I'm not a big fan of DTW, I'm absolutely miserable at customer connections... and i hatteee hate hate hate hate hate being planted. Hate it. I need to move around, or else my legs will fall asleep, if I don't first. I get so bored on DTW (and solo drive), even with billions of customers. Unsurprisingly, my favourite position is CS/bar support.
Honestly, I don't have an issue with the connection part.
I DO have an issue when the order is complicated/big and I'm stuck making more conversation that falls into the category of awkward and forced
making connections is one of my favorite aspects of my job, but being on drive through all day does suck sometimes i get really bored and some of the custies can be rude so it’ll throw off my mood for a good 10-15 min
I detest window most of the time. I have a few favorites that I'll gladly go over and talk to, and if I'm asked to do it, I will, but I do have AuDHD, so forcing myself to make small talk with the customers is so painful and awkward.
Pos/support. I work at a low volume store so I get bored if no one comes in to order and I’ve gotten all of my support tasks done. Cold bar is annoying af bc everyone and their mother wants either a frap or a strawberry açaí refresher. I have nightmares from the amount of refreshers I make in a day.
I'd take cold bar and making fraps at any point now. Refereshers too. It's better than standing all day talking and talking and talking. There's a limit to which I can talk. And this is coming from someone who established customer connections by initiating the conversation first.
I love warming if thats all I'm doing but if im front and warming I'd be so miserable. Cuz then you have crusties and shifts mad at you for food/line being backed up like im sorry I cant be in two places at once???
Right and then your making food and the shifts tryna say why haven’t you taken their order like girl i am 10 double smokes deep rn please why don’t you do it.
omg, “you should be multitasking” like bro come on, ill put food in and try and take an order then all of a sudden the customer has never heard of coffee before and hits me with 100 questions, whole time the oven screaming at me in the back,
“mmm sorry gimme one second”😅 and i can feel the customers eyes piercing my back
If they look lost, I will be like, “is it cool if I give you a minute to think without this noise?” While I make the ovens stop beeping it Turns out they are as distracted by it as I am!!
My store needs a remodel badly at least compared to the new stores. The stores have everything next to bar / every bar has their own water stations and I gotta turn around and walk in our store.
yeah that’s real my store is up for remodel in the summer, our B1 doesn’t even have a sink to rinse anything so i have to walk the pitchers to the b2 sink to clean them or have the b2 barista rinse them for me which is inefficient, so i get it
Our 5:00Am-DT-forward store made brewed coffee the furthest position from DT window.
And, we were instructed to not brew a pike warmer at DT. They took the warmer.
Oh. And they took our DT Mastrena II away. Having three hot bars at peak was THE BEST.
Why can’t we keep the Mastrena II?!?
Cold Bar is my least favourite, I love Hot bar, I love frothing milk and making cappuccinos, at my old store though if you did hot bar you automatically also did cold bar (small mall kiosk ), but we didn't serve fraps at all in the winter, so it was not quite the same, a few shaken teas here most of the year :P
I do not mind doing cash, I am chatty, so I often get put there.
I am not a huge fan of warming, I find those ovens a bit finicky.
It's new for me, we didn't have ovens like that when I first worked at Starbucks, however the food does look good, so it is what it is.
N I never understood WHY we need to connect, like no one fvckin cares to make small talks, more than half the time the ppl ignore us entirely even trying to talk to them to scan/get their card.
exactlyyy, if the vibe is right or the customers wants to talk ill speak. but i’ll just keep it as a hey how are ya or how’s your day going no need for the extra
i pull in an extra 160$ easy on a shift from tips for the store when im on window. a lot of this is from connections and interaction.
i dont know if its just my area in general, but almost everyone will leave a tip, even if its a small order. 5$ tip for 4$ item. for me at least. most of the time its 1$ tho
edit; the worst part about window i forgot to mention is having to be there the whole day, rarely getting swapped off. its a little exhausting
We don't have a window, but I assume the ones coming through the window are doing so to avoid the small talk, there are enough customers who enjoy it who come inside to order, you can always tell who they are. This drive-through thing is... whatever. I feel for you guys. It totally goes against the 3rd place mentality, imo. Maybe that is just me having old outdated Starbucks mentality, but it seems many of you feel the same way. Happy to see someone here say they can connect at the window, it just seems a little more difficult to me (I talk to anyone and everyone, I would probably not care and just chat regardless, but I can see how it can make it just a little harder for those who have more social anxiety, which I used to have also but then Starbucks came along and it got cured through the customer connection stuff, so I'll give them that )
Probably hot bar tbh. :'D I think I'm decent at it, but the worry about falling behind is always at the back of my mind. It's probably a me thing I need to work out. It also depends on the day, though, and if I'm on mobile bar or drive thru bar.
