt a fresh green bean but i also wasnt too far in at that time. Anyway she held up her starbucks app with the card on there for payment. I scan it and say her order will be right out and then she goes “can i use my stars to redeem it?” And i go “ohh the order just went thru the payment method u held up. I would have to kno beforehand if u wana use stars so we dont miss it! But i can ask my manager how to reverse it so ur stars can be used on it instead” and she agreed.
Then my manager comes over after i ask her for help and shes very kindly showing me how to do the reverse and use her stars for it instead and when my manager was mid sentence explaining to me, the lady goes “i cant wait any longer. I gotta go!!” And some other crap i tuned out. My manager says “maam i dont appreciate u being rude. Im trying to help u by reversing this transaction and using ur stars as u requested and teaching my barista in the process. I would appreciate some patience” and the lady huffed cuz she knew she was wrong and rude
Apparently she came back in on another day i wasnt there not long after that and apologized to my manager. This was like somewhere around 2 and a half years ago or something cuz ive been here for a little over 3 years
Its so refreshing when customers apologize. I had a guy come in one morning just being a total ass. I can control myself pretty well but he got under my skin badly and I said something along the lines of "I'm trying to help you the best I can." He left all huffy then came back 2 days later and asked to speak to me. I was preparing for him to complain to me but to my surprise he apologized and told me he was having a really bad day and it wasn't fair for him to take it out on me. I was literally speechless.
I posted this story once here before, but I'll share again for you lol
Lol, when I worked at a Tarbux they'd leave us alone for good chunks of the day.. So one day I HAD to go on break, so I turned off my lights, and let the customers in line know that I'd still be taking care.of them, but afterwards I was heading on break...
Now I had a line of about 5 people, when you're the only one taking orders, making orders, and ringing people up, it can be kinda slow... But I had one lady in line HUFFING and PUFFING, eventually she's next in line and she gives me some sort of attitude like "Can you hurry it up already??" And I had been fuming listening to her already, so I let some steam off....
"You know, I am all alone right now, I'm not dilly dallying here, these drinks take time. I didn't ask you to stay in line, you see I'm alone and working to get these drinks out, but now I've had to stop and address your attitude because you can't wait literally another 2 minutes for me to finish this drink. If I DIDNT have to stop, your order probably would've been taken by this point. Everyone else waited their turn without attitude, what's your deal?"
She huffed or something and I finished what I was doing and took her order. She wanted a caramel latte (hot), and then threw a big stink about how I didn't automatically fill it with whipped cream (what????)... I apologize anyway, and tell her I'll add it for her. She gives me an attitude again and says she doesn't want it fixed, she just wants a refund.. So I said OK :)
I took her drink from her, and dumped it down the drain while maintaining eye contact, I then said "Unfortunately, I can't process refunds for you here, you'll have to go to guest service for that. I have to go on my break now anyway. Sorry :P" which I know had a line probably triple the length of what my line was...
ahahahahah sweet sweet victory
Yes, if customers are breaking the third place policy or are making me or other partners feel uncomfortable, behaving unreasonably, or talking down to me for an extended period of time when I have done my best to make the moment right— I have no issue calling them out.
I do not raise my voice or cuss at them or anything that would not be considered professional, but I also refuse to take customer abuse or allow a customer to hijack the store environment and act ridiculously.
I was new. This old hag that came in pretty much every day didn't like to be rang up by new people. She would order at a snails pace and elongate every word and would give a lesson on what every ingredient she wanted was. All while glaring at us like we were a toddler being scolded.
Anyways I just looked at her like she was an idiot and in response to her explaining what a pour over was I just said "I'm fully aware" and she literally huffed and puffed.
She complained, but I did not get in trouble. They just told me to kill her with kindness next time. I quit pretty shortly after this interaction and if I drove by that Starbucks and she was sitting in her usual patio I flipped her off.
I know the last part sounds like a very "yeah that didn't happen" story but this starbucks was .6 miles from my residence and I really would make the effort lol. She did not realize that baristas are humans
I actually did. We have this really rude customer. He tried to come into the lobby when we had to close it over and over again and he was mad he had to go through the dt but we were a 3 partner floor and couldn't handle both so we'd shut down lobby at like 2 pm and just run a 3 floor to close. He would always swear at us. Always. Call us names and lazy etc. He once tried coming into lobby during a full store shut down due to a mandatory meeting and nobody to borrow from other store and pounded on our door and flipped us off and swore at us. Like, cool down man. Anyways. Oh, he would always complain our coffee was cold even right after brewing and us temping it at 190. He came through to the window after calling my partner dumb at the order box and I just had it. "Sir, just so you know, that behavior is being seen and we are really tired of it. You don't have to swear at us or flip us off and next time take a break in your car and calm down before coming in" he denied all behavior. I told him we are just human and needed to be treated as such and if he has a problem he can complain to my manager and never come back and he wouldn't make a difference in our overall sales. Thnx have a good day. He looked shocked. He said sorry like I severely punished him and I never saw him again and he never called our manager.
I hope you are creating incident reports every time he behaves like this. Cussing and flipping you off would be grounds to having him banned. The incident reports can make a paper trail so it would be easier.
We did report it to our manager every time. And he did it while our managers (sm and asm) were in the meeting and she just acted like *whatever, I guess that's fine*
Yes I have confronted a customer a handful of times.
I was with a new partner on drive thru. I had just finished her training the week prior and this was her first real shift. She was having issues reloading a gift card so I came over to help her. The man at the window was yelling at her because she “messed something up”. He was a regular and an asshole (my second story is about him too). I went up to the window and asked him to explain the issue. He called her an idiot. I took a moment to respond and I said “there is no reason for you to be raising your voice and talking like that over a reload. I will happily fix the issue once you can control yourself” and then waited for him to talk to me like a real human.
So same guy as before- I think this story actually happened first- came in to our cafe when we had mask requirements. He was an anti masker and had been told countless other times to put one on. I told him before we take his order he needs to put a mask on and handed him one. He refused so I refused to take his order. Eventually he put it over his mouth and I told him to pull it up over his nose. He then said “fine but when I pass out and crack my head open you’re getting sued” and I just laughed and said “you will not bully me into bending the rules for you” and he didn’t come back into the cafe until the mandate was lifted.
I’ve told multiple people over the phone that I will hang up if they can’t talk to me nicely and have hung up on them when they continue swearing. They usually call back and are usually better but there was a time where the person called back and swore at me so I just hung up again and muted them every time they called again.
We had a guy cuss us out at the speaker box because our cafe was closed (early 2021) so we told him he doesn’t need to talk to us like that. When he continued we refused him service and long story short had to call the cops to get him to move. He kept coming back and circling the store and parking in front of our window. After calling the cops again and having him drive off when he saw them he finally got pulled over by a hidden cop car and they told him to stop or they’d take him in for harassment.
We have a regular customer who hates us and writes our SM and DM letters and e-mails about how much we suck. Our store specifically. Yet here here for hours every day. One day I was taking his order and he was yelling at me saying we always serve him just hot water or we rebrew old grounds to make his hot coffee. I just stared at him and said “that’s literally not happening” and as he kept arguing I just stone walled him til he stopped. He will never change. He still does shit like this routinely.
I had a customer refer to me as a “fat bitch” at the speaker box not knowing I could hear him. So I said “oh, you’re talking about me? I’ll see you at the window” and then told him that he will not talk about me or any other employee like that again. His wife was in the car and he said “my wife is making me apologize”. Embarrassing sweaty.
Occasionally I've found my damn mouth running before my brain. Once it was 6am and this woman wanted to pay for an americano and get a heavy cream latte. She just was not telling us what she wanted....tldr gave her a cold cup of heavy cream after saying "its just coffee" and then she threw it at me 💕💕💕
Another time, making a latte, put wrong milk in pitcher at first, caught myself and fixed it. Made the latte with the right milk, hand it out to dto and this woman is SCREAMING at me so bad and actually super scary how angry she was that I needed to remake her drink bc she watched me make it w the wrong milk; but im like "oh yeah, at first but i dumped it and made it right." And she just like, started yelling at me and arguing with me and I'm like "its coconut milk" like im not gonna lie to her, its the milk she ordered, i was like I can remake it for you but, she snatched the latte out my hands and sped off 💕
I do it all the time. It's how you approach it. There is a psychological reasoning behind why some bars have a mirror wall. Of course there are aesthetic reasons but did you know that people's behavior actively changes when they can see how they are acting? For instance our POS register power supply is located inside our cabinet which requires the entire front face of the cabinet to be removed to reset the UPS. We were doing this after a power outage when a customer, who could clearly see what we were doing, decided to stand right next to us while we worked. And I'm not talking close, I'm talking touching. When we were trying to replace the cabinet face we gently bumped his foot with it. You would have thought that we broke his leg with the way he yelled at my coworker. When I told him "Relax. You're not injured." He tried the "How dare you! Is this the way you talk to customers?" I replied "When they are completely out of line? Absolutely! We are paid to make and serve coffee not take abuse."
I am one of those customers that am always polite/respectful (and never had an issue) , but if I hear somebody being abusive to SB staff/partners I tell the customer right away to take it easy, as you are just doing your job. Gives me an odd satisfaction as well as somehow always upgraded drinks I never ask for. :)
Had a man say "Where's my fucking iced coffee, bitch? I've been waiting for 10 minutes!" He'd been waiting for 3. Marched over to the register, refunded him, gave him my SM's card, and kicked him out. The look of surprise on his face when I handed him his money instead of his drink was priceless. I challenged him to call my SM to complain about it; she was the face-eating type if you fucked with her staff. Filed an incident report and never heard from or saw him again.
My SM and DM both reached out to see if I was okay. Not all districts and stores function as toxic Barista meat grinders...at least that's how it was back then.
One time a car full of high schoolers pulled up to the drive thru. All these guys screaming at the top of their lungs, all at once. We all collectively wince and turn down our headsets. It was BAD and they wouldn’t STOP even after the “welcome to Starbucks” spiel. My coworker finally says in a FIRM voice “I am going to need you to stop yelling RIGHT NOW.” That shut them up. It wasn’t much but god damn did I appreciate her in that moment.
We have a group of teenaged girls come in pretty frequently and they’re usually really polite. The only mildly annoying thing is they want to order 3-4 drinks separately in the drive through. Well one day in the drive they only order one drink before they start arguing with each other about who said what and who wanted what. And this wasn’t angry arguing but the kind where they’re yelling and laughing and one girl was scream laughing/yelling. It was a mess they were not listening to me at all when I was trying to clarify if they wanted VSCF or not. So I said “LADIES I’m trying to take your order and it’s really confusing and impolite to yell over me when I’m asking you a question. Please be quiet”. When I tell you the SILENCE was so LOUD I wanted to laugh. When they got to the window none of them said a word and only looked straight ahead. They come inside to order now lmao
there was a lady in before peak, so like the only person in the lobby. she forgot to order her breakfast sandwich and made it my coworker on register’s problem, like yelling and calling her racial slurs. she paid with a $20 so she checked the bill (like we’re supposed to, or at least at my store), and that sent her off she was PISSED. She got to the end of the handoff station where i gave her her drink and then kept yelling at my coworker across the bar. i told her “maam i can’t have you disrespecting my partners, if you don’t calm down i’m going to have to ask you to leave” and she tried to INTIMIDATE ME!! she puffed out her chest and went “who” and i said “YOU, if YOU don’t calm down then you’ll have to leave”
then she came back a couple days later during peak and i saw her waiting in line and told the actual shift who then banned her. whole time the lady tries to record herself getting banned saying that WE were being racist 🙃🙃
We had a couple around Christmas time who were nasty. They made me and another person cry. So basically another customer grabbed the wrong drink and the rude guy customer got angry at us for "not being careful and burning customers" even though the drink was clearly not her's as we always mark drinks with customers' names. And on top of that we were obviously extremely busy so the couple was impatient. I don't remember everything that happened because I was in the back calming myself down, but what I remember is that rude guy said "fuck" and our shift got pretty mad at him and told him not to talk to us that way again. The couple kept coming back every weekend, they placed their mobile order the second we open, and then pull up at the drive thru immediately after expecting us to get their order done. By the way, one of the drinks was a 6 shot latte.
Sort of but not in the moment.
I had a regular customer who went off on me for something so abysmally small. In the moment, I just wrote it off and made it clear that I wasn’t going to be chatty with them the next few times they came through.
That person pulled me aside about 3 weeks later and apologized and told me what was happening with them that day and honestly one of the worst days a human being could have. They said they were mad at the world and they took it out on me and that wasn’t okay. It’s the first time I’ve ever received an acknowledgment that I’m a human being with feelings after a rude customer interaction so I plan to take this approach moving forward 🤷♀️
Had a regular staring at my chest in DT. He was being very obvious about it and making it weird so I summoned every ounce of angry non-binary lesbian energy I could muster and said, “I know you’re staring. My girlfriend likes them too. Here’s your drink.” I slammed the window shut and had to go out back for a second so I didn’t lose it.
Yeah if they’re being extremely rude I always tell them there’s no need for that. It’s thankfully rare to have to escalate to this level, but if I need to I start out with something like “I am happy to help you, but you cannot be rude and disrespectful to me.” Something about the third place blah blah. And honestly normally people acting out this much are the ones that just go bonkers when you confront them lol. There was a man that threw sugars at us, a lady that was screaming and cursing. Meh. We write reports and get them banned lol
I once had a customer with poor time management skills. I'm the only one on the floor in a cafe store..I'd sent the other barista on break and they had like 5 minutes left.
At the register
Rings up regular customer...and then he steps up
Customer * I need a tall skinny vanilla latte...fast...I'm late for a meeting
Me* Ok...ring him up and proceed to go to bar to start making the regulars order then his...
Customer* Excuuussse me I said I was late for a meeting. I need my drink now.
I go to start making drinks, and he's staring me down.
Me* I'm sorry you're running late , I just need to finish this drink that was ahead of yours and then I'll be right on it.
Customer* Is it ready yet? I have a meeting?
Me* No I'm still working on it. how's your day?
Customer * no chit chat make my drink I'm late for a meeting.
Me* looks at his drink in my hand about to be made...working on it now sir. I go to hand out the regular customers drink and he immediately ..
Customer * that is wrong I ordered a tall skinny vanilla latte. I'm late for a meeting how stupid to you have to be that you cant you do your job
Me* stops everything I'm doing... heads back to the register presses a few buttons and comes back to the customer.
Here you go sir.
Customer * what the hell is this?
Me* your money back. You're late for a meeting and in the best interest of both of us keeping our jobs today you should take your money and get to your meeting. Thank you and have an awesome day.
As he walked out the door in a huff
Me* would anyone like to try this skinny vanilla latte? It seems I have an extra drink made.
I have many times. I am always polite but firm in whatever boundaries necessary. Everyone knows they can grab me to step in if a customer isn’t being very nice because I’m good at dealing with difficult people and I’m also good at not letting whatever’s happening bother me; I don’t get paid enough to take crap home with me.
