Yes, we have no Estima
It was the store on Robertson and Pico, with the auspicious priviledge of being the Starbucks outlest nearest me. It’s also where we had the meeting with the LA-area Starbucks managers.
So when I walked in around noon yesterday, I thought it’d be easy. Especially when I saw a basket that announced Cafe Estima as the coffee of the week.
Barista: We’re not brewing that right now. We have [named 2 blends].
Me: Oh. Um, can I still get a cup?
Barista: The coffees rotate, you understand what I’m saying? It’s not brewing right now.
Me: Oh. Do you think I could get a cup in a French press?
Barista: A French-press… We don’t… (Turns to another barista, repeats my request to her; barista2 looks at me quizzically). Do you understand what I’m saying? We’re not brewing that right now. They rotate. Thank you. (cocks his head towards the door)
Was it something I said? Or do I just look English illiterate?
Not all of my “teaching” is altruistic; often I use it as a bit of revenge — how does the CIA put it? Ah yes, “psychological motivation.”
“Ok look, that’s not the way to “say yes.” It was in the scoop X weeks ago; ask your store manager about the FT policy. In fact, hey is (Name here if you no it)? You are supposed to offer to french press fair trade any time a customer asks for it; you are not supposed to treat a customer as if they are stupid. What’s your name and partner number, please.” Delivered in a no nonsense tone will have the dork wettin’ his pants and remembering the lesson. The fun part is the look of terror.
Admittedly, you have to be in the mood to be mean. (grin). I haven’t been lately. And it is not the best pedagogical form. But it can make you feel better.
Comment by Roger, Gone Green — January 28, 2006 @ 5:47 pm
Oh dear sweet zombie jesus.
The Starbucks stupid just burns.
Comment by Rainy — January 28, 2006 @ 6:29 pm
He must of thought you were French, siel.
Comment by ProgGrrl — January 28, 2006 @ 9:01 pm
Did the 2 baristas also raise their voice to make sure you understand better? Urghh…you should’ve gotten their names, and tell them that your major is actually english literature and you’re the one who’s been challenging Sbx to get it right…or yeah, why not just speak french back at them :-)…and take a picture as soon as they look at each other looking stupid. Neah…just entertaining myself for the last point here.
Comment by Maya — January 28, 2006 @ 11:10 pm
What an arse or a barista. I’d have stopped he and said, “I understand perfectly, now do you understand ‘I want to talk to the manager, please’?”
I learned something about the stupidity of some baristas yesterday when a former Irish one contacted me on gmail asking for her P45 (basically the Irish version of a pink slip sent out a couple of weeks after you leave your job). She emailed all her details and contact information to me on the assumption that since I mentioned Starbucks in my blog I was the contact point for them in Ireland :-) I rang her and explained the Starbucks Challenge to her.
Comment by Declan — January 29, 2006 @ 5:48 am
sorry meant to write “What an arse of a barista”, early morning and I havent had my coffee yet :-). Going to solve that now.
Comment by Declan — January 29, 2006 @ 5:50 am
Totally unrelated to this post. Siel, have you ‘met’ Yarn Harlot? at: (it’s a huge huge knitting community out there :-)) I was just wondering if you’re already part of it…they even do knitting Olympics. Wow. Bravo.
http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/
Comment by Maya — January 29, 2006 @ 5:53 am
argh. i get so mad when baristas are assholes and perpetuate the stereotype of condescending bitchy baristas.
seriously, send in a complaint. this has nothing to do with the starbucks challenge, it has to do with starbucks partners who need to get the sticks out of their asses.
Comment by Claire — January 29, 2006 @ 12:13 pm
I don’t think your at fault for being nice. Next time, you could just say, “Oh, I thought Starbucks had committed to French pressing a cup of fair trade whenever someone wanted one. Is this not true?” Then, you’re still being nice. You’re still letting the guy know you’re not dumb. And, you’re able to clearly show Starbucks that it’s not keeping it’s commitment if the barista should still not get you the fair traded stuff. Being a jerk to jerks is like shrieking at a shrieking monkey. Fun and all, maybe, but definitely not very constructive. I say, try to be above it all, if you can.
Comment by NC — January 29, 2006 @ 2:15 pm
NC’s right, of course. (Hanging head).