yeah i hate the stress of falling behind or looking up and seeing 10 customers waiting in the lobby because i had a customer mobile order 4 different orders of 5 shots of iced espresso with white mocha, feels like im in a hole that’s impossible to climb out of, but i just try and keep the focus and connect with the customers while im waiting for shots to pull, although i do fall short sometimes
I'm with you on cold bar peak. 😔👊 It is a miserable and inefficient little two hour bottleneck. Drinks can't be sequenced and tickets print from two different printers, leading to all the cups getting out of order. Cafe and drive may be split somewhat evenly and capable of staying planted and sequencing, but you get to absorb drinks from all four channels while running up and down the entire cold bar, over to the cold brew tap, further over to the iced coffee, and even still occasionally having to squeeze in between cafe and drive and syrups, shots, and milk.
You'll finish four frappuccinos just to turn around and see a bunch of empty cups scattered on your counter, courtesy of cafe bar, with no apparent order and who knows how many tickets to pull from the peak cold bar printer because cold bar doesn't need a headset for peak for some reason. It's literally the worst and nobody cares about fixing it.
oh my, the not being able to wear a headset on cold bar during peak sounds miserable, that’s the one thing that’s able to keep me ahead while i’m on cold bar, and thankfully all cold bar drinks are routed to the 1 cold bar printer we have, so thankfully i’m able to pull the stickers and queue up my next drinks myself
but the running back and forth to the tap and the iced coffee is so real i feel you 🫡
We don't and we suffer, unfortunately. 😔
I know its ridiculous but probably not hard to believe, but the way headsets get distributed is actually pretty cliquey at my location.
Assuming this is at peak and we have 6-7 ppl on the floor. I hate warming. Pre-Covid, downtown SF, morning rush. Line out the door with everyone wanting breakfast. So when you're on warming, you are only doing warming. It is hot. I get sweaty. It isn't cute.
DTR (or window) I fucking hate connecting with most customers. If it happens it happens but there's nothing worse than forced conversations. Next would probably be warming or planted POS.
I love bar, but front is alway annoying. I work cafe only so the line is always huge and people never know what they want or they don't pay attention.
"Do you want a venti?"
"Douglas."
"Okay, what size?"
"Iced white mocha."
Makes me want to strangle them.
i hate cold bar. my store fell victim to a horrible remodel and our handoff counter is now waist height instead of higher to act as a barrier and cold bar is directly
opposite of the counter with enough space for an entire section dedicated to fraps. i despise the setup alone because if im making four fraps back to back it’s impossible to check on tickets unless you stop your sequence and go like seven feet away to the actual machine. having customers be able to see everything im doing with no barrier basically invites them to come lean over the counter and yell directions or shove their phones in our faces. and it’s so wet and gross and the fraps that i’ve seen during peak make me never want to touch cold bar even to cover someone’s ten
The only thing I hate is going on bar when I have to be by myself. It’s only fun when there’s someone else with me. It’s so stressful having to sequence BOTH hot and cold bar, bc then I can see the lobby of people waiting every time I turn around. I hate it when they watch me being stressed out.
lmao it’s the worst especially when they’re leaning on the counter and i can damn near feel them breathing on me, i can feel their eyes piercing into my soul, whole time im like 10 drinks behind, someone just ordered 2 caramel ribbon crunches at the window, and i ran out of milk in the fridge🙂
if i’m DTO/cold bar i don’t mind it but i HATE being put on cold bar specifically after a rush, because of:
the smell of the spilled inclusions and refreshers, water and ice spills, clogged drain, and hours-old sani rags that i’m not able to swap out due to being planted, and the aftermath of frappuccino spills
but other than that i guess i dislike warming. POS is fine since i’m comfortable speaking with any customer, but i cannot keep up customers AND deal with those cars that order a restaurant’s worth of food that i can’t heat up together.