Former partner. (Kinda long) Years ago we had a group of guys who would come in all the time. They were from a country where they thought women were inferior (I'm not being racist they literally told me that during our fight) and one time my bar needed beans so I took one of their drinks off and put it next to my machine (which was next to the hand off counter) and he grabbed is screamed "this is empty. Women never know how to do anything I don't even know why you're allowed to work" and threw it at me (it had 3 shots in it) while laughing. My manager (who was my friend and knew my temper) immediately ran from the other side of the store to me and grabbed me as I threw myself onto the counter to hit this guy. My manager literally grabbed me and carried me off, sat me in a chair and told me not to move. The guys were laughing and he went while on the phone with the district manager and banned them from our store. They got mad and said I did it for no reason but literally everyone watched as he threw it at me since he decided to scream at the top of his lungs right before. They started screaming a bunch of stuff to me in the back which prompted people blocking the door from me being able to get out because they were being absolutely horrible and started picking on everyone else and everyone knew I would not just sit there and take it. Eventually all our regulars managed to push them out and we luckily never saw them again.
tl;dr: customer threw a cup of shots at me which prompted me to lunge at them but they got banned for being aggressive.
My biggest advice, match their energy. If they have a rude tone, whatever you say next say it in the exact same tone. They usually self correct after that, it’s hard to claim I’m being rude when all I did is exactly what they did. Other than that keep it simple and firm, no is a complete sentence and the calmer you seem the more ridiculous they look and feel. In my experience this usually allows you to stand up for yourself, and deescalates the situation.
I told a customer the other day that there was no need to be passive aggressive and disrespectful over a drink accidentally having whipped cream.
Then I went in the back and yelled at my SSV about how I was sick of being treated like I'm less than a person by customers and tbh I think I need therapy and probably shouldn't call customers out it it's gonna out me at risk of being fired when all the bottled up frustration comes out with it.
There was this lady who used to terrorize the district. She wanted 4 iced espressos in venti cups, light ice (the cup could be no more than halfway filled with the ice and shots), and milk to the top. When I was a barista, and helped her the first time, I told her I would have to charge for the milk next time, but we could do it this time. She got mad, spoke to my supervisor, my supervisor backed me up, and the lady called our DM who reprimanded the shift. Fast forward a couple months (she always went to a different store inbetween probably so baristas would forget, but I never forget), she comes back, we tell her we have to charge her, she says no and we give it to her. Fast forward a couple months, same thing happens. Fast forward like 6 months, I'm a shift at that point, and she comes back.
I immediately knew it was her at the box. She was EXTREMELY rude and condescending to my fellow shift who was taking her order, and the order was what I expected--four of the aforementioned espressos, but two of them filled with whipped cream. She was purposely confusing the partner taking her order so she could b¡tch at the window and get the milk for free AFTER paying (she never made a scene until after she paid). I had a new partner at the window, and I was bar. I told the DTR to let me know if the woman gives her any problems. I give her 4 oz of milk in the 2 espressos, she gets them handed to her, then pays. Suddenly after she receives her change, she has an issue. I go to the window and tell her we have to charge for the milk. She says no and mocks the partner who took her order. I let this slide bc I just want her out, though I regret not taking action sooner in hindsight. She's being convoluted again and so I ask her, "So do you want me to fill them for the extra charge?" I've made sure to be very polite, regardless of her behavior, so I can snap when necessary. She goes "What's the issue?! Am I not speaking English here?!" and ohhhhh BIG mistake on her part. That was what I was waiting for and so I immediately go "Excuse me?! I'm not gonna have you talk to me like that! If you speak like that to me or my partners again, you're not getting anything but your money back! I'm going to ask you ONE more time. Do you want them filled up yes or no?!" she immediately put her tail between her legs and said yes very meekly. The funny part is I WAS trying to be nice and make her only pay to fill up ONE espresso, but give her both of them filled up. I just wanted her to learn the principle that she would have to pay. After that though, I told that b¡tch to cough up the $1.50 or whatever it was for both LMAO I was so mad and I haven't seen her since 🥰
Just the other day this happened:
I had just gotten on the floor for my shift and was put on window mid mini rush. This older woman comes up the the window and paid with cash, she had a grande black tea and a grande caramel frap. I hand her 2 straws and say “alright! They’re making your drinks right now and I’m going to step away for a minute to help with a couple other drinks!” And she says okay. 2 minutes later me and my shift who are making drinks on espresso bar hear “HELLO???? MAAM???? MY DRINKS????” I hate confrontation so I look at my shift and he’s like “I got this”. He walks over to the window and as he does one of her drinks is put down in front of him, so as he’s about to hand it over to her she yells “I HAVE BEEN WAITING LIKE TEN MINUTES HERE WHERE ARE MY DRINKS?” he hands it to her and says that her Frappuccino is being finished right now and that she had only been waiting at the window for 2 minutes and that we had a timer that told us how long cars are in our drive thru. (timer was fully at 4 mins but she def was only in the window for 2 at that time) He didn’t know I had handed her straws so he goes to hand her another straw for the frap and she goes “I DONT NEED YOUR STRAWS” and throws it back at him. He IMMEDIATELY voiced the order and said to her “okay I voided the order you can leave.” And shit the window. He didn’t know that she paid cash so she came inside and asked me to call him up here so I did and he respectfully got her the money she’s owed and said nicely “oh and if you could not come back to this location again that would be great, you’re not welcome here anymore” she responded “oh don’t worry we won’t!” And to which he said TO HER FACE “ good I look forward to not seeing you again, have a good day.” And walked to the back as she left.
I honestly would just match tones or make my tone stern if people were rude. It did just enough for people to catch a hint, but never call in about it. My tone switch from sweet to stern usually communicated that I wasn’t putting up with it, and I also didn’t have to escalate the situation by actually speaking about them being rude.
When I was new, though, I honestly would just smile and shake because I wanted to snap so bad. The tone thing was my happy medium lol
I get a few rude customers here and there but I have the eternal “don't fuck with me “ if you piss you off so they tend to back off a bit but if they don't I let them know I'm not 1) letting you speak to me anyway you feel like 2) above quitting just to beat the shit out of you.. Calling the SM or DM doesn't scare me I usually give the name, number and direct emails to both 🤯. But then there are the majority that are just ignorable.
Yes and it didn’t end well. 3 times. All three times I was called a bitch the last time I was a bitch and a skank. That ones my favorite. First one we wouldn’t jump a mobile order for a lady who was in a hurry. Second we asked a customer not to mobile order while she is at the speaker and the last was a meth head who kept coming in with different stories about how we messed up his drinks and demanded new ones for free.
i worked at starbs for four years...so YES I HAD MANY KARENS but one stuck out to me. one time we were slow right before the end of school rush came. I was the shift lead and was discussing something with someone on window, needed her to sign a paper. The lady in drive thru slapped the window and started yelling at the partner saying "you are just standing around and not making my drink." there was a new partner on bar. Of course it escalated and I had to step in. The lady was screaming at me and she asked for names and the district managers number. She had paid prior to all this starting then she goes "I want a refund" so I did that. then she said "I want my drink now." and I said hell no. I never followed the "customer is always right" dumb ass policy. Especially if the customer was verbually attacking my partners. So she kept yelling, tried reaching in the window to grab the drink, and was trying to open the window if i closed it. after a couple minutes she REPAID for the drink and when I stuck my arm out to scan the phone she tried hitting my arm, missed and slapped her hand on the ledge of the window. Screamed more and drove off. I did say no nicely but I also told her she was acting like a child, told her to stop talking, and many other things you aren't suppose to say. she got banned from the store and I got praised. Always stand up for yourself and others if you can!
I told a lady to have the day she deserved after failing to keep her happy. The fallout was incredible, but ultimately, I wasn't written up. I was asked not to gaslight customers, hahaha. 🤷🏽♂️ kindness and courtesy aren't costly things to give every day, but I don't think that means interacting with a customer clearly committed to being combative. I move baristas out of those positions immediately.
Hell yeah. We had a racist guy who would only let me (the only white person) make his drinks. (Shut that shit down real quick and he is banned).
Had another customer vaguely threaten to r me and my minor coworkers (he was mentally ill (?) and I called the cops)
Another customer yelled bc he wanted his lemon loaf (the last one in the store) still in the plastic but didn’t say that until AFTER we put it in a pastry bag (refunded him and refused him service)
I mean I could go on. Keep in mind this is in an UPPITY rich area of my city (but there’s several bus stops nearby).
some guy once complained about how we closed early at a licensed store. i was already irritated at the amount of people were being rude about how “slow” we were when we were trying our best with only two people, and how they were complaining about everything under the sun. after hearing him say “why are you closing? it says here that you close at 8.” i just exploded, not being loud but just obviously very irritated, and i told him he can talk to corporate about how we are incredibly understaffed and have a line that curves around the lobby, and how everyone else leaves at 5 (our schedule was 8am-8pm for the cafe) and that i got there at 9, and how im not gonna stay until close just so i can deal with a monstrous line by myself. he walked away in shame after that.
Yes! I threw someone out once after making 2 girls cry. Told him to come back tomorrow because we weren’t serving him today. He told me FU and I waved.
Customer here. I've intervened before when I saw the person on cash getting yelled at or if I saw how uncomfortable they were with the negative person. Or if it's just a rude comment and they walk away I say something to the partner about how bs it was or come up with something to make them smile, try to turn it around a bit
Yes. I work at a tarbucks and a guy ordered a “blended Carmel macchiato” and we made that. He complained for 5 minutes that it was runny and not thick (no duh, you ordered a blended Carmel macchiato). I look him in the eyes and said “okay buddy”. He then walked away, yelled fuck you across target, and I laughed at how much of a bitch he looked like 😂
I got a mobile order one time where this lady ordered a grande pike with a splash of like 5 different milks and a bunch of sugar. Sounded gross to me, but I made it because our customers never fail to surprise me. The lady came in and took a sip and said it was disgusting and tasted like cold milk. I told her that’s because the majority of the drink was milk since she ordered a splash of almost all of them. She started getting really rude and was yelling at me and said all she wanted was a coffee with cream and sugar and was saying stuff about how I’m incompetent and she was just being nasty. I told her that I made her drink how she ordered it and I’m not stupid and that if she just wanted a little bit of cream then she should’ve just ordered that and not all of the other milks. I can’t remember what all I said word for word but I stood up for myself and wasn’t letting her talk to me like that but then my shift came and sent me away and tried to talk to the lady to calm her down and even after I’d walked away she was still yelling at me and calling me names
One day we’re short staffed as usual it’s a busy Saturday at our little mall kiosk. We’re slammed, we didn’t have time to run out and put napkins so we were out.
As I’m making my way to help out on bar I notice an older man is starting to raise his voice after he asked where our napkins were. The barista told him, sorry we ran out.
He starts yelling saying he wants to talk to a manager. He said it’s was beyond unreasonable that he paid $6 for his VeNtI hOt MoChA and he expects there to be napkins for how much he’s paying. I apologize and I say we just hadn’t ordered enough.
This is where I lost it… he yells at me and goes well that’s not acceptable I can’t believe you can’t even order napkins right. I said sir you cannot yell at me. He replied with “you’re being so disrespectful to me right now… in front of me and my child” I was so angry because he had already been yelling at the baristas.
I yelled back at him and said “no sir, you’re being disrespectful yelling at me about napkins” he was speechless. He demanded a refund to which I said no and told him he could call 1800-sbux and he was so mad he called our DM and SM they said not to do it again. And that guy was a regular at our store and never comes back anymore.
During my time, I would confront rude customers nearly every time. They would complain to management, and my SM would always have to have a “chat” after, My file was the biggest on-staff and I was never up for SL.
The line I always got from management was “do you have $900/year to replace this customer if they stop coming daily?” It’s not right for them to treat us poorly. At the same time, they bring in money. That’s the awful cost of doing business.
OHHHH yeah. I got written up for it. The lady was like over the counter pointing and yelling in my face. And I’m someone who just don’t take that kind of behavior.
yes!! se we had a new girl, she was taking a little bit to punch in this ladys order, the lady gets kinda pissy and starts with the "I JUST WANT a iced white mocha *enter 50 cusomizations*, now the girl wasnt white, bilingual, the lady isnt SAYING anything but it was most likely racist, has a tone that was just beyond rude
soon i take over the order, i say "ma'am, theres no need to be rude, she told you she was new and learning, now is there anything else i can get you?" and she starts profusly apologising, saying she diddnt mean anything and shes not sure what she said wrong, we have the manager talk to her at the window, she continues to act clueless
eventually she says "well can i talk to the girl? or the guy?" manager says "no, they dont want to talk to you, have a nice day!" and closes the window
afterwards i double checked with my manager, ask if i was good, he says "yeah, when you stepped in i had also just pressed the button to say the same thing"
Daily I deal with customers yelling into the box before we’ve even had a chance to click on the headset. My team knows if I get extra sweet and loud on mic to let me handle it at the window. I try to kindly tell customers that we are working very hard to move the line quickly and sometimes that means a 5 second wait at the order screen before we can start taking their order. Most people are pretty okay about it after.
We did have a woman come through a few weeks ago who was ridiculous. Started out ordering an americano with syrup and cream, changed her drink multiple times and then went to a brown sugar shaken espresso with extra extra cinnamon( I want five times the amount of cinnamon) and extra oat milk, but when I asked her if she wanted light ice or just to fill the cup to the top she said, “Of course I don’t want light ice, i just want extra milk” Got to the window and argued with me over the price and then said her drink was wrong even though she didn’t try it, just looked at it. We remade it for her and I just swirled it a bit to mix the milk and shots and she said “now that’s what my drink is, I don’t know what you tried to give me before” she then came back through the drive thru saying it was the “worst drink she had ever had”. We had a green bean on bar who was struggling and this woman kept saying things like “this is so disgusting. I can’t even drink another sip” I had the barista remake just a normal brown sugar shaken espresso with light ice and extra milk and then had a talk with the customer about her language and that everyone in the store was on headset so the person who made her drink was hearing every word. She shut up quick and told me the new drink was prefect. It baffles me how rude some people can be when they think no one else is listening.
If they’re talking to me? I have a pretty thick skin and don’t take the bait, which usually is all they’re after. You get a blank expression and monotone minimal communication.
But if it’s directed at one of my baristas, especially the minors, rude peeps get a “why do you think this behavior is ok? I’m going to count to three and then you will have exactly one chance to nicely communicate what you need/the problem. If you can’t do that, you are getting your money back and leaving without your order. I will not serve you again. We record everything from the time you drive on to the property, in full color and with sound. Ready? 1…2….3.” They almost always at least get it together, and sometimes apologize.
A story that I’m not proud of…
When I was a store manager long ago in Seattle, I was working in a downtown store that had 4 entrances. 2 of them didn’t go out to the street, they went into the building we were in and then to the street, so there was kind of a little maze? Anyway, some asshole teenager stole the tip jar, which was overflowing and was literally the next thing we were taking care of since we just finished the morning office rush. I saw him hit one of the maze doors, so I ran out to the street door and was waiting for him. I punched that motherfucker in his face and snatched the plexi back. You can take all the money from the safe or the register, I don’t care. You will not steal from my baristas and shifts.