Comment by Roger, Gone Green — January 29, 2006 @ 3:16 pm
so, maybe I’m confused, but I thought each cup of coffee was made when you ordered it. For example, don’t they put the ground beans into a little thingy and then into the espresso machine? Excuse the weird terminology, but I’m not a coffee person at all. Anyway, if this is the case, would it really be that hard to get you some cafe estima and make a cup any which way you want?
I guess the point is to say that I didn’t really think Starbucks did drip/percolated coffee. Am I wrong?
Comment by Leah — January 29, 2006 @ 6:14 pm
Leah -
Starbucks does brew regular drip coffee, as well as the espresso drinks.
There are three coffees of the week every week. There is a bold, a mild, and a decaf brewing at all times.
When someone orders regular coffee, we just have to turn around and put it under the spigot on one of the coffee pots. So when someone asks for a specific brew that isn’t one of the coffees of the week it has to be made specially. The beans have to be found, then ground, then brewed for four minutes and pressed in a french press.
Comment by Claire — January 29, 2006 @ 6:22 pm
And this is what they call progress? WTF, man?
Comment by Jasmin — January 30, 2006 @ 8:00 am
Wow, so starbucks does do just plain, regular coffee.
Now, I’m just really confused as to why people would go to Starbucks for plain coffee that they could make themselves. Then again, like I said, I don’t drink coffee at all. I appreciate the clarification, Claire. I still don’t think it’d be all that difficult to have some estima hanging around in a convenient spot to be ground and french pressed.
Another question: even if you can’t get drip estima or french pressed estima, could they still make espresso out of it for you?
Comment by Leah — January 30, 2006 @ 9:29 am
Leah -
Espresso is a particular roast of coffee. It is much darker than the Cafe Estima.
It would technically be possible to use Estima as Espresso is used, but it would not be feasible to do at a Starbucks. It would be easy to do on a personal espresso machine, but at Starbucks we either have an old machine where we use seperate grinders that are already full of Espresso or a new machine which has the Espresso grinders directly inside of it. In order to use Estima instead of Espresso we would have to empty out the grinders and fill them again with Estima. Then after the Esitma drinks were made we would have to empty it out of the girnders again. This would be a really huge hassle and would disrupt the flow of business for quite a while. During rushes when there are consistently ten drinks or so lined up on top of the bar to be made, it really juist would not be feasible to specially make Espresso beverages with Cafe Estima.
Brewing a french press of Estima is a little bit of a hassle, but one we baristas should be able to handle easily and without being assholes.
It would be wonderful and amazing if we would just use fair trade espresso roast. But I don’t see that happening any time soon. Unfortunately.
Comment by Claire — January 30, 2006 @ 10:53 am
In the future, I’ll def. try your tactic, NC. I don’t want to ever get mean at the baristas, even if some aren’t that nice, because it would totally defeat the purpose of the challenge. Mean challengers are prolly the biggest critique against the challenge. And certainly, I’ve worked a # of jobs for practical reasons — like paying rent and getting health insurance — even though my heart wasn’t in the job.
In any case, because the LA meeting was at this Starbucks, I have the names & #s of the manager & assnt manager. I’ll call and ask if the barista was new and/or recently had a beloved pet puppy die or something once I get back home.
Claire — Thanks so much for the detailed info on the way coffee works in Starbucks :) I too hope that one day soon the mermaid’ll have fair trade espresso beans. Though I s’pose the first steps to just get stores to serve fair trade drip coffee during the weeks it’s supposed to be brewing…
Comment by Siel — January 30, 2006 @ 11:23 am
Hey, uhm, I am NEVER mean, overtly. Just succinct, with a dollop of middle-school teacher thrown in; it is watching their fear of having screwed up that provides my “mean” jollies. Just yellin’ at people makes them feel all self-rightious . . .
Comment by Roger, Gone Green — January 30, 2006 @ 2:02 pm
“Succint, with a dollop of middle-school teacher thrown in…”–Now, that’s a blog I would read.
Comment by NC — January 30, 2006 @ 6:47 pm
NC and Roger — You guys are hilar. Have you met? You’re both in the Southland –
When challenges go badly like this, sometimes I wonder if I somehow come across as mean without realizing it… Ah — self-doubt — But I really don’t think so. I’m more likely to run out before a situation escalates into anger, and this guy just seemed to get weirdly angry for no reason. Oh well.
Maya — Yes — I thought about joining the knitting olympics, but got sidetracked into blogging…
Comment by Siel — February 1, 2006 @ 1:13 am