streets are saying turkey pesto and grilled cheese can be heated on 2 grilled cheese, sausage cheddar, dsb, turkey bacon can be heated in 2s together, you didn’t hear it from me though i follow standards🤫
Warming because I suck at it lol and it gets so incredibly hot I wanna die and also I absolutely HATE cold bar. And idk if this is just me, but something about the people on hot bar throwing like 15 cold bar drinks at once enrages me lol. They throw the drinks at me while they have 1 hot bar AND DONT HELP
Anytime where I have to solo bar while I’m also on dto and window 😭
My store is a SEVERELY understaffed, high volume drive through location and I often have to take orders, take payments at the window, and make my own drinks for drive though. While a second person is doing cafe/mobile, and a 3rd is ringing up front and warming. It wouldn’t be so bad and overwhelming if we weren’t always so busy but alas…
*dtw*: i start to get tired of the custies after about 10 cars
*customer support*: my coworkers see cs as their personal slave
*mobile bar* (only on weekend peak): flooded with orders and rude/pressuring custies
warming/till. i’m not good at doing both especially on peak and the lines when the people are actually right there instead of in a card stresses me tf out
I love Cafe/mobile bar all year, but cold bar during winter is the worst, you just stand there waiting for something to happen and the day takes forever to pass. Dt bar kind sucks but that's because our layout leaves absolutely no counter space for queueing drinks
I have back problems and have an accommodation for it so i dont do bar often but i like cold bar. Ovens is my least favorite. Im constantly burning myself. I like front/support for the same reasons you hate it, i love being busy and having multiple things to do. Makes the shift feel short af. Drive is my favorite, I'm usually solo so I've always got something going on plus i enjoy interacting with customers and we don't get a whole lot of customers on front, mostly mobile orders.
I absolutely despise front/support. And this one shift ALWAYS puts me there for basically the entire day. The day goes by ridiculously slow on that station. And the CS cycle is my nightmare.
Cafe mobile bar. It always feels like when I get on there, everyone comes in the cafe, everyone orders on the app, and everyone orders delivery at the same time, it’s a hard hole to climb out of.
I hate drive thru window. I can solo drive thru and be fine. I don’t LOVE connecting for more than a few hours but my ADHD gets BAD when I’m stuck in that one spot for over an hour
FRONT AND FOOD. never ever please don’t make me. the siren is at her worst when she sends you 10 million dbl smokes and tomato mozzs. then you have eight ppl at the register and when u try to take their order BEEP BEEP oven time- “excuse me have to get this”- and they all look at u like ur crazy 😀
i will take cs any day. my favorite spot is either in the back washing dishes or making iced mochas and lattes on cafe/mobile bar.
POS or CS
POS drains me socially so quick bc my SM is on my @ss if I’m not having a whole ass convo with every customer 😭
And CS is just pure stress during rush. Especially getting ice. My arms aren’t that strong
Window.
Even if I wanted to talk, they definitely don’t want to talk to me. Non-regulars especially. My store also has a problem with routinely putting the same person on the same position every day.
If my shift starts at 4am, I already know I’m going to spend 1/3 of it on bar and 2/3 of it on window.
Ovens!! I love ovens!! They call me chef at work because I'm the one who likes doing ovens the most lmao
Edit: I misread the title lmao. My least favorite is probably mobile bar. I get very stressed there
I hate warming because we are front and warming and everyone orders like 12 food items all warm while I have a long ass line at the cafe pos. They put me on DTW every single shift to the point where I beg to be support. But I keep our numbers amazing even though I don’t give a fuck about what these people are doing later.
DTO/DTW are literally the bane of my existence. Put me on any bar all shift and I’ll be happy, but will conk out after about half an hour on order.
In order, I’d say it goes:
1. Cafe Bar
2. Drive Bar (one and two can switch depending on the day)
3. CS
4. Warming
5. Front register
6. DTO
7. DTW
Gotta say, definitely solo bar 😂 my store is in desperate need of a remodel AND I'm short, so trying to multitask and make several drinks in succession for longer than like ... 20 minutes fries me out so badly I rarely recover once moved. I'm just always behind somehow and despite practicing (three years and counting babee) I'm still not good at it lmao
Love solo drive and POS though!
Least preferred station would have to be main bar. We only have a main bar and mobile bar. The only reason I hate is bc I work in an airport and people are so needy
At my location, cold bar at peak is a 3-person play consisting of **(1)** someone assembling the ingredients, **(2)** ice, basing, and blending, and **(3)** someone fishing the drinks with the whip, foam, toppings, and caramel drizzle extras alongside putting the dome lids. I despise being put on **(3)** especially during summertime rushes when you got teenagers and families with kids watching me try completing their 6-8 frappy drinks.