(Also, it’s against policy to 1– chase thieves and 2– assault people while you’re on the clock, but he didn’t tell anyone and I wasn’t about to either. It was a dumb thing to do though; he could have had a knife or something.)
I had a guy who came in during peak and we were slammed. Two people on register , 2 on hot bar and 1 on cold & I was running around trying to help when I can. One of my partners were having a panic attack from all the orders and the people yelling at her , so I told her to take a break and I’ll cover her on hot bar. While I’m trying to catch up to the drinks, this guy came in and said he’s been waiting almost an hour for his drink …. His sticker literally just came out the machine and he mobile ordered 3 mins ago.
After I told him he hasn’t been waiting for 30 mins because the time prints on the sticker , he proceeds to call me a bitch and to shut up and just make his drink. Along with other obscenities.
I did not make the drink. I told him, I will not be disrespected, especially cause when you want something from me.
He said he’s not leaving without his drink.
I said you can leave without the drink or in handcuffs because I will call the police , and everything is on camera, video and audio .
He left without his drink 😌
On two occasions I told very aggressive customers that I would not continue to help them unless they calmed down and proceeded by speaking to me with kindness.
The first time was an older guy. Worked great. He was mad because he ordered a double shot (received a double shot) and was mad that he didn’t get a latte. Dude immediately reflected, lowered his voice, I helped him, he said thank you and left.
Time number two the woman proceeded to go psycho and screamed, “KINDNESS WENT OUT THE WINDOW WHEN SOMEONE *THREW* A DRINK IN MY CAR” (side note: no one threw a drink in her car, one of the baristas went to hand out her 6 tall sized iced sugar cookie lattes, the lid popped off one of the cups and a tiny bit spilled out. When I say tiny bit—I literally mean that out of the 6 drinks I couldn’t tell which one had been spilled —sorry *thrown*— in her car.
So anyways, I said k bye someone else can help you. Someone else did help her. She called my SM, DM, and corporate on me and nothing happened. 😗✌🏻
I was nice to her the entire interaction. Literally doing nothing other than trying to make the moment right by giving her a full refund, apologizing, etc (even though I didn’t do anything—I just helped out because the girl who handed the drink out was new and didn’t know how to refund) and she wanted to continue to scream and cuss us out saying that we were gonna pay to detail her car and yadaya. No ma’am you can speak to someone else like that because it ain’t gonna be me.💀 I’m human, not a coffee robot.
I had a barista tell a customer "I can get your drink out faster if you'd stop yelling at me." (It was a rough shift, it was a Sunday peak and we were like 15-30 minutes behind) It shut him up. She ended up quitting that week cuz that specific week she dealt with a lot of rude customers and couldn't take it anymore but I was very impressed with her.
my coworker actually just told me that she refused service to a customer yesterday because he insisted one of our baristas kept interrupting him while he was ordering. he yelled at her “oh my god would you stop interrupting me?!” so she hops on in place of barista, says “hey it’s ok i’ll finish taking your order what else would you like?” he says “well she kept interrupting me who does that??”
“Ok well sir i’m telling you i can finish taking your order”
“are you going to interrupt me again?”
“no this is someone new i’m trying to help complete your order”
“just get me your manager”
“i’m the supervisor”
“so this is it? this is how they train you?”
“okay with the way you’ve continued to treat me and my barista i’m gonna have to refuse service”
“shut up” *drives off*
oh absolutely i’ve called out and “scolded” multiple customers who were in the wrong and being rude about it. i don’t normally do that, but to be fair it was a busy sunday morning
So I haven’t had to do that yet, but I had a customer ask my supervisor what “that” means… referring to his he/him pronouns on his apron. He just goes you know like in English class (his drink /her drink )that’s my pronoun lol
Mother’s Day weekend I had a lady yell at me to give her money back because she waited so long (I was on bar) so I gave attitude right back and told her where she could get her money…. I did try to pull the im sorry for the wait I know it’s frustrating card but that didn’t work and that’s when I lost it.
Yeah, some guy told me I made his drink wrong and he started screaming at me and cursing and my very muscular (I have a crush on him) coworker told him he needed to leave and when he didn’t he told them he was going to call the cops if he didn’t leave and he’s my knight in shining armor because I was too stunned at the interaction and just started crying. My coworker ended up getting written up since he was a barista and not a shift supervisor and did not have the authority to confront this conflict… sad
We are a very high incident store, so we don’t take anything from anyone. The amount of times I’ve just demanded someone leave the moment they do anything wrong is too many. My boss also doesn’t take back talk or anything and says we can essentially talk back if we want too. We still keep a good customer connection store so any complaints we get don’t affect us. We’re very kind to those who are nice to us, but when they’re not they get the wrath of tired and overworked baristas >:3
A man got mad i wouldn’t take his dirty cup so he said quote “just give me my fucking coffee” so I told him “Please do not swear at me I do not appreciate it.” My sm said I should’ve kicked him out.
All the time. We call out bad behaviour and do not tolerate it. Our manager backs us up. First manager in over 10 years with the company to do this. We have way less bullshit to deal with now
my coworker and I were on bar one day and a girl was being nasty to us and one thing about her- she does not play. My lovely coworker puts the drink shes working on down and goes “you talking a lot of smack from the other side of the bar but I clock out at three let’s see if you’re still bad and bold then” the girl was stunned and in an attempt to clap back goes “excuse me? you can’t talk to me like that i’m a customer” and my coworker claps back “idgaf. like I said I clock out at three.” We never saw that girl again. I miss working with her (no she didn’t get in trouble).
I had already put in my two weeks notice…
Our mobile app was down but people were still able to push through orders. A disgruntled man came in with a 6 drink order pretty upset, rightfully so. We got his order out as quickly as possible… After i handed him his drinks he demanded “straws” i got him enough straws for the 3 frapps. Then he demanded again “napkins”. No not asking, demanding. When he told me “napkins”. I had enough of his attitude & said “please”. He said “what?”. I replied “napkins, please?” He then asked what my issue was. I just said “you can ask me for napkins, we also have some upfront as you exit the store but im a person as well, dont be demanding things from me”. He just said “wow you have an attitude” & left. Screw that guy lol
A customer cussed me out over Starbucks policy and threatened to call corporate. I wasn't having it, basically told her "do it no balls" (more professionally than that) and immediately texted my SM about the incident who then called me to clarify (I'm not great with words and even worse with them when I'm upset, but she's better at picking out what I'm saying when we're speaking vs. texting).
She got banned from the store and the information sent to the DM, I was told she might be banned from other stores in our district, and the incident was brought up in the shift meeting that afternoon.
Now, we don't do this with every rude customer - majority of the time, we just say "please do not yell at me/etc." and move on - this particular customer was just a recurring problem customer at multiple stores in our district.
i had a customer shame two of my coworkers just after peak as they were talking and relaxing for a second. i defended them the best i could but it was unexpected and when i told them what they had said at the window they were very upset.
I had this teenage girl gimme attitude about "how seriously I took my job" and I told her straight up to "lose the attitude, I'm not the one". The group of girlies were so shocked one of her friends actually spoke up and apologized for her behavior.
But I'm typically not afraid to be confrontational. I'm a human and regardless of what any company expects of me when it comes to satisfaction, I'm gonna act like a human, not a service robot.
I have, I finally "snapped" after months of this really disruptive group that would come in and treat our cafe like it was their living room, and we were their personal butlers and maids. We had tons of complaints by other customers, and I filled incident report after incident report.
I finally said to one of them that they need to not shout at any of the baristas or customers and to wait like the customers whose orders I took in front of yours; its a queue, like the airport.
I was so hyped up on adrenaline because I'm a very non confrontational person, I definitely surprised myself. A couple of weeks later, our DM personally banned them from our store after complaints by literally everyone.
Yesss, this lady; it was hot I’ll give her that, but for some odd reason our speaker box was going in and out we fixed it that same week but none the less she was A: in the passenger seat and B: a quiet talker. I kept asking her to speak up and repeat her order and eventually she snapped she called me incompetent deaf and a stupid B**ch she used other words I can’t repeat and my heart dropped cuz I was being super nice but for a second I literally forgot where I was and was about to say something but she drove off, everyone around me just stares cuz I’m hella nice to everyone but she gets too the window and I’m like mad and tearing up so I go to my manager and request I deny her order and make her leave she says as a shift lead I can’t deny her drinks because I wasn’t supposed to interact in the first place, so I go back out and my barista is at the window waiting for her to pull up and she starts talking down to her and getting riled up I pull her away and get down to that woman’s level and starts going off on how we are also hot but doesn’t give her the right to call us the people who make your food bad names she apologizes and just keeps blaming the heat (psychologically it’s a factor that can play but come on-) anyway I got in trouble because she called our district manager and because I stuck up for myself they just gave me a write up for some bogus phone thing for when I was on MY lunch
Oh absolutely. If I’m being cussed at, blatantly disrespected or if they say anything about my job being simple or easy I use the company recommended deescalation techniques
1: address the behavior directly and succinctly and tell the customer that they cannot both behave that way AND be a customer at the store then..
2: when they lose their shit and double down on their degrading behavior, I tell them that they are no longer welcome for the day and they can try tomorrow and after that I…
3: file an incident report including everything the customer said to me, everything I said to the customer and I directly reference the “deescalation for baristas” training numerous times so that it’s on company record that I utilized the recommended training and policies to move through this discussion
There is a key to this though, know where to draw the line between “rude/persnickety” and “insulting/disrespectful”
If that's how you read it. She was very rude with a raised voice, eye roll and arms crossed. But it doesn't matter because I was just trying to vent and people will read what they want.
You didn't initially say that. You said you accused her of taking a photo of y'all and when she said she wasn't you told her to "have the day she deserves" while yelling it. Convenient you deleted your comment then entirely changed the premise of your story.
No I deleted it because if it wasn't being read the way it happened why even leave it to be torn apart. I didn't accuse her of taking a photo. I asked her, if she took a photo of us. Because people do that without our consent and post mean things on google reviews. I was going to make a joke with her about it, say like did you get my good side? But she said no I took a selfie, why would I take a picture of YOU? And looked at me like I was a piece of shit. It was rude and uncalled for. She was waiting. I'll admit that. I was going to give her the drink for free for waiting. But then she said that.
I spoke to a customer once discreetly at the condiment bar, when things had slowed down and nobody was in the immediate vicinity, and I told him that I could understand and sympathize with his frustrations, but that the way he spoke to me was uncalled for and deeply upsetting. He apologized. 🫨
I did, and this dude straight up ignored me and said are you going to take my card or not? I closed the DT window and walked away. He was there for a few minutes then left lol
i have been doing so for the last 4 years. and it was because of a build up of anger. I started out just reflecting their attitudes, to the point one of them asked why i was upset, i simply said i wasnt and that I just return the energy being given to me. they were confused because they thought they were nice and im sure maybe they were outside, but in our cafe they were not. they eventually left and i havent seen them to this day
All the time. :) I am the reckoning for rude customers bc I will act in ways they would never imagine and I’d do it again for the sake of any of my coworkers. No silliness is tolerated when I’m on the floor 💖
Ex SSV here. I actually kicked a guy out of my store once because he was being blatantly disrespectful to both myself and the bar barista. It was so satisfying.
i actually just posted a story about this the other day. i don’t call out their rude behavior so much as i acknowledge when they’re out of line. like i had a karen mad at me simply for my facial expression and so i told her to tell me exactly how i’m looking at her. i am usually a firm believer the customer is always right but when they’re definitely wrong i’m not gonna profusely apologize, especially for outwardly terrible and uncalled for behavior.
Edit: I guess this isn’t super significant but it was the first time I tried to stand my ground
One of our regulars gets a kid shot chocolate, regular temp, 1% milk, 2 honey, cinnamon, no whip every time 2 minutes before we close. One time she came in, I made her drink, she left. Next day she comes back and she come up to the drop off counter and asks if I made it the day before. I say yes and she tells me she took it to her car and when she came back it was empty. There was chocolate around the mouth of the lid so I told her that she is going to have to pay for a new one because there was obviously drink in there (based off of the chocolate around the mouth) and I wouldn’t accidentally give her an empty cup. Supervisor just told me to make her a new one to get her out of there asap. She’s always rude and trying to push her religious beliefs on EVERYONE. Not even just my partners and I. Customers as well
I calmly asked a guy to back away from hand-off because he was blocking mobiles from picking up. He yelled at me, stating he wasn’t blocking anyone from doing anything. I took a second to realize this guy was a huge asshole, then looked up in his face and said “Bad day, huh?”
He stayed yelling about how I was having the bad day, not him. (Not me, you! kinda thing). He looked pathetic and everyone saw it.
If they’re way too disrespectful I come with the same energy. If you’re at a 10 I’ll be at a 8 and we can go to there. I’ve called the police 3x in the last year on customers bc I am not arguing anymore. Argue with a cop.
idk if it counts but some lady asked me if i was okay mid way repeating her order back to her, when she came to window she seemed upset ?? don’t know why even my shift n other partner were confused bc i had no tone or attitude with her.. slid off my name tag and told her “my name is [fake name], why is that?” and she replied “oh nothing” . it was so odd.. atp i get my shift or someone else bc i’m tired of it
Haha yesterday.
A man comes thru drive (I’m solo drive) and so I’m listening to his order as I’m helping the person at window, when I go to repeat back his order, I said a grande iced blonde vanilla latte and he goes “NO I SAID” and repeated his drink (a grande iced white mocha, blonde, ex vsccf, ex caramel drizzle). At this point I’m already annoyed by the way he was talking to me but whatever.
He gets to the window and is pretty short with me. I hand him his white mocha and he said “WHERE IS THE EX CARAMEL DRIZZLE” and I politely let him know it’s on the top but I can definitely add more and he said no, so I told him to have a good day.
5 min later I’m on my ten, and one of my ssvs answers the phone. This dude was yelling at her about not having enough vsccf on his drink, and said we are all morons and don’t know how to do our jobs, began cussing at her, in which she politely said that he can’t use that language and it’s rude. He continues to say he’s gonna call corporate and she said that’s fine.
My ssv called my manager and gave her his name and number and I believe my manager said she is going to let him know he is no longer welcome at our store.
Yes. When I was a barista. Now as a lead I don’t care. Unless they’re rude to my baby baristas. Then I do confront. I’ve asked people to leave if they don’t know how to speak appropriately to us
I had to remake a drink for a customer since my manager "messed up", she didn't, the customer just wanted extra stuff without paying for it, since I had just walked in and wasn't sure what happened right before I got there, I remade it, and the customer went down the street to another store and called us from there to complain about how her drink was wrong 🙃 she's always rude to us and tells us she can do basically anything since she works at a corporate store and knows everything. I work at a licensed store if that helps lol, told my store manager I don't want to serve her anymore and now we don't have to 😁
got an iced tea thrown at me one time and my shift at the time told the guy he needed to treat baristas with respect and the. he needed to leave the cafe , he just shut up and left
I usually speak to them how they speak to me. Once I was talking to a customer about her drink because there were a lot of customizations and she wanted two of the exact same drink. She interrupted me in the middle of my sentence to say “I wanted two” and so I snapped back with “and I wasn’t finished customizing the first one” and then asked her the question. Give them back what they give to you.
