The Starbucks Latte from Psychoville

Sunday mornings consist of 2 things, a run and a latte. I am a creature of habit and I can’t seem to break the cycle. Mondays are Crossfit at 5:30am, tennis at 9 and work for the rest of the day. Same thing every week. I could list out my week and it would seem like groundhog day every single week.

Today I skipped the run because I couldn’t leave the kids home alone but I did manage to persuade one of them to take the ride with me to Starbucks for the latte. Everybody has something they “must-have” in life. I have a few things and one of them is Starbucks. I made a promise to the little one that if he went with me, we could finally pick up the Halloween costume he has been asking for since August. Personally, I could not take one more day of hearing about it and it was the perfect compromise to get my coffee fix.

We walked into Starbucks and there was a woman in front of me with long, grey hair holding her “own” cup. I knew from the minute I saw her cup, this was going to be trouble. Not everyone, but many people who bring their own cup into Starbucks request a drink their own “special” way. I couldn’t hear what she was asking for but I heard her giving VERY clear instructions to the cashier. She also paid half with a Starbucks gift card and half with some other card. I wanted to tell her to download the Starbucks app because it is one of the best apps ever and she didn’t need to go through all this trouble paying. But I decided to not spend the time explaining the app, its usefulness and, for someone who spends half their life in Starbucks (she certainly did..you will see why), what she was missing out on.

I ordered my short, soy latte and waited behind the woman with the long grey hair. All of a sudden, the grey-haired woman starts SCREAMING (ask anyone in the Rt. 10 Starbucks that was there at 10:40am) “EXCUSE ME, I DID NOT ASK FOR MY DRINK LIKE THAT!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

She proceeded to push this little boy who was standing behind her out-of-the-way and ran up to the cashier.

She fully exploded. She screamed “THIS IS THE SECOND TIME IN 2 DAYS THIS HAS HAPPENED TO ME. I ASKED FOR THE FOAM A CERTAIN WAY AND THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.”

I have to tell you, I felt terrible for this cashier. She had NOTHING to do with the coffee-making. Her job solely  was to handle the transactions. The grey-haired lady (who, by the way, if dyed her hair would look about 30 times younger…not that is was my business, I do like the look of au natural but she really has the opportunity to look way younger ..just saying) also said “I TOLD YOU EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?  I AM SUPPOSED TO BE AT THE CEMETERY AND NOW I AM LATE”.

Okay – the lady was in jeans. JEANS. Since when do you go to a funeral in jeans? Secondly if she wasn’t going to a funeral and simply paying a visit to the cemetery, Are there visiting hours on Sunday at the cemetery? I doubt she made a date with the deceased. Even if she was meeting someone at the cemetery, I am sure she could have texted whoever she was “meeting” that she was running late because the Starbucks Barista fucked up her coffee order and she was having a nervous breakdown while they remade it.

The psychotic grey haired lady requested, actually demanded, to speak to the manager. If you have been to the Starbucks on Rt.10 in East Hanover, you would know the manager is the nicest guy ever. You have probably seen him making drinks. He has grey hair (as well), usually in a pony-tail, a few earrings and he normally wears the green Starbucks hat. He was trying his hardest not to lose it on this woman who was yelling and screaming like a 5 year-old who wasn’t getting her way. Everybody who was in Starbucks at that moment in time could not believe the scene this lady was making. I would have recorded it but knew I would be up shits creek from the lady who was creating a shit storm. Instead I am writing about it.

The manager, as nice as he was, told the lunatic that he will remake it and handed her a business card of someone, I am guessing, who is way above the corporate Starbucks ladder than the nice manager. This part gets good….

He told the barista who originally made the wrong ” venti whatever she asked for”, he will handle her order.

He was almost finished with the drink and grey-hair lady says in her mean, crazy voice “You know how to do this right? This is how it was made wrong the first time. I do not want the foam held back from the spoon.”

I almost fell over. Do you mean to tell me that she just caused a line out the door, a scene from Saturday Night Live, because the barista did not hold the foam back when she finished the drink? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

The manager looks up at her and says,”the term we use at Starbucks is called a “free pour”. If that is how you want your drink, you have to use that term.”

Seriously, I have heard it all. I have seen it all. The lady from Psychoville asked for the SAME drink in a venti cup and stormed off.

The moral of the story is this:

People it is just coffee. If you feel the need to make a scene at Starbucks because somebody did not pour the foam correctly, you need to do 3 things:

1. Get a life

2. Invest in an espresso maker and make your own damn coffee. I am sure the amount of money you are spending on your venti coffee everyday is well over the amount of money it would cost you to buy the machine

 

3. Stay home on Sunday. My kid asked me 30 times what was wrong with the lady in Starbucks and why was she so mad? Sunday is a day of relaxation. I felt nothing but anxiety and stress after I left there.

Hope the start to your Sunday was better than mine!

P.S. This was the lady’s cup…if you see a lady with grey hair holding this cup, RUN!