One thing I’ve learned with writing about the Starbucks Challenge is that — just as baristas might need a reminder now and then about what the French press policy is — activists too often need a reminder to always be nice, even if one runs into the occasional rude barista. After all, the challenge is about Starbucks’ policies as a company, not about individual baristas, nice or not. It’s a tough job, serving a long line of cranky, caffeine-deprived people –

rude baristas aside, the problem is that the learning process is so long, and slow. and while the good customers care about coffee, and the better ones about coffee buying practices, i’m hard pressed to find more than a handful in many places.

the majority of our customers care about quality service, clean environments, fast service. the knowledge and coffee mastery is a very far second to all of that.
and when you factor in turnover rates – with the lowest unemployment (at least in my city) in years, it gets harder to ensure that people are able to learn more than the basics.

but keep up the challenge. i enjoy reading when we get it right. keep pushing starbucks to make themselves better – it has helped and will only continue to make us better.

but be forewarned: if you keep challenging us and we rise to it – then you become responsible for us being better, and bigger. :)

A manager of a Starbucks location probably feels that it’s a best practice if no one asks for the french press option. This is perhaps so because much of the barista’s work has been de-skilled and routinized. A french pressed coffee is, after all, a customized product in that most SBux customers will opt for whatever the daily blend happens to be.

If Starbucks corporate is really serious about this option and fair trade promotion in general, they need to emphasize it at the store manager level. Baristas do what they’re told whereas their boss can ignore or hide what the higher-ups want done. Incidentally, sorry Al, I mistakenly thought you were female as well. Thanks for getting this started along with GreenLAGirl.

But, with all this having been said, I wonder if it influences how people perceive your stuff.

Namaste

Al