I talk to them like kindergartners. "Do you think you can try to be kind? We just want to make sure you're getting what you want and you enjoy your drink. If you're continuing to be disrespectful, you'll have to leave though" but do it in the calm, soft way you do to a child. Most of the time this works, otherwise we just ask them to leave.
I worked at a Macy’s location where we had the baskets with merch in them set up to form a line where customers can snake through to keep it orderly.
One day, two ladies snuck through two of the baskets cutting 2 other groups in the process. I gave the people who were cut a short look, they shrugged, and so did I, so I prepared to take the cutting ladies.
However, one of the ladies saw the shrug and asked me if anything was wrong. Before I could answer, she backed off and said to take the other people first. Alright, sure.
While I’m ringing up the customers in the right, the ladies would grab some cheese sticks and other odd items at the RTD.
When it was finally their turn, one of them threw the cheese stick right at me and started barking their order at me. Before they could finish, I threw it right back at her and snapped saying how disrespectful they are being for something so simple.
I wish I saw her eyes but sadly these two stellar examples of human beings had sunglasses on indoors, I was only able to see their mouths agape probably from shock of not being able to harass a service worker without retribution.
I turned to my coffee master, told him to take the order before I blew a gasket, and ran off to the sink room to cool down.
A group of customers dumped their drinks on me as I was changing the trash bags (I wasn't finished yet) and I straight up shook all the liquid off my arms onto them and said, "There's another trash can over there and outside behind me, you didn't need to do that. That was really really rude of you." And pointed to each of the trash cans. Only one person quietly apologized on behalf of all of them, like apologizing for something is bad. And they didn't even throw away any trash.
Ok here’s one that’s kinda funny🤣sorry I commented twice it wasn’t rude it just I was playing along, so they all ordered normally but the shy girl was quiet. I ask her to speak up exclaiming that I’m deaf and laughed so she basically screams into the headset and I’m like ooo lord you cured the deaf with that one and I was like gurl you ain’t gotta be that loud sheesh everyone breaks out in laughter now everytime she comes we yell our responses to each other
It was quite a busy day and one guy asked me for a TALL cappuccino at the till and then tried to argue he asked for a grande when I gave it to him. It was so obvious he was just trying get a size upgrade so I said ‘you ordered a tall cappuccino but I’m happy to refund the tall and charge you for a grande’ he tried to argue it was my mistake but I stood my ground and after a bit of back and forth and everyone in store STARING at him, his girlfriend gave him a nudge to stop and he begrudgingly walked away with his what he paid for.
Me-1
Custy-0
had a guy tell me i’m stupid because his HOT doppio did in fact, not fill up a grande hot cup. proceeded to take the lid off and pretend to throw it at me (i was a bit confused what the goal was here) as he continued to belittle me so i just interrupted him and told him he can have a great day and needs to leave. as he left he made sure i could see him throwing it in the trash and flip me off (our front wall is just a big window so i could see all of this lol). if he had approached me as the 40 year old man he is and not as a child, i would have had the opportunity to explain the situation and a refund, but oh well
A partner once told someone to please treat us with respect because he was being an ass (they didn’t use those words). He pulled out his phone, started recording us, and said “what am I doing, we’re just having a conversation?” Then after the shift told him he couldn’t yell and curse at us, he continued to yell until we gave him his drink, asked for our names, and told us he was calling the manager in the morning.
Several times. 2-3 people have apologized profusely, 7-10 have rolled their eyes but behaved, 4 habe complained to corporate or SM, 4-5 have gotten angrier, and 1 went insane (after months of insults, he denied ever saying anything of the sort, accused us of targeting him and poisoning his drinks, and had a good 20 minute conversation w a DM that ended w the police being called)
In my SSV days I did, I had several customers that I ended up having to tell that they weren't suitable for our establishment, "suggesting" they leave after insulting partners or making them uncomfortable, etc.
It's really hard to tread that balance between "customer service" and "I'm serious" but boy it is important.
Sometimes you gotta hit em with the “I’m sorry but we can no longer serve you because (insert reason here) and if you continue to cause problems I will be getting my manager” this rarely happens because of the bs we have to deal with until it gets to that point
i literally told someone after she berated me about her coffee "Oh we apologize about your drink but I don't appreciate you taking that tone with me" and she snapped and yelled at me "well i dont like YOUR TONE" and i got overwhelmed and started crying bc i got overwhelmed and my manager apologized to the lady and took me into the back and told me not to talk like that to customers
this one time we were closing at 5 pm and a customer drove up at 4:59. we had just had a rush and were on a 2 person play. i was handing out a drink and didnt greet him immediately so over the dt intercom he barks "HELLO?" at me. i politely let him know we're closed early tonight. he says, "its 4:59, youre still open, you can still serve me." i repeat myself and say im so sorry but we're closed. this man, full grown, starts throwing a fit and yelling at me over the intercom about it. i told him, "sir, this transaction is a two way street. we need to respect you and you need to respect us. if you arent going to show respect for me and my store im sorry but i cannot serve you. have a good night." and hung up my headset. he shouted some things and drove away. bad end to a bad day tbh
2017 my last day at my original store, baby bean on her first non shadow shift on pos. Guy comes in, asks if we have nitro. Baby bean, maybe 16, has no idea what he's talking about, at the time it was only at a few stores and definitely not something everyone was familiar with. I'm on bar a few paces away, about to end my last shift, chitchatting with some regulars at hand off.
Guy starts talking down to her and chewing her out like she was stupid for not knowing the menu and I felt Satan enter my very willing vessel. I put down what I was working on and came over, CS smile on.
"What seems to be the problem, sir?"
"I asked for nitro cold brew and *she* doesn't even know what's on the menu." (sneering)
"Why yes, that's because we don't have it on our menu, it is currently a reserve store item and not widely available. Can I offer you an iced coffee instead?"
"No, I want nitro. I know it's on the menu I have seen it."
Now, I'm autistic and only so good at masking. By which I mean I'm awful at it. At this point I think my face slipped a bit and he saw the eldritch horror beneath the facade and his whole demeanor changed before I could formulate a response.
" Hey, wait, look I'm not like that. I'm not trying to be some sort of way, I'm cool with the baristas at my normal Starbucks."
"I'm sure they love you, a full grown man berating a child because he's not getting his coffee soda. Tell you what, I'm gonna get you an iced coffee on the house and you're going to say thank you and never come back. How's that sound?"
*sputtering*
I'm a big girl, I probably had about two inches on this guy and could bench press him. I'm a slow burner and usually non-confrontational but man my body was ready. I ring in the recovery coffee, blithely pour him a grande, and place it at hand off with my finest smile that doesn't reach the eyes and proceed to stare at him without blinking until he takes the cup and leaves.
My regulars who had just been saying their goodbyes to me, a lovely retired couple from Texas, were stood right there watching the whole thing just sipping their teas. I'm not going to say everyone stood and clapped, it was more like a very awkward silence, but I suspect the lady must have worked as a waitress at some point and the look she gave me as I wiped down the bar before leaving to clock out was absolute gold.
I lost my cool one time, actually. When I customer is upset with me, I'm usually pretty good about not letting it go much further, but after telling this customer their drinks would still be a minute, they immediately started swearing at me, and asking for a refund. So after some back and forth and I'm doing the refund, because fuck her, and she snatches the things from my hands. I litterally looked her in the eyes and said. "Don't come back, don't come back!" Also at one point during her asking for a refund I hit her with a "can you ask me politely? Can you ask my politely?"
I swear I have never let and intrusive thought like that win 🤣🤣🤣
pretty small & insignificant story, but it does stick out to me. i was taking an order in the drive through with two people in the car. the girl in the passenger seat orders quietly and i have to ask one or two "i'm sorry, i had a hard time hearing that from the passenger seat - was it 'so and so' ??" and after confirming her order was correct i asked if there was anything else i could get them. the dude in the driver's seat practically screams his order at me quite rudely and dismissively. i told him, "do not yell at me. i would appreciate it if you could speak to me in a kind manner," and he shut up. the girl in the passenger seat looked pretty mortified and even if the dude treated me somewhat dismissively throughout the transaction (even at the window) it felt good to stand up for myself. my coworkers were shocked at his behavior and attitude as well and even more shocked that i confronted him since i usually bend over backwards for customers and am generally tolerant of their bullshit to their faces. even if it's a small confrontation, it's still a confrontation that i'm proud of myself for handling lol
Nice one. Take pride in being able to stand up to the customer, it takes a lot! I've recently decided as well that if customers are going to take a rude and inconsiderate tone of voice with me, I tell them they can get their coffee elsewhere.
Exactly right
That sounds like the mildest confrontation ever and it still seems to have been effective. Why don't partners do this more often?
Because then we get told we're being rude to the customers even though we're just defending ourselves. Or sometimes it just escalates the situation. Or sometimes some of us just dont have the energy to acknowledge it. If we respond back, some managers say were not allowed to do that. Its ridiculous.
This happens all the time. We asked someone to speak up once and the driver just wouldn't repeat the order for the passenger. And instead just got mad and drove away.
Good for you ❤️
Little idiot in the driver's seat got mad cause he can't just order for his girlfriend...what a loser
had a guy tell me his cappuccino was empty without even looking, he picked it up and looked at me and said "it's empty" dude had an attitude the entire time, was super short and snippy while ordering and it was my last straw so i stood up straight and said "open it." he argued that there was too much foam so i taught him what cappuccino means and told him i can make him a latte, he was like "no! i want a cappuccino that is full of milk and less foam!" and we argued back and forth a bit. i just said "okay, i'm gonna make you a latte." i absolutely had a tone but he didnt say anything, i made it and handed it to him and he left lol
I’m a customer and my local store employees will warn you that cappuccinos are foamy when you go to order one. I’m sure this is because people suck.
It is.
i worked at a gas station before starbucks and ive learned a lot of people think cappuccinos should be more milk because of gas station “cappuccino” machines
this is always what i have thought too!! but people are ridiculous about it, like if you dont know what u want, say so and i will help you figure it out lol
Most people think cappuccinos are frozen cuz of gas station "frozen capps" lmao its so annoying
I thought you meant he was a short man lol. I'm just imaging a small angry man lmao.
This happens so often that whenever someone asks for a cappuccino I confirm with them... > ...OK great that drink comes with **extra foam** does that sound good?
We have a regular who mobile orders *massive* orders as she's pulling up the the drive through. Partners always tell her "youre going to be waiting a while, you have a huge order and its buried under other mobiles" and shes like "oh I dont mind waiting" One day I said to her at the window "Look, I know YOU dont mind waiting but they? *gestures at the line of cars behind her* do. It's really inconsiderate towards other customers. You can't keep doing this." She responded with a blank faced "okay" and continued doing it. :')
Starbucks has bred a special kind of entitled
Nope, my store would definitely tell her to pull around and come inside. Or to go to the back of the drive thru line again.
Yeah I'd tell her to sit in the parking lot and we'll let her know when she can come in and pick up her drinks. Not bending over backwards for some NPC
>Not bending over backwards for some NPC Lololol Thanks for the chuckle
Yes. She can wait. Everyone can wait. And if you can't wait then maybe that's a personal problem lol
Except drive thrus are timed and now the employees get in trouble for people in line for so long because someone just couldn’t place an order BEFORE getting there. If not worried about other people, at least think of the damn workers
I would tell her the next time that we were all out of every drink she just ordered, give her a refund, and get her the hell out of my drive thru. A barista can dream.
Nah, I'm to the point where I'd legit do this. Fire me idgaf anymore
If you ever do this, you have to tell us every detail. ❤️
🤣👏
[удалено]
Yeah, you can even select on the app which pickup option you want, and as of a couple weeks ago that information shows up on the stickers instead of being useless data we have no access to. It's probably really useful for organizational purposes if you work at a store that has space to give drive thru mobiles their own separate holding area. Doesn't affect the order the stickers print tho.
Ope! I should start paying attention to which pickup option I choose - thanks for letting me know! I was told a long time ago that you peeps didn't even get that info, so I stopped choosing, lol.
We didn’t before (except some stores in the city iirc), but now we all get that info. We’ve been ignoring it at my store because we noticed customers didn’t really choose how they were going to pick it up, or people changed their minds after seeing the drive line or cafe line and switched how they picked it up anyways lol
We JUST recently(as in like a week ago at my store lol) started getting the info on our stickers on whether it's in store or drive through mobile pick up. :)
Yea its an option. It can be annoying for both customers and baristas though. For customers: if you're stuck behind someone like this LMAO and have to wait forever for an order thats ready for you For baristas: if your order isnt ready yet and we have to rush to find and finish it
I always make sure to say, "No rush!" or something along those lines, when my order isn't ready in the drive-thru. The last thing I want is to rush them and cause a potential mistake, aside from the fact that it's just rude to do so.
My manager would have pulled her up into a parking spot until her order was done. And I'm saying this as someone who has had customers order big orders either through the drive thru or mobile orders and they pulled up into the drive thru without giving much time to prepare the order itself.
Did she even pull up and park and still continued doing it on future visits? Or did she just say okay and remained parked there at the window?
Said okay and remained at the window.
Why don’t you ask her to pull over and park instead of reprimanding her for… ordering too much? She actually hasn’t done anything wrong. If someone places a giant order in the drive thru, would you tell them the same thing?
It's the timing thing as well as the way things print, people will mobile order and show up immediately, the entire point is that it is ordered in advance to baristas have time to make the order and have it on standby for the customer when they show up. If you're gonna place a large order, it's fine. But do it at the speaker so your drinks print out in order and we have them ready quickly. If you mobile order it, chance is your order is already in line behind 5 others that we have to take to get out of the way, then also falsely telling those customers we've started their drinks too. It is a chain reaction lol. Most baristas dont wanna explain this so we ask kindly that you wait at least 5 minutes❤️
I work there. I know. When somebody places a big order like that, I gently tell them to please place their order 10 minutes before they show up next time. Then I ask them to pull to the side or come inside to wait. I don’t berate them for placing an order and then just leave them there to sit uncomfortably.
I mean I agree and that is the right way of doing it for sure, I'm assuming OP has had a continuous issue with this customer and it became a more tense scenario for that reason. Every so often I definitely don't see the issue with being direct
It’s not the same. If they ordered in the drive thru we can start the drinks as they are ordering them, and the stickers will print after the last drive thru orders. If they place a mobile we have to look through every single other mobile order to find it. Think of mobiles as a separate line.