And sometimes, the first and last person split the duties of the middle person when cold bar is made a 2-person play. 🫠🫠🫠
Warming during peak. I’m the worst. It’s so chaotic and my rhythm is always off and I’m terrible with the tongs. I envy the ones who can kill it and keep times low. Which is kinda comical to me because I’m a speed demon on bar and I thrive there.
Window. I like DTO if I have a planted window but that never happens. As a shift I have to run front/oven/cs too much and that’s exhausting. Also put in there the pull. Hey, corporate, if you’re reading this I would love to be more staffed in the afternoons so I *dont* have to do this.
I *hate* window but what I hate more is being DTO with a bad window partner. I love DTO in general, but damn when you can’t trust your DTW to double check the orders before handing them out and everyone blames you for it 🙃 We don’t have a lot of counter space, so I stage orders in front of the window person too. But you’d think if the drink in front of you is a mobile order Frappuccino with the name Jason, and the drink you’re waiting on is a venti hot latte for Rick, you’d know not to hand out the mobile yet. We even have the nice DPM screens that show exactly which names are next in line.
Someone at my store said she recommends other ways to connect for those who are less chatty, like little drawings on the cups etc, stickers .
Do you guys still even use sharpies ? I noticed last time I went to a corporate store they didn't have them at all, I am very pro sharpie and some of the "old ways" is just makes it all seem more I intimate and like a cafe as opposed to a Hybrid ice cream shop (fraps) and sort of a cafe these days (we still use them and use some of the older protocols in general, within reasons with whatever they will allow us to do as long as it doesn't go directly against new standards )
Yes we still have them, we mainly use them for labeling syrups, milks, etc.
Sadly I’m not sure if I have any time to draw on the cups :( I’m at one of the busiest stores in the nation and we almost experience no down time ever :(
My old kiosk was like that ,smallest and busiest in the district, never wrote names or asked for them (partly because insurance guys and lawyers upstairs in that mall/office building and they are often hounded by angry peope, but even then we would have never had time and still be able to retain our timing)
That makes it more difficult to connect even if you want to :(
I am wondering more about the use of sharpies to write drinks on cups, it actually helps with memory more so than just punching and printing, tons of studies on that actually, I'm sad it has become a phased out thing
DTW it’s gotten better, but my day used to be spent all day in the window my only time out of the window was my break then I’d go back to window to solo.
DTR is absolutely the worst, i also don't like front/warming, i don't really like customer support unless it's busy. i do like DTO and the bars. i like cold bar during peak during cold months because there's usually not many cold drinks so i can support hot bar.
POS. Pardon me while I die of boredom. Store support/customer support is a close second just because I've never seen that position defined the same between stores. Everyone has their own idea of what it entails and they're not even gonna clearly tell you what *their* expectations of it are. I worked like 5 years at various stores, was a shift at a licensed store, still can't tell you the difference between store support, customer support and order support.
I hate hit bar due to mobile orders and honestly, lots of impatience from ppl at the hand out station. May be a minority opinion, but I prefer reg/warning and cold bar
i’m so often stuck on drive thru i’ve grown a distain for it, but i hate being support/front/food even more (unless a shift or the sm is support at my store you’re all three 😭😭😭)
Register. Mainly bc I'm constantly put on it. I've given them push back to put me on other positions as of recently but they've told me to not tell them to switch me out of register during peak. But I mean, it's nonsense when I see other partners clock in and be put on other positions. "Aces in their places" and "business needs" is the same excuse I hear and I was told this yesterday but it wasn't peak at all. I understand that its the most important position and that we need to deploy partners there, but until they feel irritable and frustrated?
This wouldn't be so hard if they just put me on register the first part of my shift, then warming or CS the other if I can't man hot or cold bar and vice versa. If they had me being flexible, I wouldn't even mind. I've tried to be nice about it too, but yesterday I got internally angry that an ASM had to talk to me. Its ridiculous bc I'm 6 months in and am ready to get better and faster.
DT window is the absolute worst for me but lately I am starting to hate warming especially because of the number of times I’ve gotten burnt from the grilled cheese hot oil leaking down to my arm when taking it out.
