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Hey, Starbucks Baristas? Nobody Is Named "Phone"
By
Garth Johnston
Published Oct 14, 2011
Modified Oct 14, 2011
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Marguerite McAfee via Runnin' Scared
By
Garth Johnston
Published Oct 14, 2011
Modified Oct 14, 2011
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Starbucks has a long history of getting people's names wrong on cups (just ask Pat Kiernan, who blogs about them nearly daily) but today Runnin' Scared offers a particularly egregious one. It isn't as bad as the time a barista wrote "The Black Guy" on one of Chad Ochocinco's cups, but it's not much better.
The story goes like this: Earlier this week Marguerite McAfee went to her usual Starbucks and was on line to order her usual tall soy latte from a barista. While she waited she played a little FlightControl on her iPhone, while still paying "close attention" to the person in front of her on line. Except after the person in front of her placed their order the barista turned around, so...
I looked back down at my phone. Apparently I was wrong and he had planned to take my order. He shouted at me, "Miss on the phone." I felt affronted by the way he spoke to me, it was rude and angry, as if I had no right to be looking down at my phone while waiting for him to take my order. I wasn't speaking on the phone, I was looking at it, but no manner of using a phone should have caused him to speak to me this way. I placed my order with him, a $4.08 tall soy latte, which I buy once or twice a day (this adds up over the course of a year), and continued to wait to get to the register.
Skipping over a whole bunch of her adventure—oh, snippy cashiers!—by the time McAfee's latte was in her hands the name on the side read "Phone." A name which left McAfee "really taken aback" as "it was meant to be humiliating and it worked. I was embarrassed to take the cup with the sort of scarlet letter written on it."
Eventually McAffee complained to a manager, who didn't so much as apologize as say "he would take care of the situation." But this? This is why whenever we're on a line for anything where we get our name asked we always try and make sure they take it. And even add a little something to make it more memorable, like, obviously, "Garth, as in, 'Party On.'"
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