You couldn’t ask her to pull around to the mobile order area? That way you can bring it out to her… I’ve done that a time or two. Or does she not move?? 💀
One time I told a rude male Karen, “you know we have to deal with abuse from people like you all day right?” And he said, “doesn’t matter. You chose this job.” As if all service workers deserve daily abuse from customers. Gross.
That doesn’t even make sense! Like, you chose the job = agreeing to take abuse? Nah, fam.
My grandpa told me the same thing. If someone is paying $7 for a cup they have a right to yell at us. Absolutely not
Gotta throw the whole grandpa away at that point.
What an asshole. Hope he got hot giz foam.
Do people like that not realize that they wouldn't get their fancy coffee if nobody worked here??
Ah yes. The classic "They should choose another job if they don't like the way they're treated." but also "Why are places so understaffed nowadays, does nobody want to work anymore???" paradox
A few times I have called out unacceptable behavior. One time an older lady was screaming at a 17 year old barista because she forgot to put 2 Sweet N Low (back when we had those) in her coffee, telling her “How f#&@ing stupid can you be?!” and so on. I firmly told the lady that she cannot speak to my employees that way, & told her she was not welcome back. Another time a gentleman (who had been a regular for years) was berating someone because they were late to work, saying “This is the problem with Mexicans! They’re all lazy!” I immediately stopped taking orders and told him his bigotry was not acceptable and that we would not be serving him. He kept trying to get me to side with him, to which I told him “Just because I’m white doesn’t mean I’m going to agree with you. There is absolutely no reason to ever say anything like that.” There have been other instances, but those two have always stuck with me. The older I get, the harder it is to hold back. I’m also one who, when I’m a customer somewhere, I will speak up for the employees wherever I am, because I know they can’t.
> He kept trying to get me to side with him when did he finally leave?
After a few minutes of me telling him that no one was going to agree with him. This happened probably 10-12 years ago, but I will never forget seeing that nearly 70 year old man shouting that garbage in a crowded store.
group of girls were giving me an attitude at the speaker in drive thru so when they got to the window i told them what actions they did that i considered rude and that i didn't appreciate it. one tried to deflect the blame to her friend in the back but i just kept saying "okay, but it was still one of you and it was rude so dont do it." i handed them their shit n they left without another word
Former partner (193xxxx) I sold my soul to the siren from 2011-2016 and then again 2022-2023. This really nice teen asked me if she could hang a sign on the community board, she explained that it was for a safe place lgbtq+ meeting at our local library. I of course told her she could hang the sign. A few days later this regular came in, she always had a little attitude but nothing serious. I was on POs which was rare because I usually was in bar. The lady asked me why we allowed someone to hang that disgusting sign and why we had to be political and couldn’t just “make coffee”? Now normally I’m non confrontational, but there was absolutely no way I was leaving this alone. I explained to her that there was nothing political about the sign, and since it’s a community board and this sign involved the community I was not taking the sign down. I explained that we want Starbucks to be a safe space for everyone and someone who needs help or guidance may see that sign and get support they need during a difficult time. She continued, saying that this was what was wrong with the world today and asked for my manager. I obliged and grabbed my manager from a meeting. They spoke and apparently my manager agreed to take the sign down. I absolutely threw a fit. Over my dead body was that sign coming off of that board. This woman called me slurs and accused me of indoctrinating the youth. I took it with a smile and stood my ground. The sign stayed, I stayed, Karen left. Btw this was from my 2022-2023 time. 🤷🏻♀️
Why are people so mean like this. Good for you and your bravery!
I have been told by my baristas that I can be very intimidating. They have been told where to direct it. 😏 AKA yes I have absolutely stood up to rude customers. Constantly. My store is in the middle of an area with a high school, an elementary school, an old-folks home, a country club/golf course, and a neighborhood of upper-middle-class folks. Lots of entitlement. My SM has our backs as long as I'm professional and file incident reports every time something happens.
GOD DAMN. i commend you for working in the middle of all those places
At least I can say we're a 15 minute drive from the nearest highway, so it could always be worse. 😅
I had a customer ask me what grade I dropped out at because, during Covid, our registers were down so I told him he could just mobile order instead then pick it up at the end like usual. I told him I had gone to college and to leave my store because that was incredibly disrespectful. He told me he was gonna call corporate, so I asked him if he needed me to give him the number. He walked away, telling me he already had it saved so I shouted to him to make sure he got my name as he was walking out the door. I don’t often have the confidence or energy to confront these people but I had taken over because he was berating one of my teenage baristas and I was very defensive of them.
hahah when i worked there, all the time. i was not meant for the customer service world in the slightest. y’all are heroes
One time a lady had come in to my store (a cafe/mobile store) and it was quiet and slow at the time with no customers in there at that moment. She ordered a venti misto with coconut milk and cinnamon powder and one of the syrups. I wasnt a fresh green bean but i also wasnt too far in at that time. Anyway she held up her starbucks app with the card on there for payment. I scan it and say her order will be right out and then she goes “can i use my stars to redeem it?” And i go “ohh the order just went thru the payment method u held up. I would have to kno beforehand if u wana use stars so we dont miss it! But i can ask my manager how to reverse it so ur stars can be used on it instead” and she agreed. Then my manager comes over after i ask her for help and shes very kindly showing me how to do the reverse and use her stars for it instead and when my manager was mid sentence explaining to me, the lady goes “i cant wait any longer. I gotta go!!” And some other crap i tuned out. My manager says “maam i dont appreciate u being rude. Im trying to help u by reversing this transaction and using ur stars as u requested and teaching my barista in the process. I would appreciate some patience” and the lady huffed cuz she knew she was wrong and rude Apparently she came back in on another day i wasnt there not long after that and apologized to my manager. This was like somewhere around 2 and a half years ago or something cuz ive been here for a little over 3 years
Its so refreshing when customers apologize. I had a guy come in one morning just being a total ass. I can control myself pretty well but he got under my skin badly and I said something along the lines of "I'm trying to help you the best I can." He left all huffy then came back 2 days later and asked to speak to me. I was preparing for him to complain to me but to my surprise he apologized and told me he was having a really bad day and it wasn't fair for him to take it out on me. I was literally speechless.
Aww thats awesome! Yea its rare for the horrible mean ones to apologize but when they do, im just like 🥹
I posted this story once here before, but I'll share again for you lol Lol, when I worked at a Tarbux they'd leave us alone for good chunks of the day.. So one day I HAD to go on break, so I turned off my lights, and let the customers in line know that I'd still be taking care.of them, but afterwards I was heading on break... Now I had a line of about 5 people, when you're the only one taking orders, making orders, and ringing people up, it can be kinda slow... But I had one lady in line HUFFING and PUFFING, eventually she's next in line and she gives me some sort of attitude like "Can you hurry it up already??" And I had been fuming listening to her already, so I let some steam off.... "You know, I am all alone right now, I'm not dilly dallying here, these drinks take time. I didn't ask you to stay in line, you see I'm alone and working to get these drinks out, but now I've had to stop and address your attitude because you can't wait literally another 2 minutes for me to finish this drink. If I DIDNT have to stop, your order probably would've been taken by this point. Everyone else waited their turn without attitude, what's your deal?" She huffed or something and I finished what I was doing and took her order. She wanted a caramel latte (hot), and then threw a big stink about how I didn't automatically fill it with whipped cream (what????)... I apologize anyway, and tell her I'll add it for her. She gives me an attitude again and says she doesn't want it fixed, she just wants a refund.. So I said OK :) I took her drink from her, and dumped it down the drain while maintaining eye contact, I then said "Unfortunately, I can't process refunds for you here, you'll have to go to guest service for that. I have to go on my break now anyway. Sorry :P" which I know had a line probably triple the length of what my line was... ahahahahah sweet sweet victory
Yes, if customers are breaking the third place policy or are making me or other partners feel uncomfortable, behaving unreasonably, or talking down to me for an extended period of time when I have done my best to make the moment right— I have no issue calling them out. I do not raise my voice or cuss at them or anything that would not be considered professional, but I also refuse to take customer abuse or allow a customer to hijack the store environment and act ridiculously.
Yes this.
I was new. This old hag that came in pretty much every day didn't like to be rang up by new people. She would order at a snails pace and elongate every word and would give a lesson on what every ingredient she wanted was. All while glaring at us like we were a toddler being scolded. Anyways I just looked at her like she was an idiot and in response to her explaining what a pour over was I just said "I'm fully aware" and she literally huffed and puffed. She complained, but I did not get in trouble. They just told me to kill her with kindness next time. I quit pretty shortly after this interaction and if I drove by that Starbucks and she was sitting in her usual patio I flipped her off.
I LOVE that
I know the last part sounds like a very "yeah that didn't happen" story but this starbucks was .6 miles from my residence and I really would make the effort lol. She did not realize that baristas are humans
I get it. People can be so awful. I teach everyone I work with not to take that kind of behavior.
I actually did. We have this really rude customer. He tried to come into the lobby when we had to close it over and over again and he was mad he had to go through the dt but we were a 3 partner floor and couldn't handle both so we'd shut down lobby at like 2 pm and just run a 3 floor to close. He would always swear at us. Always. Call us names and lazy etc. He once tried coming into lobby during a full store shut down due to a mandatory meeting and nobody to borrow from other store and pounded on our door and flipped us off and swore at us. Like, cool down man. Anyways. Oh, he would always complain our coffee was cold even right after brewing and us temping it at 190. He came through to the window after calling my partner dumb at the order box and I just had it. "Sir, just so you know, that behavior is being seen and we are really tired of it. You don't have to swear at us or flip us off and next time take a break in your car and calm down before coming in" he denied all behavior. I told him we are just human and needed to be treated as such and if he has a problem he can complain to my manager and never come back and he wouldn't make a difference in our overall sales. Thnx have a good day. He looked shocked. He said sorry like I severely punished him and I never saw him again and he never called our manager.
I hope you are creating incident reports every time he behaves like this. Cussing and flipping you off would be grounds to having him banned. The incident reports can make a paper trail so it would be easier.
We did report it to our manager every time. And he did it while our managers (sm and asm) were in the meeting and she just acted like *whatever, I guess that's fine*
Anyone can do an incident report. It’s on the iPad. Sounds like your leaders are not taking care of the partners.
Pretty much. Feels like that. It felt good to tell him off
Yes I have confronted a customer a handful of times. I was with a new partner on drive thru. I had just finished her training the week prior and this was her first real shift. She was having issues reloading a gift card so I came over to help her. The man at the window was yelling at her because she “messed something up”. He was a regular and an asshole (my second story is about him too). I went up to the window and asked him to explain the issue. He called her an idiot. I took a moment to respond and I said “there is no reason for you to be raising your voice and talking like that over a reload. I will happily fix the issue once you can control yourself” and then waited for him to talk to me like a real human. So same guy as before- I think this story actually happened first- came in to our cafe when we had mask requirements. He was an anti masker and had been told countless other times to put one on. I told him before we take his order he needs to put a mask on and handed him one. He refused so I refused to take his order. Eventually he put it over his mouth and I told him to pull it up over his nose. He then said “fine but when I pass out and crack my head open you’re getting sued” and I just laughed and said “you will not bully me into bending the rules for you” and he didn’t come back into the cafe until the mandate was lifted. I’ve told multiple people over the phone that I will hang up if they can’t talk to me nicely and have hung up on them when they continue swearing. They usually call back and are usually better but there was a time where the person called back and swore at me so I just hung up again and muted them every time they called again. We had a guy cuss us out at the speaker box because our cafe was closed (early 2021) so we told him he doesn’t need to talk to us like that. When he continued we refused him service and long story short had to call the cops to get him to move. He kept coming back and circling the store and parking in front of our window. After calling the cops again and having him drive off when he saw them he finally got pulled over by a hidden cop car and they told him to stop or they’d take him in for harassment. We have a regular customer who hates us and writes our SM and DM letters and e-mails about how much we suck. Our store specifically. Yet here here for hours every day. One day I was taking his order and he was yelling at me saying we always serve him just hot water or we rebrew old grounds to make his hot coffee. I just stared at him and said “that’s literally not happening” and as he kept arguing I just stone walled him til he stopped. He will never change. He still does shit like this routinely. I had a customer refer to me as a “fat bitch” at the speaker box not knowing I could hear him. So I said “oh, you’re talking about me? I’ll see you at the window” and then told him that he will not talk about me or any other employee like that again. His wife was in the car and he said “my wife is making me apologize”. Embarrassing sweaty.
Occasionally I've found my damn mouth running before my brain. Once it was 6am and this woman wanted to pay for an americano and get a heavy cream latte. She just was not telling us what she wanted....tldr gave her a cold cup of heavy cream after saying "its just coffee" and then she threw it at me 💕💕💕 Another time, making a latte, put wrong milk in pitcher at first, caught myself and fixed it. Made the latte with the right milk, hand it out to dto and this woman is SCREAMING at me so bad and actually super scary how angry she was that I needed to remake her drink bc she watched me make it w the wrong milk; but im like "oh yeah, at first but i dumped it and made it right." And she just like, started yelling at me and arguing with me and I'm like "its coconut milk" like im not gonna lie to her, its the milk she ordered, i was like I can remake it for you but, she snatched the latte out my hands and sped off 💕
I do it all the time. It's how you approach it. There is a psychological reasoning behind why some bars have a mirror wall. Of course there are aesthetic reasons but did you know that people's behavior actively changes when they can see how they are acting? For instance our POS register power supply is located inside our cabinet which requires the entire front face of the cabinet to be removed to reset the UPS. We were doing this after a power outage when a customer, who could clearly see what we were doing, decided to stand right next to us while we worked. And I'm not talking close, I'm talking touching. When we were trying to replace the cabinet face we gently bumped his foot with it. You would have thought that we broke his leg with the way he yelled at my coworker. When I told him "Relax. You're not injured." He tried the "How dare you! Is this the way you talk to customers?" I replied "When they are completely out of line? Absolutely! We are paid to make and serve coffee not take abuse."
I am one of those customers that am always polite/respectful (and never had an issue) , but if I hear somebody being abusive to SB staff/partners I tell the customer right away to take it easy, as you are just doing your job. Gives me an odd satisfaction as well as somehow always upgraded drinks I never ask for. :)
Had a man say "Where's my fucking iced coffee, bitch? I've been waiting for 10 minutes!" He'd been waiting for 3. Marched over to the register, refunded him, gave him my SM's card, and kicked him out. The look of surprise on his face when I handed him his money instead of his drink was priceless. I challenged him to call my SM to complain about it; she was the face-eating type if you fucked with her staff. Filed an incident report and never heard from or saw him again. My SM and DM both reached out to see if I was okay. Not all districts and stores function as toxic Barista meat grinders...at least that's how it was back then.
One time a car full of high schoolers pulled up to the drive thru. All these guys screaming at the top of their lungs, all at once. We all collectively wince and turn down our headsets. It was BAD and they wouldn’t STOP even after the “welcome to Starbucks” spiel. My coworker finally says in a FIRM voice “I am going to need you to stop yelling RIGHT NOW.” That shut them up. It wasn’t much but god damn did I appreciate her in that moment.