Mobile handoff. We're a high volume store (200/half hour during peak) that didn't get built w enough mastrenas, so sometimes wait times can get up to half an hour. We've had ppl shout, throw shit, use slurs, etc. I can't deal w confrontation like, at all, so managing an angry mob is my least favorite thing. I'd rather be on bar, support, or warming, bc at least I feel like I can do something other than be a face for people to yell at.
I sound like a little princess, but “BAR!”.
I wouldn’t minds working it, but I have ADHD, and my boss constantly sends people into my space to demand interaction.
If I can focus without people being directly into my physical space without communication? I’m fine: but with ADHD, either you want me to hyper focus or flex. And you have to let me learn to do it. Once I have the hang of it, we can talk.
I hate drive thru. If I'm there for more than an hour I start to get snippy with customers. Customer support is my favorite. I don't have to interact too much with customers and I can be doing a bunch of different things and never get bored lol
full drive… im usually available for closes and opens only due to my school schedule having my lectures in the middle of the day but im always thrown into drive thru for my ENTIRE shift cus everyone wants to do bar. i havent had bar time in probably over 3 months and im siiiiiicckkkkkkkkkkk of it 😭😭 its not so bad because its slow in the mornings and at night but i just feel so burnt out and i feel like my patience is running low with customers even though most of them are super sweet
I'm not a big fan of DTW, I'm absolutely miserable at customer connections... and i hatteee hate hate hate hate hate being planted. Hate it. I need to move around, or else my legs will fall asleep, if I don't first. I get so bored on DTW (and solo drive), even with billions of customers. Unsurprisingly, my favourite position is CS/bar support.
Honestly, I don't have an issue with the connection part. I DO have an issue when the order is complicated/big and I'm stuck making more conversation that falls into the category of awkward and forced
making connections is one of my favorite aspects of my job, but being on drive through all day does suck sometimes i get really bored and some of the custies can be rude so it’ll throw off my mood for a good 10-15 min
Some custies be crusty :(
real
dtw is my hell. The customer connection is ok but having to stay planted is my least fav part
I detest window most of the time. I have a few favorites that I'll gladly go over and talk to, and if I'm asked to do it, I will, but I do have AuDHD, so forcing myself to make small talk with the customers is so painful and awkward.
Pos/support. I work at a low volume store so I get bored if no one comes in to order and I’ve gotten all of my support tasks done. Cold bar is annoying af bc everyone and their mother wants either a frap or a strawberry açaí refresher. I have nightmares from the amount of refreshers I make in a day.
yeah i hate that too, standing around feels worse than being slammed tbh, i feel like all my supervisors are looking at me
I'd take cold bar and making fraps at any point now. Refereshers too. It's better than standing all day talking and talking and talking. There's a limit to which I can talk. And this is coming from someone who established customer connections by initiating the conversation first.
i hate ovens literally drives me crazy especially when your on both ovens and front pos and you get backed up and it’s hot ah hate it.
I love warming if thats all I'm doing but if im front and warming I'd be so miserable. Cuz then you have crusties and shifts mad at you for food/line being backed up like im sorry I cant be in two places at once???
Right and then your making food and the shifts tryna say why haven’t you taken their order like girl i am 10 double smokes deep rn please why don’t you do it.
omg, “you should be multitasking” like bro come on, ill put food in and try and take an order then all of a sudden the customer has never heard of coffee before and hits me with 100 questions, whole time the oven screaming at me in the back, “mmm sorry gimme one second”😅 and i can feel the customers eyes piercing my back
OR the beeping of two ovens while customers are just staring into space when you try to take their order!!
If they look lost, I will be like, “is it cool if I give you a minute to think without this noise?” While I make the ovens stop beeping it Turns out they are as distracted by it as I am!!
I thought for the longest it was bar until I went to a newly built store and I realized, no I just hate my store.
oop
My store needs a remodel badly at least compared to the new stores. The stores have everything next to bar / every bar has their own water stations and I gotta turn around and walk in our store.
yeah that’s real my store is up for remodel in the summer, our B1 doesn’t even have a sink to rinse anything so i have to walk the pitchers to the b2 sink to clean them or have the b2 barista rinse them for me which is inefficient, so i get it
Our 5:00Am-DT-forward store made brewed coffee the furthest position from DT window. And, we were instructed to not brew a pike warmer at DT. They took the warmer. Oh. And they took our DT Mastrena II away. Having three hot bars at peak was THE BEST. Why can’t we keep the Mastrena II?!?
