Starbucks

11.10.2012 Art, Starbucks

Destination: Art

I love the artist Dale Chihuly. If you’ve been to the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, you’ve probably seen his work on the ceiling (right.)

The photo to the left was taken at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix in 2011. It was freakin’ hot, even at ten a.m. My sons and I were there to look at the plants, but were delighted to find some artwork of Chihuly’s near the entrance. Those two “plants” on the right are made of glass. Even though they’re this vibrating neon green, they don’t seem to clash with the natural surroundings. Weird, huh!

Anyway, Chihuly is from Tacoma, Washington and in Seattle they’ve built the Chihuly Garden and Glass installation. I’m dying to go see it.

If I went there, I could also see the first Starbucks location, too. I’ve heard there are always long lines, but I wouldn’t need to buy a coffee there. Come to think of it, a trip to Seattle would guarantee we’d have good coffee at least. There’s nothing worse than going on vacation and having to suffer bad coffee. (Carnival Cruise Lines have horrible coffee, FYI.)

05.13.2009 Magazines, Shopping, Silliness, Starbucks, Websites

Unnecessary Knitted Item

I saw this in my Real Simple magazine and couldn’t believe it. It’s a knitted coffee cup sleeve. Guess how much it retails for!

No, really, guess!

$18.00, no lie. I suppose there might be some eco-freaks out there who might drag this thing into Starbucks to use. (If you’re one of them, I’ll knit you one for only five bucks.)

This is the place where you can get the original if you want it. They also have slingshot pencils, hair clips that look like googly eyes, and tiny herb gardens whose pots are porcelain eggs. Those things are kind of cool.

03.24.2009 Rants, Starbucks

Bagel Jerk

I work at Starbucks. Most of the time customers are really nice. Sometimes, they’re…not. I can usually weather the idiots without getting upset. However, once in a while, someone rubs me the wrong way. Bagel Jerk, as I not-so-fondly refer to him as, is one of those people.

A guy comes in and says, “I want two plain bagels.”

I say, “I’m sorry, we’ve sold out of plain bagels. All we have left are the cheese bagels.”

He makes a face. “I don’t like cheese bagels.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

He continues to complain about how he doesn’t like cheese bagels and I tell him again that sometimes we sell out of stuff. He goes on to order several drinks and then he pays. A few customers later, I notice the bagel guy (he was still just a “guy” at that point) is still standing near my register.

“Are you waiting for something else, sir?” I ask.

“My bagels.”

My jaw drops. “I thought you didn’t want them.”

“You mean after all that, you didn’t get the bagels???” He looks incredulous and angry. That made two of us.

“I thought you said you didn’t like cheese bagels.”

“I still wanted them!” he declares, irate.

So, tensely we conduct another transaction, because obviously I didn’t make him pay for the bagels when he ordered the first time. He gets his nasty cheese bagels and leaves.

Idiot. When you tell someone you don’t like what they have, they’re going to assume you don’t want to order them. Now when he comes in, I always pray we’re sold out of the plain bagels. LOL

Thing is, he came in again yesterday. I hear a little snippet of conversation at the register. I look up to see Bagel Jerk. He’s, of course, asking about the plain bagels. Someone has cut all the ones in the case, He wants two bagels, uncut, toasted, with cream cheese, and some drinks. Samantha, who was taking his order, says, “Okay.” She knows we have another bag of plain bagels, uncut, behind the counter. They finish the transaction. Then, another partner (at Starbucks we’re all called partners) goes to make his bagels, and he says to her, “Oh, you have them uncut?”

“Yes.”

Somewhat surprised, he says, “Oh. Well, I really want mine cut and toasted, but I just wanted to see what you would say.”

So, he was freakin’ TESTING us to see if we’d lie about whether we had them uncut or not. Like maybe we’d sell him the bagels and THEN say, belatedly that we didn’t have them uncut after he’d already paid.

Like I said, Bagel JERK.

01.28.2009 Food, Recommendations, Starbucks

Tea Lattes

As you may know, I work at Starbucks. They recently rolled out a new batch of drinks: the tea lattes. I have always been a coffee person, but once in a while I’ll take tea: always with Chinese food, sometimes when I have a sore throat or stuffed up sinuses, but never with milk. Yuck. So, these new drinks–the London Fog Tea Latte, the Vanilla Rooibos Tea Latte, and the Black Tea Latte–are not my favorite beverages on the Starbucks menu. (Although if we’re going to talk SMELLS, the Vanilla Rooibos tea bags smell AMAZING! I want someone to bottle that as bubble bath. I’d buy a gazillion gallons of it.)

They also have two other new drinks–the Berry Chai Infusion and the Apple Chai Infusion. I like both of them, and they both come iced or hot. I like the BCI cold. The ACI tastes a lot like mulled apple cider, which I like. (I just realized I’ve never had that with whipped cream, and I bet that’s pretty tasty.)

So, out of the five new drinks, I would highly recommend the Berry Chai, iced.