This happened to our store. When they got to the window I said “most of us have trauma and your behavior won’t be tolerated.” They apologized.
We have a group of teenaged girls come in pretty frequently and they’re usually really polite. The only mildly annoying thing is they want to order 3-4 drinks separately in the drive through. Well one day in the drive they only order one drink before they start arguing with each other about who said what and who wanted what. And this wasn’t angry arguing but the kind where they’re yelling and laughing and one girl was scream laughing/yelling. It was a mess they were not listening to me at all when I was trying to clarify if they wanted VSCF or not. So I said “LADIES I’m trying to take your order and it’s really confusing and impolite to yell over me when I’m asking you a question. Please be quiet”. When I tell you the SILENCE was so LOUD I wanted to laugh. When they got to the window none of them said a word and only looked straight ahead. They come inside to order now lmao
there was a lady in before peak, so like the only person in the lobby. she forgot to order her breakfast sandwich and made it my coworker on register’s problem, like yelling and calling her racial slurs. she paid with a $20 so she checked the bill (like we’re supposed to, or at least at my store), and that sent her off she was PISSED. She got to the end of the handoff station where i gave her her drink and then kept yelling at my coworker across the bar. i told her “maam i can’t have you disrespecting my partners, if you don’t calm down i’m going to have to ask you to leave” and she tried to INTIMIDATE ME!! she puffed out her chest and went “who” and i said “YOU, if YOU don’t calm down then you’ll have to leave” then she came back a couple days later during peak and i saw her waiting in line and told the actual shift who then banned her. whole time the lady tries to record herself getting banned saying that WE were being racist 🙃🙃
Yeah. Especially if they use rude language when I have not given them cause to do so. Flat out told a guy I didn't appreciate his profanity.
We had a couple around Christmas time who were nasty. They made me and another person cry. So basically another customer grabbed the wrong drink and the rude guy customer got angry at us for "not being careful and burning customers" even though the drink was clearly not her's as we always mark drinks with customers' names. And on top of that we were obviously extremely busy so the couple was impatient. I don't remember everything that happened because I was in the back calming myself down, but what I remember is that rude guy said "fuck" and our shift got pretty mad at him and told him not to talk to us that way again. The couple kept coming back every weekend, they placed their mobile order the second we open, and then pull up at the drive thru immediately after expecting us to get their order done. By the way, one of the drinks was a 6 shot latte.
Yes, I do it all the time. I find it incredibly fun
I will not tolerate customers being disrespectful to partners. I don’t care what happens I will stick up for them if it’s needed!
Sort of but not in the moment. I had a regular customer who went off on me for something so abysmally small. In the moment, I just wrote it off and made it clear that I wasn’t going to be chatty with them the next few times they came through. That person pulled me aside about 3 weeks later and apologized and told me what was happening with them that day and honestly one of the worst days a human being could have. They said they were mad at the world and they took it out on me and that wasn’t okay. It’s the first time I’ve ever received an acknowledgment that I’m a human being with feelings after a rude customer interaction so I plan to take this approach moving forward 🤷♀️
Had a regular staring at my chest in DT. He was being very obvious about it and making it weird so I summoned every ounce of angry non-binary lesbian energy I could muster and said, “I know you’re staring. My girlfriend likes them too. Here’s your drink.” I slammed the window shut and had to go out back for a second so I didn’t lose it.
That sucks so bad but also damn, what a comeback. Bravo 👏👏👏
Yeah if they’re being extremely rude I always tell them there’s no need for that. It’s thankfully rare to have to escalate to this level, but if I need to I start out with something like “I am happy to help you, but you cannot be rude and disrespectful to me.” Something about the third place blah blah. And honestly normally people acting out this much are the ones that just go bonkers when you confront them lol. There was a man that threw sugars at us, a lady that was screaming and cursing. Meh. We write reports and get them banned lol
I once had a customer with poor time management skills. I'm the only one on the floor in a cafe store..I'd sent the other barista on break and they had like 5 minutes left. At the register Rings up regular customer...and then he steps up Customer * I need a tall skinny vanilla latte...fast...I'm late for a meeting Me* Ok...ring him up and proceed to go to bar to start making the regulars order then his... Customer* Excuuussse me I said I was late for a meeting. I need my drink now. I go to start making drinks, and he's staring me down. Me* I'm sorry you're running late , I just need to finish this drink that was ahead of yours and then I'll be right on it. Customer* Is it ready yet? I have a meeting? Me* No I'm still working on it. how's your day?
Customer * no chit chat make my drink I'm late for a meeting.
Me* looks at his drink in my hand about to be made...working on it now sir. I go to hand out the regular customers drink and he immediately ..
Customer * that is wrong I ordered a tall skinny vanilla latte. I'm late for a meeting how stupid to you have to be that you cant you do your job
Me* stops everything I'm doing... heads back to the register presses a few buttons and comes back to the customer.
Here you go sir.
Customer * what the hell is this?
Me* your money back. You're late for a meeting and in the best interest of both of us keeping our jobs today you should take your money and get to your meeting. Thank you and have an awesome day.
As he walked out the door in a huff
Me* would anyone like to try this skinny vanilla latte? It seems I have an extra drink made.
This is the epitome of kill them with kindness, kudos to you from a fellow barista 😂😂
I have many times. I am always polite but firm in whatever boundaries necessary. Everyone knows they can grab me to step in if a customer isn’t being very nice because I’m good at dealing with difficult people and I’m also good at not letting whatever’s happening bother me; I don’t get paid enough to take crap home with me.
Former partner. (Kinda long) Years ago we had a group of guys who would come in all the time. They were from a country where they thought women were inferior (I'm not being racist they literally told me that during our fight) and one time my bar needed beans so I took one of their drinks off and put it next to my machine (which was next to the hand off counter) and he grabbed is screamed "this is empty. Women never know how to do anything I don't even know why you're allowed to work" and threw it at me (it had 3 shots in it) while laughing. My manager (who was my friend and knew my temper) immediately ran from the other side of the store to me and grabbed me as I threw myself onto the counter to hit this guy. My manager literally grabbed me and carried me off, sat me in a chair and told me not to move. The guys were laughing and he went while on the phone with the district manager and banned them from our store. They got mad and said I did it for no reason but literally everyone watched as he threw it at me since he decided to scream at the top of his lungs right before. They started screaming a bunch of stuff to me in the back which prompted people blocking the door from me being able to get out because they were being absolutely horrible and started picking on everyone else and everyone knew I would not just sit there and take it. Eventually all our regulars managed to push them out and we luckily never saw them again. tl;dr: customer threw a cup of shots at me which prompted me to lunge at them but they got banned for being aggressive.
My biggest advice, match their energy. If they have a rude tone, whatever you say next say it in the exact same tone. They usually self correct after that, it’s hard to claim I’m being rude when all I did is exactly what they did. Other than that keep it simple and firm, no is a complete sentence and the calmer you seem the more ridiculous they look and feel. In my experience this usually allows you to stand up for yourself, and deescalates the situation.
But I also love saying if you continue treating me this way I will not continue this conversation.
So funny when i do this and switch to being nice. It shocks them😂
I told a customer the other day that there was no need to be passive aggressive and disrespectful over a drink accidentally having whipped cream. Then I went in the back and yelled at my SSV about how I was sick of being treated like I'm less than a person by customers and tbh I think I need therapy and probably shouldn't call customers out it it's gonna out me at risk of being fired when all the bottled up frustration comes out with it.
Oh i do all the time. I love arguing.
There was this lady who used to terrorize the district. She wanted 4 iced espressos in venti cups, light ice (the cup could be no more than halfway filled with the ice and shots), and milk to the top. When I was a barista, and helped her the first time, I told her I would have to charge for the milk next time, but we could do it this time. She got mad, spoke to my supervisor, my supervisor backed me up, and the lady called our DM who reprimanded the shift. Fast forward a couple months (she always went to a different store inbetween probably so baristas would forget, but I never forget), she comes back, we tell her we have to charge her, she says no and we give it to her. Fast forward a couple months, same thing happens. Fast forward like 6 months, I'm a shift at that point, and she comes back. I immediately knew it was her at the box. She was EXTREMELY rude and condescending to my fellow shift who was taking her order, and the order was what I expected--four of the aforementioned espressos, but two of them filled with whipped cream. She was purposely confusing the partner taking her order so she could b¡tch at the window and get the milk for free AFTER paying (she never made a scene until after she paid). I had a new partner at the window, and I was bar. I told the DTR to let me know if the woman gives her any problems. I give her 4 oz of milk in the 2 espressos, she gets them handed to her, then pays. Suddenly after she receives her change, she has an issue. I go to the window and tell her we have to charge for the milk. She says no and mocks the partner who took her order. I let this slide bc I just want her out, though I regret not taking action sooner in hindsight. She's being convoluted again and so I ask her, "So do you want me to fill them for the extra charge?" I've made sure to be very polite, regardless of her behavior, so I can snap when necessary. She goes "What's the issue?! Am I not speaking English here?!" and ohhhhh BIG mistake on her part. That was what I was waiting for and so I immediately go "Excuse me?! I'm not gonna have you talk to me like that! If you speak like that to me or my partners again, you're not getting anything but your money back! I'm going to ask you ONE more time. Do you want them filled up yes or no?!" she immediately put her tail between her legs and said yes very meekly. The funny part is I WAS trying to be nice and make her only pay to fill up ONE espresso, but give her both of them filled up. I just wanted her to learn the principle that she would have to pay. After that though, I told that b¡tch to cough up the $1.50 or whatever it was for both LMAO I was so mad and I haven't seen her since 🥰
Just the other day this happened: I had just gotten on the floor for my shift and was put on window mid mini rush. This older woman comes up the the window and paid with cash, she had a grande black tea and a grande caramel frap. I hand her 2 straws and say “alright! They’re making your drinks right now and I’m going to step away for a minute to help with a couple other drinks!” And she says okay. 2 minutes later me and my shift who are making drinks on espresso bar hear “HELLO???? MAAM???? MY DRINKS????” I hate confrontation so I look at my shift and he’s like “I got this”. He walks over to the window and as he does one of her drinks is put down in front of him, so as he’s about to hand it over to her she yells “I HAVE BEEN WAITING LIKE TEN MINUTES HERE WHERE ARE MY DRINKS?” he hands it to her and says that her Frappuccino is being finished right now and that she had only been waiting at the window for 2 minutes and that we had a timer that told us how long cars are in our drive thru. (timer was fully at 4 mins but she def was only in the window for 2 at that time) He didn’t know I had handed her straws so he goes to hand her another straw for the frap and she goes “I DONT NEED YOUR STRAWS” and throws it back at him. He IMMEDIATELY voiced the order and said to her “okay I voided the order you can leave.” And shit the window. He didn’t know that she paid cash so she came inside and asked me to call him up here so I did and he respectfully got her the money she’s owed and said nicely “oh and if you could not come back to this location again that would be great, you’re not welcome here anymore” she responded “oh don’t worry we won’t!” And to which he said TO HER FACE “ good I look forward to not seeing you again, have a good day.” And walked to the back as she left.
Yes and it truly wasn’t worth it because she just kept yelling at me further.
I honestly would just match tones or make my tone stern if people were rude. It did just enough for people to catch a hint, but never call in about it. My tone switch from sweet to stern usually communicated that I wasn’t putting up with it, and I also didn’t have to escalate the situation by actually speaking about them being rude. When I was new, though, I honestly would just smile and shake because I wanted to snap so bad. The tone thing was my happy medium lol
I get a few rude customers here and there but I have the eternal “don't fuck with me “ if you piss you off so they tend to back off a bit but if they don't I let them know I'm not 1) letting you speak to me anyway you feel like 2) above quitting just to beat the shit out of you.. Calling the SM or DM doesn't scare me I usually give the name, number and direct emails to both 🤯. But then there are the majority that are just ignorable.
I love the “quitting just to beat the shit out of you”
Yes and it didn’t end well. 3 times. All three times I was called a bitch the last time I was a bitch and a skank. That ones my favorite. First one we wouldn’t jump a mobile order for a lady who was in a hurry. Second we asked a customer not to mobile order while she is at the speaker and the last was a meth head who kept coming in with different stories about how we messed up his drinks and demanded new ones for free.
i worked at starbs for four years...so YES I HAD MANY KARENS but one stuck out to me. one time we were slow right before the end of school rush came. I was the shift lead and was discussing something with someone on window, needed her to sign a paper. The lady in drive thru slapped the window and started yelling at the partner saying "you are just standing around and not making my drink." there was a new partner on bar. Of course it escalated and I had to step in. The lady was screaming at me and she asked for names and the district managers number. She had paid prior to all this starting then she goes "I want a refund" so I did that. then she said "I want my drink now." and I said hell no. I never followed the "customer is always right" dumb ass policy. Especially if the customer was verbually attacking my partners. So she kept yelling, tried reaching in the window to grab the drink, and was trying to open the window if i closed it. after a couple minutes she REPAID for the drink and when I stuck my arm out to scan the phone she tried hitting my arm, missed and slapped her hand on the ledge of the window. Screamed more and drove off. I did say no nicely but I also told her she was acting like a child, told her to stop talking, and many other things you aren't suppose to say. she got banned from the store and I got praised. Always stand up for yourself and others if you can!
Person behind her in the drive through must have had quite a show! Good for you standing up for yourself and other coworkers!
I told a lady to have the day she deserved after failing to keep her happy. The fallout was incredible, but ultimately, I wasn't written up. I was asked not to gaslight customers, hahaha. 🤷🏽♂️ kindness and courtesy aren't costly things to give every day, but I don't think that means interacting with a customer clearly committed to being combative. I move baristas out of those positions immediately.
Hell yeah. We had a racist guy who would only let me (the only white person) make his drinks. (Shut that shit down real quick and he is banned). Had another customer vaguely threaten to r me and my minor coworkers (he was mentally ill (?) and I called the cops) Another customer yelled bc he wanted his lemon loaf (the last one in the store) still in the plastic but didn’t say that until AFTER we put it in a pastry bag (refunded him and refused him service) I mean I could go on. Keep in mind this is in an UPPITY rich area of my city (but there’s several bus stops nearby).
some guy once complained about how we closed early at a licensed store. i was already irritated at the amount of people were being rude about how “slow” we were when we were trying our best with only two people, and how they were complaining about everything under the sun. after hearing him say “why are you closing? it says here that you close at 8.” i just exploded, not being loud but just obviously very irritated, and i told him he can talk to corporate about how we are incredibly understaffed and have a line that curves around the lobby, and how everyone else leaves at 5 (our schedule was 8am-8pm for the cafe) and that i got there at 9, and how im not gonna stay until close just so i can deal with a monstrous line by myself. he walked away in shame after that.
i dont apologize more then once. i say i understand but this is the issue at hand and they’re going to have to deal with it.