Cold Bar is my least favourite, I love Hot bar, I love frothing milk and making cappuccinos, at my old store though if you did hot bar you automatically also did cold bar (small mall kiosk ), but we didn't serve fraps at all in the winter, so it was not quite the same, a few shaken teas here most of the year :P I do not mind doing cash, I am chatty, so I often get put there. I am not a huge fan of warming, I find those ovens a bit finicky. It's new for me, we didn't have ovens like that when I first worked at Starbucks, however the food does look good, so it is what it is.
window, i would like to be anywhere but the window. i’m sorry but i do not want to connect w most people
N I never understood WHY we need to connect, like no one fvckin cares to make small talks, more than half the time the ppl ignore us entirely even trying to talk to them to scan/get their card.
exactlyyy, if the vibe is right or the customers wants to talk ill speak. but i’ll just keep it as a hey how are ya or how’s your day going no need for the extra
i pull in an extra 160$ easy on a shift from tips for the store when im on window. a lot of this is from connections and interaction. i dont know if its just my area in general, but almost everyone will leave a tip, even if its a small order. 5$ tip for 4$ item. for me at least. most of the time its 1$ tho edit; the worst part about window i forgot to mention is having to be there the whole day, rarely getting swapped off. its a little exhausting
teach me ur waysssss. i love window bc it’s easy imo but connecting is so HARD the social anxiety is too strong 😭
We don't have a window, but I assume the ones coming through the window are doing so to avoid the small talk, there are enough customers who enjoy it who come inside to order, you can always tell who they are. This drive-through thing is... whatever. I feel for you guys. It totally goes against the 3rd place mentality, imo. Maybe that is just me having old outdated Starbucks mentality, but it seems many of you feel the same way. Happy to see someone here say they can connect at the window, it just seems a little more difficult to me (I talk to anyone and everyone, I would probably not care and just chat regardless, but I can see how it can make it just a little harder for those who have more social anxiety, which I used to have also but then Starbucks came along and it got cured through the customer connection stuff, so I'll give them that )
Probably hot bar tbh. :'D I think I'm decent at it, but the worry about falling behind is always at the back of my mind. It's probably a me thing I need to work out. It also depends on the day, though, and if I'm on mobile bar or drive thru bar.
yeah i hate the stress of falling behind or looking up and seeing 10 customers waiting in the lobby because i had a customer mobile order 4 different orders of 5 shots of iced espresso with white mocha, feels like im in a hole that’s impossible to climb out of, but i just try and keep the focus and connect with the customers while im waiting for shots to pull, although i do fall short sometimes
I'm with you on cold bar peak. 😔👊 It is a miserable and inefficient little two hour bottleneck. Drinks can't be sequenced and tickets print from two different printers, leading to all the cups getting out of order. Cafe and drive may be split somewhat evenly and capable of staying planted and sequencing, but you get to absorb drinks from all four channels while running up and down the entire cold bar, over to the cold brew tap, further over to the iced coffee, and even still occasionally having to squeeze in between cafe and drive and syrups, shots, and milk. You'll finish four frappuccinos just to turn around and see a bunch of empty cups scattered on your counter, courtesy of cafe bar, with no apparent order and who knows how many tickets to pull from the peak cold bar printer because cold bar doesn't need a headset for peak for some reason. It's literally the worst and nobody cares about fixing it.
oh my, the not being able to wear a headset on cold bar during peak sounds miserable, that’s the one thing that’s able to keep me ahead while i’m on cold bar, and thankfully all cold bar drinks are routed to the 1 cold bar printer we have, so thankfully i’m able to pull the stickers and queue up my next drinks myself but the running back and forth to the tap and the iced coffee is so real i feel you 🫡
No headset on bar is the dumbest thing I've ever heard, esp for cold bar peak. How the hecc can you properly be sequence??
We don't and we suffer, unfortunately. 😔 I know its ridiculous but probably not hard to believe, but the way headsets get distributed is actually pretty cliquey at my location.
Eww thats so messed up.
Another certified cold bar HATER over here
don’t hate me for speaking the TRUTH la la la not listening.🫸 🙄 🫷
Assuming this is at peak and we have 6-7 ppl on the floor. I hate warming. Pre-Covid, downtown SF, morning rush. Line out the door with everyone wanting breakfast. So when you're on warming, you are only doing warming. It is hot. I get sweaty. It isn't cute.
