STARBUCKS: FRITTERING AWAY THE BUSINESS ONE UNPLEASANT ‘PARTNER' AT A TIME

I heard it from a pal that works at a Seattle area Starbucks that breakfast sandwiches have gone away. Probably not news to the people who add Starbies to their (I mean this literally) their daily grind, but I just found out and was elated to hear it. It was the one thing that was garnering them the nickname of “the new Mickey Ds.” At least now people can walk out of the store without smelling like they’ve bathed in vegetable oil at Denny’s. Well, that’s what it was like—you’d actually be stuck there so long waiting for your drink that the smell from the re-heater cooking those fancy-looking “Star-Mac-Cholesterol-fins,” would predispose you to need a trip to the dry cleaner to get the stench out. Every time I wore my favorite blazer, I would be forced to relive bad service over and over again in my mind! No one deserves that.

Okay, so I’ve been pretty hard on the White and Green, but hey, don’t they deserve it just a bit? I realize that the wages suck and the partners have to deal with bitchy customers who were given the impression that SBs was Burger King and that they can get it “their way,” but come on. Some of us are paying $5 a day. That’s almost $1300 per year for a cup of coffee (Cover your ears, Suze Orman.) Don’t we have some rights? Shouldn’t that involve some service?

In spite of Starbuck’s recent attempt to win back so many customers by changing their logo and re-training employees and having them sign a chalkboard (can someone say marketing Band Aid?), I’ve seen very little improvement. There are, occasionally, the helpful staffers who I see often at the SoHo Spring Street store, but none of them helped me this morning. Lucky for me, I got the grumpy “I’m preoccupied and overwhelmed by so many Euro-trash customers today that I think I’ll drop the ball girl.” She got my order and name right, but the hardest thing, that of actually handing me my apple fritter, just escaped her. This wasn’t just in a “oh, I’m so sorry, I forgot" way either. It was a “ I see you waiting for something, but you're just going to have to reach around me and the register to get it yourself before you'll be able to move over to the drink counter" way. I praise Jesus that the pastry was actually so hard that I was able to get my talons around it. When all is said and done, I got my Chai and my fritter, but what I also left with was a sense that I don’t matter. This reminds me of my neighborhood corner deli, where the owners used to constantly jip people out of a couple cents change a day. Imagine if they did that to ten people every day at two cents per day. That would equal $7300 over the course of year. Would you let that happen? No, you’d say something and, perhaps never go there again. Why should I make them rich? Well, I like Starbucks. I’m from the Northwest and I support Northwest businesses. Instead of just going cold turkey, I just decided to sit here in my caffeinated stupor and exercise my right to say something about it!

(The funniest Starbucks post ever! http://www.holytaco.com/2008/05/21/8-types-of-annoying-people-youll-find-inside-starbucks/)