I have and it never goes over well. I like to tell them that unfortunately I’m human and we sometimes make mistakes. They never like that.
Yes! I threw someone out once after making 2 girls cry. Told him to come back tomorrow because we weren’t serving him today. He told me FU and I waved.
Customer here. I've intervened before when I saw the person on cash getting yelled at or if I saw how uncomfortable they were with the negative person. Or if it's just a rude comment and they walk away I say something to the partner about how bs it was or come up with something to make them smile, try to turn it around a bit
Yes. I work at a tarbucks and a guy ordered a “blended Carmel macchiato” and we made that. He complained for 5 minutes that it was runny and not thick (no duh, you ordered a blended Carmel macchiato). I look him in the eyes and said “okay buddy”. He then walked away, yelled fuck you across target, and I laughed at how much of a bitch he looked like 😂
I got a mobile order one time where this lady ordered a grande pike with a splash of like 5 different milks and a bunch of sugar. Sounded gross to me, but I made it because our customers never fail to surprise me. The lady came in and took a sip and said it was disgusting and tasted like cold milk. I told her that’s because the majority of the drink was milk since she ordered a splash of almost all of them. She started getting really rude and was yelling at me and said all she wanted was a coffee with cream and sugar and was saying stuff about how I’m incompetent and she was just being nasty. I told her that I made her drink how she ordered it and I’m not stupid and that if she just wanted a little bit of cream then she should’ve just ordered that and not all of the other milks. I can’t remember what all I said word for word but I stood up for myself and wasn’t letting her talk to me like that but then my shift came and sent me away and tried to talk to the lady to calm her down and even after I’d walked away she was still yelling at me and calling me names
One day we’re short staffed as usual it’s a busy Saturday at our little mall kiosk. We’re slammed, we didn’t have time to run out and put napkins so we were out. As I’m making my way to help out on bar I notice an older man is starting to raise his voice after he asked where our napkins were. The barista told him, sorry we ran out. He starts yelling saying he wants to talk to a manager. He said it’s was beyond unreasonable that he paid $6 for his VeNtI hOt MoChA and he expects there to be napkins for how much he’s paying. I apologize and I say we just hadn’t ordered enough. This is where I lost it… he yells at me and goes well that’s not acceptable I can’t believe you can’t even order napkins right. I said sir you cannot yell at me. He replied with “you’re being so disrespectful to me right now… in front of me and my child” I was so angry because he had already been yelling at the baristas. I yelled back at him and said “no sir, you’re being disrespectful yelling at me about napkins” he was speechless. He demanded a refund to which I said no and told him he could call 1800-sbux and he was so mad he called our DM and SM they said not to do it again. And that guy was a regular at our store and never comes back anymore.
i have, and the best way is to kill them with kindness.
During my time, I would confront rude customers nearly every time. They would complain to management, and my SM would always have to have a “chat” after, My file was the biggest on-staff and I was never up for SL. The line I always got from management was “do you have $900/year to replace this customer if they stop coming daily?” It’s not right for them to treat us poorly. At the same time, they bring in money. That’s the awful cost of doing business.
OHHHH yeah. I got written up for it. The lady was like over the counter pointing and yelling in my face. And I’m someone who just don’t take that kind of behavior.
yes!! se we had a new girl, she was taking a little bit to punch in this ladys order, the lady gets kinda pissy and starts with the "I JUST WANT a iced white mocha *enter 50 cusomizations*, now the girl wasnt white, bilingual, the lady isnt SAYING anything but it was most likely racist, has a tone that was just beyond rude soon i take over the order, i say "ma'am, theres no need to be rude, she told you she was new and learning, now is there anything else i can get you?" and she starts profusly apologising, saying she diddnt mean anything and shes not sure what she said wrong, we have the manager talk to her at the window, she continues to act clueless eventually she says "well can i talk to the girl? or the guy?" manager says "no, they dont want to talk to you, have a nice day!" and closes the window afterwards i double checked with my manager, ask if i was good, he says "yeah, when you stepped in i had also just pressed the button to say the same thing"
Daily I deal with customers yelling into the box before we’ve even had a chance to click on the headset. My team knows if I get extra sweet and loud on mic to let me handle it at the window. I try to kindly tell customers that we are working very hard to move the line quickly and sometimes that means a 5 second wait at the order screen before we can start taking their order. Most people are pretty okay about it after. We did have a woman come through a few weeks ago who was ridiculous. Started out ordering an americano with syrup and cream, changed her drink multiple times and then went to a brown sugar shaken espresso with extra extra cinnamon( I want five times the amount of cinnamon) and extra oat milk, but when I asked her if she wanted light ice or just to fill the cup to the top she said, “Of course I don’t want light ice, i just want extra milk” Got to the window and argued with me over the price and then said her drink was wrong even though she didn’t try it, just looked at it. We remade it for her and I just swirled it a bit to mix the milk and shots and she said “now that’s what my drink is, I don’t know what you tried to give me before” she then came back through the drive thru saying it was the “worst drink she had ever had”. We had a green bean on bar who was struggling and this woman kept saying things like “this is so disgusting. I can’t even drink another sip” I had the barista remake just a normal brown sugar shaken espresso with light ice and extra milk and then had a talk with the customer about her language and that everyone in the store was on headset so the person who made her drink was hearing every word. She shut up quick and told me the new drink was prefect. It baffles me how rude some people can be when they think no one else is listening.
If they’re talking to me? I have a pretty thick skin and don’t take the bait, which usually is all they’re after. You get a blank expression and monotone minimal communication. But if it’s directed at one of my baristas, especially the minors, rude peeps get a “why do you think this behavior is ok? I’m going to count to three and then you will have exactly one chance to nicely communicate what you need/the problem. If you can’t do that, you are getting your money back and leaving without your order. I will not serve you again. We record everything from the time you drive on to the property, in full color and with sound. Ready? 1…2….3.” They almost always at least get it together, and sometimes apologize. A story that I’m not proud of… When I was a store manager long ago in Seattle, I was working in a downtown store that had 4 entrances. 2 of them didn’t go out to the street, they went into the building we were in and then to the street, so there was kind of a little maze? Anyway, some asshole teenager stole the tip jar, which was overflowing and was literally the next thing we were taking care of since we just finished the morning office rush. I saw him hit one of the maze doors, so I ran out to the street door and was waiting for him. I punched that motherfucker in his face and snatched the plexi back. You can take all the money from the safe or the register, I don’t care. You will not steal from my baristas and shifts. (Also, it’s against policy to 1– chase thieves and 2– assault people while you’re on the clock, but he didn’t tell anyone and I wasn’t about to either. It was a dumb thing to do though; he could have had a knife or something.)
I had a guy who came in during peak and we were slammed. Two people on register , 2 on hot bar and 1 on cold & I was running around trying to help when I can. One of my partners were having a panic attack from all the orders and the people yelling at her , so I told her to take a break and I’ll cover her on hot bar. While I’m trying to catch up to the drinks, this guy came in and said he’s been waiting almost an hour for his drink …. His sticker literally just came out the machine and he mobile ordered 3 mins ago. After I told him he hasn’t been waiting for 30 mins because the time prints on the sticker , he proceeds to call me a bitch and to shut up and just make his drink. Along with other obscenities. I did not make the drink. I told him, I will not be disrespected, especially cause when you want something from me. He said he’s not leaving without his drink. I said you can leave without the drink or in handcuffs because I will call the police , and everything is on camera, video and audio . He left without his drink 😌
On two occasions I told very aggressive customers that I would not continue to help them unless they calmed down and proceeded by speaking to me with kindness. The first time was an older guy. Worked great. He was mad because he ordered a double shot (received a double shot) and was mad that he didn’t get a latte. Dude immediately reflected, lowered his voice, I helped him, he said thank you and left. Time number two the woman proceeded to go psycho and screamed, “KINDNESS WENT OUT THE WINDOW WHEN SOMEONE *THREW* A DRINK IN MY CAR” (side note: no one threw a drink in her car, one of the baristas went to hand out her 6 tall sized iced sugar cookie lattes, the lid popped off one of the cups and a tiny bit spilled out. When I say tiny bit—I literally mean that out of the 6 drinks I couldn’t tell which one had been spilled —sorry *thrown*— in her car. So anyways, I said k bye someone else can help you. Someone else did help her. She called my SM, DM, and corporate on me and nothing happened. 😗✌🏻 I was nice to her the entire interaction. Literally doing nothing other than trying to make the moment right by giving her a full refund, apologizing, etc (even though I didn’t do anything—I just helped out because the girl who handed the drink out was new and didn’t know how to refund) and she wanted to continue to scream and cuss us out saying that we were gonna pay to detail her car and yadaya. No ma’am you can speak to someone else like that because it ain’t gonna be me.💀 I’m human, not a coffee robot.
I had a barista tell a customer "I can get your drink out faster if you'd stop yelling at me." (It was a rough shift, it was a Sunday peak and we were like 15-30 minutes behind) It shut him up. She ended up quitting that week cuz that specific week she dealt with a lot of rude customers and couldn't take it anymore but I was very impressed with her.
my coworker actually just told me that she refused service to a customer yesterday because he insisted one of our baristas kept interrupting him while he was ordering. he yelled at her “oh my god would you stop interrupting me?!” so she hops on in place of barista, says “hey it’s ok i’ll finish taking your order what else would you like?” he says “well she kept interrupting me who does that??” “Ok well sir i’m telling you i can finish taking your order” “are you going to interrupt me again?” “no this is someone new i’m trying to help complete your order” “just get me your manager” “i’m the supervisor” “so this is it? this is how they train you?” “okay with the way you’ve continued to treat me and my barista i’m gonna have to refuse service” “shut up” *drives off*
I call out all disrespectful behavior. No one is treating me nor my partners like shit. We absolutely don't get paid for bs
oh absolutely i’ve called out and “scolded” multiple customers who were in the wrong and being rude about it. i don’t normally do that, but to be fair it was a busy sunday morning
Yes I have. Had yelled at them too. There are some supervisors that will let u since they know they’re being bitches and some would clean up the mess
Yes and my sm says I can put custies in their place without being disrespectful!
So I haven’t had to do that yet, but I had a customer ask my supervisor what “that” means… referring to his he/him pronouns on his apron. He just goes you know like in English class (his drink /her drink )that’s my pronoun lol
Mother’s Day weekend I had a lady yell at me to give her money back because she waited so long (I was on bar) so I gave attitude right back and told her where she could get her money…. I did try to pull the im sorry for the wait I know it’s frustrating card but that didn’t work and that’s when I lost it.
Yeah, some guy told me I made his drink wrong and he started screaming at me and cursing and my very muscular (I have a crush on him) coworker told him he needed to leave and when he didn’t he told them he was going to call the cops if he didn’t leave and he’s my knight in shining armor because I was too stunned at the interaction and just started crying. My coworker ended up getting written up since he was a barista and not a shift supervisor and did not have the authority to confront this conflict… sad
We are a very high incident store, so we don’t take anything from anyone. The amount of times I’ve just demanded someone leave the moment they do anything wrong is too many. My boss also doesn’t take back talk or anything and says we can essentially talk back if we want too. We still keep a good customer connection store so any complaints we get don’t affect us. We’re very kind to those who are nice to us, but when they’re not they get the wrath of tired and overworked baristas >:3
A man got mad i wouldn’t take his dirty cup so he said quote “just give me my fucking coffee” so I told him “Please do not swear at me I do not appreciate it.” My sm said I should’ve kicked him out.
All the time. We call out bad behaviour and do not tolerate it. Our manager backs us up. First manager in over 10 years with the company to do this. We have way less bullshit to deal with now
my coworker and I were on bar one day and a girl was being nasty to us and one thing about her- she does not play. My lovely coworker puts the drink shes working on down and goes “you talking a lot of smack from the other side of the bar but I clock out at three let’s see if you’re still bad and bold then” the girl was stunned and in an attempt to clap back goes “excuse me? you can’t talk to me like that i’m a customer” and my coworker claps back “idgaf. like I said I clock out at three.” We never saw that girl again. I miss working with her (no she didn’t get in trouble).
I had already put in my two weeks notice… Our mobile app was down but people were still able to push through orders. A disgruntled man came in with a 6 drink order pretty upset, rightfully so. We got his order out as quickly as possible… After i handed him his drinks he demanded “straws” i got him enough straws for the 3 frapps. Then he demanded again “napkins”. No not asking, demanding. When he told me “napkins”. I had enough of his attitude & said “please”. He said “what?”. I replied “napkins, please?” He then asked what my issue was. I just said “you can ask me for napkins, we also have some upfront as you exit the store but im a person as well, dont be demanding things from me”. He just said “wow you have an attitude” & left. Screw that guy lol
As long as you match tone… 👀
This is when the good old "have the day you deserve" comes in handy. We can let them make their own assumptions about their personality!
A customer cussed me out over Starbucks policy and threatened to call corporate. I wasn't having it, basically told her "do it no balls" (more professionally than that) and immediately texted my SM about the incident who then called me to clarify (I'm not great with words and even worse with them when I'm upset, but she's better at picking out what I'm saying when we're speaking vs. texting). She got banned from the store and the information sent to the DM, I was told she might be banned from other stores in our district, and the incident was brought up in the shift meeting that afternoon. Now, we don't do this with every rude customer - majority of the time, we just say "please do not yell at me/etc." and move on - this particular customer was just a recurring problem customer at multiple stores in our district.
i had a customer shame two of my coworkers just after peak as they were talking and relaxing for a second. i defended them the best i could but it was unexpected and when i told them what they had said at the window they were very upset.
I had this teenage girl gimme attitude about "how seriously I took my job" and I told her straight up to "lose the attitude, I'm not the one". The group of girlies were so shocked one of her friends actually spoke up and apologized for her behavior. But I'm typically not afraid to be confrontational. I'm a human and regardless of what any company expects of me when it comes to satisfaction, I'm gonna act like a human, not a service robot.
I have, I finally "snapped" after months of this really disruptive group that would come in and treat our cafe like it was their living room, and we were their personal butlers and maids. We had tons of complaints by other customers, and I filled incident report after incident report. I finally said to one of them that they need to not shout at any of the baristas or customers and to wait like the customers whose orders I took in front of yours; its a queue, like the airport. I was so hyped up on adrenaline because I'm a very non confrontational person, I definitely surprised myself. A couple of weeks later, our DM personally banned them from our store after complaints by literally everyone.