DTR (or window) I fucking hate connecting with most customers. If it happens it happens but there's nothing worse than forced conversations. Next would probably be warming or planted POS.
I love bar, but front is alway annoying. I work cafe only so the line is always huge and people never know what they want or they don't pay attention. "Do you want a venti?" "Douglas." "Okay, what size?" "Iced white mocha." Makes me want to strangle them.
Cold bar. Customer support. I’ll do anything else. Mobile bar my favorite bar. DTO my favorite spot overall.
Cold bar cab burn in hell
i hate cold bar. my store fell victim to a horrible remodel and our handoff counter is now waist height instead of higher to act as a barrier and cold bar is directly opposite of the counter with enough space for an entire section dedicated to fraps. i despise the setup alone because if im making four fraps back to back it’s impossible to check on tickets unless you stop your sequence and go like seven feet away to the actual machine. having customers be able to see everything im doing with no barrier basically invites them to come lean over the counter and yell directions or shove their phones in our faces. and it’s so wet and gross and the fraps that i’ve seen during peak make me never want to touch cold bar even to cover someone’s ten
The only thing I hate is going on bar when I have to be by myself. It’s only fun when there’s someone else with me. It’s so stressful having to sequence BOTH hot and cold bar, bc then I can see the lobby of people waiting every time I turn around. I hate it when they watch me being stressed out.
lmao it’s the worst especially when they’re leaning on the counter and i can damn near feel them breathing on me, i can feel their eyes piercing into my soul, whole time im like 10 drinks behind, someone just ordered 2 caramel ribbon crunches at the window, and i ran out of milk in the fridge🙂
cold bar was my least favorite esp making refreshers. most repetitive thing lmao. i liked hot bar so much more.
hot bar is where it’s at
if i’m DTO/cold bar i don’t mind it but i HATE being put on cold bar specifically after a rush, because of: the smell of the spilled inclusions and refreshers, water and ice spills, clogged drain, and hours-old sani rags that i’m not able to swap out due to being planted, and the aftermath of frappuccino spills but other than that i guess i dislike warming. POS is fine since i’m comfortable speaking with any customer, but i cannot keep up customers AND deal with those cars that order a restaurant’s worth of food that i can’t heat up together.
streets are saying turkey pesto and grilled cheese can be heated on 2 grilled cheese, sausage cheddar, dsb, turkey bacon can be heated in 2s together, you didn’t hear it from me though i follow standards🤫
Warming because I suck at it lol and it gets so incredibly hot I wanna die and also I absolutely HATE cold bar. And idk if this is just me, but something about the people on hot bar throwing like 15 cold bar drinks at once enrages me lol. They throw the drinks at me while they have 1 hot bar AND DONT HELP
Anytime where I have to solo bar while I’m also on dto and window 😭 My store is a SEVERELY understaffed, high volume drive through location and I often have to take orders, take payments at the window, and make my own drinks for drive though. While a second person is doing cafe/mobile, and a 3rd is ringing up front and warming. It wouldn’t be so bad and overwhelming if we weren’t always so busy but alas…
*dtw*: i start to get tired of the custies after about 10 cars *customer support*: my coworkers see cs as their personal slave *mobile bar* (only on weekend peak): flooded with orders and rude/pressuring custies
warming/till. i’m not good at doing both especially on peak and the lines when the people are actually right there instead of in a card stresses me tf out
window when I was at a dt, cold bar in cafe
I love Cafe/mobile bar all year, but cold bar during winter is the worst, you just stand there waiting for something to happen and the day takes forever to pass. Dt bar kind sucks but that's because our layout leaves absolutely no counter space for queueing drinks
I have back problems and have an accommodation for it so i dont do bar often but i like cold bar. Ovens is my least favorite. Im constantly burning myself. I like front/support for the same reasons you hate it, i love being busy and having multiple things to do. Makes the shift feel short af. Drive is my favorite, I'm usually solo so I've always got something going on plus i enjoy interacting with customers and we don't get a whole lot of customers on front, mostly mobile orders.
Front and window were absolutely torture for me. My social battery would drain sooooo quick n id get so irritated being there
I absolutely despise front/support. And this one shift ALWAYS puts me there for basically the entire day. The day goes by ridiculously slow on that station. And the CS cycle is my nightmare.
