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…

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…

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.

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?

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.

I guess the point is to say that I didn’t really think Starbucks did drip/percolated coffee. Am I wrong?