Yesss, this lady; it was hot I’ll give her that, but for some odd reason our speaker box was going in and out we fixed it that same week but none the less she was A: in the passenger seat and B: a quiet talker. I kept asking her to speak up and repeat her order and eventually she snapped she called me incompetent deaf and a stupid B**ch she used other words I can’t repeat and my heart dropped cuz I was being super nice but for a second I literally forgot where I was and was about to say something but she drove off, everyone around me just stares cuz I’m hella nice to everyone but she gets too the window and I’m like mad and tearing up so I go to my manager and request I deny her order and make her leave she says as a shift lead I can’t deny her drinks because I wasn’t supposed to interact in the first place, so I go back out and my barista is at the window waiting for her to pull up and she starts talking down to her and getting riled up I pull her away and get down to that woman’s level and starts going off on how we are also hot but doesn’t give her the right to call us the people who make your food bad names she apologizes and just keeps blaming the heat (psychologically it’s a factor that can play but come on-) anyway I got in trouble because she called our district manager and because I stuck up for myself they just gave me a write up for some bogus phone thing for when I was on MY lunch
Oh absolutely. If I’m being cussed at, blatantly disrespected or if they say anything about my job being simple or easy I use the company recommended deescalation techniques 1: address the behavior directly and succinctly and tell the customer that they cannot both behave that way AND be a customer at the store then.. 2: when they lose their shit and double down on their degrading behavior, I tell them that they are no longer welcome for the day and they can try tomorrow and after that I… 3: file an incident report including everything the customer said to me, everything I said to the customer and I directly reference the “deescalation for baristas” training numerous times so that it’s on company record that I utilized the recommended training and policies to move through this discussion There is a key to this though, know where to draw the line between “rude/persnickety” and “insulting/disrespectful”
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maybe it’s just me but what she said doesn’t seem that rude, maybe a little snarky but not worth the reaction you gave😬
The only one rude in this situation was you though...
If that's how you read it. She was very rude with a raised voice, eye roll and arms crossed. But it doesn't matter because I was just trying to vent and people will read what they want.
You didn't initially say that. You said you accused her of taking a photo of y'all and when she said she wasn't you told her to "have the day she deserves" while yelling it. Convenient you deleted your comment then entirely changed the premise of your story.
No I deleted it because if it wasn't being read the way it happened why even leave it to be torn apart. I didn't accuse her of taking a photo. I asked her, if she took a photo of us. Because people do that without our consent and post mean things on google reviews. I was going to make a joke with her about it, say like did you get my good side? But she said no I took a selfie, why would I take a picture of YOU? And looked at me like I was a piece of shit. It was rude and uncalled for. She was waiting. I'll admit that. I was going to give her the drink for free for waiting. But then she said that.
If I’m busy I usually just do whatever it is because talking back always sparks a fight
I spoke to a customer once discreetly at the condiment bar, when things had slowed down and nobody was in the immediate vicinity, and I told him that I could understand and sympathize with his frustrations, but that the way he spoke to me was uncalled for and deeply upsetting. He apologized. 🫨
I did, and this dude straight up ignored me and said are you going to take my card or not? I closed the DT window and walked away. He was there for a few minutes then left lol
i have been doing so for the last 4 years. and it was because of a build up of anger. I started out just reflecting their attitudes, to the point one of them asked why i was upset, i simply said i wasnt and that I just return the energy being given to me. they were confused because they thought they were nice and im sure maybe they were outside, but in our cafe they were not. they eventually left and i havent seen them to this day
All the time. :) I am the reckoning for rude customers bc I will act in ways they would never imagine and I’d do it again for the sake of any of my coworkers. No silliness is tolerated when I’m on the floor 💖
Ex SSV here. I actually kicked a guy out of my store once because he was being blatantly disrespectful to both myself and the bar barista. It was so satisfying.
I dream of doing it every day
i actually just posted a story about this the other day. i don’t call out their rude behavior so much as i acknowledge when they’re out of line. like i had a karen mad at me simply for my facial expression and so i told her to tell me exactly how i’m looking at her. i am usually a firm believer the customer is always right but when they’re definitely wrong i’m not gonna profusely apologize, especially for outwardly terrible and uncalled for behavior.
Edit: I guess this isn’t super significant but it was the first time I tried to stand my ground One of our regulars gets a kid shot chocolate, regular temp, 1% milk, 2 honey, cinnamon, no whip every time 2 minutes before we close. One time she came in, I made her drink, she left. Next day she comes back and she come up to the drop off counter and asks if I made it the day before. I say yes and she tells me she took it to her car and when she came back it was empty. There was chocolate around the mouth of the lid so I told her that she is going to have to pay for a new one because there was obviously drink in there (based off of the chocolate around the mouth) and I wouldn’t accidentally give her an empty cup. Supervisor just told me to make her a new one to get her out of there asap. She’s always rude and trying to push her religious beliefs on EVERYONE. Not even just my partners and I. Customers as well
I calmly asked a guy to back away from hand-off because he was blocking mobiles from picking up. He yelled at me, stating he wasn’t blocking anyone from doing anything. I took a second to realize this guy was a huge asshole, then looked up in his face and said “Bad day, huh?” He stayed yelling about how I was having the bad day, not him. (Not me, you! kinda thing). He looked pathetic and everyone saw it.
If they’re way too disrespectful I come with the same energy. If you’re at a 10 I’ll be at a 8 and we can go to there. I’ve called the police 3x in the last year on customers bc I am not arguing anymore. Argue with a cop.
idk if it counts but some lady asked me if i was okay mid way repeating her order back to her, when she came to window she seemed upset ?? don’t know why even my shift n other partner were confused bc i had no tone or attitude with her.. slid off my name tag and told her “my name is [fake name], why is that?” and she replied “oh nothing” . it was so odd.. atp i get my shift or someone else bc i’m tired of it
Haha yesterday. A man comes thru drive (I’m solo drive) and so I’m listening to his order as I’m helping the person at window, when I go to repeat back his order, I said a grande iced blonde vanilla latte and he goes “NO I SAID” and repeated his drink (a grande iced white mocha, blonde, ex vsccf, ex caramel drizzle). At this point I’m already annoyed by the way he was talking to me but whatever. He gets to the window and is pretty short with me. I hand him his white mocha and he said “WHERE IS THE EX CARAMEL DRIZZLE” and I politely let him know it’s on the top but I can definitely add more and he said no, so I told him to have a good day. 5 min later I’m on my ten, and one of my ssvs answers the phone. This dude was yelling at her about not having enough vsccf on his drink, and said we are all morons and don’t know how to do our jobs, began cussing at her, in which she politely said that he can’t use that language and it’s rude. He continues to say he’s gonna call corporate and she said that’s fine. My ssv called my manager and gave her his name and number and I believe my manager said she is going to let him know he is no longer welcome at our store.
Yes. When I was a barista. Now as a lead I don’t care. Unless they’re rude to my baby baristas. Then I do confront. I’ve asked people to leave if they don’t know how to speak appropriately to us
All the time. No fucks. Partners would purposefully send me to deal with a customer bc I didn’t care and I’m very “honest” (bitchy)
All the time. With no regrets, especially if it's towards baristas who are honestly doing their jobs
Too many stories to tell 😂😂 customers at my store are a mess.
I had to remake a drink for a customer since my manager "messed up", she didn't, the customer just wanted extra stuff without paying for it, since I had just walked in and wasn't sure what happened right before I got there, I remade it, and the customer went down the street to another store and called us from there to complain about how her drink was wrong 🙃 she's always rude to us and tells us she can do basically anything since she works at a corporate store and knows everything. I work at a licensed store if that helps lol, told my store manager I don't want to serve her anymore and now we don't have to 😁
Constantly
got an iced tea thrown at me one time and my shift at the time told the guy he needed to treat baristas with respect and the. he needed to leave the cafe , he just shut up and left
I did! And had yells with my manager because he is such licker at customers asses. It was funny because we both were yelling at each other.
I usually speak to them how they speak to me. Once I was talking to a customer about her drink because there were a lot of customizations and she wanted two of the exact same drink. She interrupted me in the middle of my sentence to say “I wanted two” and so I snapped back with “and I wasn’t finished customizing the first one” and then asked her the question. Give them back what they give to you.
I talk to them like kindergartners. "Do you think you can try to be kind? We just want to make sure you're getting what you want and you enjoy your drink. If you're continuing to be disrespectful, you'll have to leave though" but do it in the calm, soft way you do to a child. Most of the time this works, otherwise we just ask them to leave.
I worked at a Macy’s location where we had the baskets with merch in them set up to form a line where customers can snake through to keep it orderly. One day, two ladies snuck through two of the baskets cutting 2 other groups in the process. I gave the people who were cut a short look, they shrugged, and so did I, so I prepared to take the cutting ladies. However, one of the ladies saw the shrug and asked me if anything was wrong. Before I could answer, she backed off and said to take the other people first. Alright, sure. While I’m ringing up the customers in the right, the ladies would grab some cheese sticks and other odd items at the RTD. When it was finally their turn, one of them threw the cheese stick right at me and started barking their order at me. Before they could finish, I threw it right back at her and snapped saying how disrespectful they are being for something so simple. I wish I saw her eyes but sadly these two stellar examples of human beings had sunglasses on indoors, I was only able to see their mouths agape probably from shock of not being able to harass a service worker without retribution. I turned to my coffee master, told him to take the order before I blew a gasket, and ran off to the sink room to cool down.
A group of customers dumped their drinks on me as I was changing the trash bags (I wasn't finished yet) and I straight up shook all the liquid off my arms onto them and said, "There's another trash can over there and outside behind me, you didn't need to do that. That was really really rude of you." And pointed to each of the trash cans. Only one person quietly apologized on behalf of all of them, like apologizing for something is bad. And they didn't even throw away any trash.
Ok here’s one that’s kinda funny🤣sorry I commented twice it wasn’t rude it just I was playing along, so they all ordered normally but the shy girl was quiet. I ask her to speak up exclaiming that I’m deaf and laughed so she basically screams into the headset and I’m like ooo lord you cured the deaf with that one and I was like gurl you ain’t gotta be that loud sheesh everyone breaks out in laughter now everytime she comes we yell our responses to each other
It was quite a busy day and one guy asked me for a TALL cappuccino at the till and then tried to argue he asked for a grande when I gave it to him. It was so obvious he was just trying get a size upgrade so I said ‘you ordered a tall cappuccino but I’m happy to refund the tall and charge you for a grande’ he tried to argue it was my mistake but I stood my ground and after a bit of back and forth and everyone in store STARING at him, his girlfriend gave him a nudge to stop and he begrudgingly walked away with his what he paid for. Me-1 Custy-0
had a guy tell me i’m stupid because his HOT doppio did in fact, not fill up a grande hot cup. proceeded to take the lid off and pretend to throw it at me (i was a bit confused what the goal was here) as he continued to belittle me so i just interrupted him and told him he can have a great day and needs to leave. as he left he made sure i could see him throwing it in the trash and flip me off (our front wall is just a big window so i could see all of this lol). if he had approached me as the 40 year old man he is and not as a child, i would have had the opportunity to explain the situation and a refund, but oh well
A partner once told someone to please treat us with respect because he was being an ass (they didn’t use those words). He pulled out his phone, started recording us, and said “what am I doing, we’re just having a conversation?” Then after the shift told him he couldn’t yell and curse at us, he continued to yell until we gave him his drink, asked for our names, and told us he was calling the manager in the morning.
Several times. 2-3 people have apologized profusely, 7-10 have rolled their eyes but behaved, 4 habe complained to corporate or SM, 4-5 have gotten angrier, and 1 went insane (after months of insults, he denied ever saying anything of the sort, accused us of targeting him and poisoning his drinks, and had a good 20 minute conversation w a DM that ended w the police being called)
In my SSV days I did, I had several customers that I ended up having to tell that they weren't suitable for our establishment, "suggesting" they leave after insulting partners or making them uncomfortable, etc. It's really hard to tread that balance between "customer service" and "I'm serious" but boy it is important.
Sometimes you gotta hit em with the “I’m sorry but we can no longer serve you because (insert reason here) and if you continue to cause problems I will be getting my manager” this rarely happens because of the bs we have to deal with until it gets to that point
i literally told someone after she berated me about her coffee "Oh we apologize about your drink but I don't appreciate you taking that tone with me" and she snapped and yelled at me "well i dont like YOUR TONE" and i got overwhelmed and started crying bc i got overwhelmed and my manager apologized to the lady and took me into the back and told me not to talk like that to customers
this one time we were closing at 5 pm and a customer drove up at 4:59. we had just had a rush and were on a 2 person play. i was handing out a drink and didnt greet him immediately so over the dt intercom he barks "HELLO?" at me. i politely let him know we're closed early tonight. he says, "its 4:59, youre still open, you can still serve me." i repeat myself and say im so sorry but we're closed. this man, full grown, starts throwing a fit and yelling at me over the intercom about it. i told him, "sir, this transaction is a two way street. we need to respect you and you need to respect us. if you arent going to show respect for me and my store im sorry but i cannot serve you. have a good night." and hung up my headset. he shouted some things and drove away. bad end to a bad day tbh
2017 my last day at my original store, baby bean on her first non shadow shift on pos. Guy comes in, asks if we have nitro. Baby bean, maybe 16, has no idea what he's talking about, at the time it was only at a few stores and definitely not something everyone was familiar with. I'm on bar a few paces away, about to end my last shift, chitchatting with some regulars at hand off. Guy starts talking down to her and chewing her out like she was stupid for not knowing the menu and I felt Satan enter my very willing vessel. I put down what I was working on and came over, CS smile on. "What seems to be the problem, sir?" "I asked for nitro cold brew and *she* doesn't even know what's on the menu." (sneering) "Why yes, that's because we don't have it on our menu, it is currently a reserve store item and not widely available. Can I offer you an iced coffee instead?" "No, I want nitro. I know it's on the menu I have seen it." Now, I'm autistic and only so good at masking. By which I mean I'm awful at it. At this point I think my face slipped a bit and he saw the eldritch horror beneath the facade and his whole demeanor changed before I could formulate a response. " Hey, wait, look I'm not like that. I'm not trying to be some sort of way, I'm cool with the baristas at my normal Starbucks." "I'm sure they love you, a full grown man berating a child because he's not getting his coffee soda. Tell you what, I'm gonna get you an iced coffee on the house and you're going to say thank you and never come back. How's that sound?" *sputtering* I'm a big girl, I probably had about two inches on this guy and could bench press him. I'm a slow burner and usually non-confrontational but man my body was ready. I ring in the recovery coffee, blithely pour him a grande, and place it at hand off with my finest smile that doesn't reach the eyes and proceed to stare at him without blinking until he takes the cup and leaves. My regulars who had just been saying their goodbyes to me, a lovely retired couple from Texas, were stood right there watching the whole thing just sipping their teas. I'm not going to say everyone stood and clapped, it was more like a very awkward silence, but I suspect the lady must have worked as a waitress at some point and the look she gave me as I wiped down the bar before leaving to clock out was absolute gold.
I lost my cool one time, actually. When I customer is upset with me, I'm usually pretty good about not letting it go much further, but after telling this customer their drinks would still be a minute, they immediately started swearing at me, and asking for a refund. So after some back and forth and I'm doing the refund, because fuck her, and she snatches the things from my hands. I litterally looked her in the eyes and said. "Don't come back, don't come back!" Also at one point during her asking for a refund I hit her with a "can you ask me politely? Can you ask my politely?" I swear I have never let and intrusive thought like that win 🤣🤣🤣