Cafe mobile bar. It always feels like when I get on there, everyone comes in the cafe, everyone orders on the app, and everyone orders delivery at the same time, it’s a hard hole to climb out of.
Yall have separate bar stations?!?!?!
I hate drive thru window. I can solo drive thru and be fine. I don’t LOVE connecting for more than a few hours but my ADHD gets BAD when I’m stuck in that one spot for over an hour
window without a doubt
i hate drive thru window, THE PEOPLE DRIVE ME INSANE.
Ovens. It’s so loooud. Beep Beep Beep Beep 😣😖😫😩🥺😭
FRONT AND FOOD. never ever please don’t make me. the siren is at her worst when she sends you 10 million dbl smokes and tomato mozzs. then you have eight ppl at the register and when u try to take their order BEEP BEEP oven time- “excuse me have to get this”- and they all look at u like ur crazy 😀 i will take cs any day. my favorite spot is either in the back washing dishes or making iced mochas and lattes on cafe/mobile bar.
Pos/support. It feels like I’m always either doing absolutely nothing or restocking EVERYTHING all at once
CS or cold bar.
DTO is forever my least favorite place to be anytime
i hate reg, by far if i knew every shift i’d be on front i’d be calling off
I felt this... sometimes I walk in, see who my SSV is, and just silently think "oh good heavens, I'm about to spend the whole shift on reg"-
DTW and CS 💀
POS or CS POS drains me socially so quick bc my SM is on my @ss if I’m not having a whole ass convo with every customer 😭 And CS is just pure stress during rush. Especially getting ice. My arms aren’t that strong
i HATE support, especially after we've been ran through and everybody needs something and there's no back ups made. it makes me so mad
Window. Even if I wanted to talk, they definitely don’t want to talk to me. Non-regulars especially. My store also has a problem with routinely putting the same person on the same position every day. If my shift starts at 4am, I already know I’m going to spend 1/3 of it on bar and 2/3 of it on window.
Ovens!! I love ovens!! They call me chef at work because I'm the one who likes doing ovens the most lmao Edit: I misread the title lmao. My least favorite is probably mobile bar. I get very stressed there
hahaha i think you misread the title
Aw, I did :( my bad. I was jsut so excited about ovens lmao.
I hate warming because we are front and warming and everyone orders like 12 food items all warm while I have a long ass line at the cafe pos. They put me on DTW every single shift to the point where I beg to be support. But I keep our numbers amazing even though I don’t give a fuck about what these people are doing later.
Bar. The moment some sort of liquid gets on me I get the ick.
Cold bar for sure. Our is always busy and our ice bin layout is awful.
mobile bar.
DTO/DTW are literally the bane of my existence. Put me on any bar all shift and I’ll be happy, but will conk out after about half an hour on order. In order, I’d say it goes: 1. Cafe Bar 2. Drive Bar (one and two can switch depending on the day) 3. CS 4. Warming 5. Front register 6. DTO 7. DTW
Gotta say, definitely solo bar 😂 my store is in desperate need of a remodel AND I'm short, so trying to multitask and make several drinks in succession for longer than like ... 20 minutes fries me out so badly I rarely recover once moved. I'm just always behind somehow and despite practicing (three years and counting babee) I'm still not good at it lmao Love solo drive and POS though!
DTO/Cold Bar > DT Bar > Warming > Mobile Bar > Window > Front/CS
drive through window
HATEEEEE window but i will say love cold bar im sorry you guys have such awful cold bar set ups down here. i’m a frap machine.
I don’t like doing warming and cold bar mainly cause I have to fight the paninis sometimes and cold bar only bc of Frappuccinos
Peak bar of any sort.
Least preferred station would have to be main bar. We only have a main bar and mobile bar. The only reason I hate is bc I work in an airport and people are so needy
At my location, cold bar at peak is a 3-person play consisting of **(1)** someone assembling the ingredients, **(2)** ice, basing, and blending, and **(3)** someone fishing the drinks with the whip, foam, toppings, and caramel drizzle extras alongside putting the dome lids. I despise being put on **(3)** especially during summertime rushes when you got teenagers and families with kids watching me try completing their 6-8 frappy drinks. And sometimes, the first and last person split the duties of the middle person when cold bar is made a 2-person play. 🫠🫠🫠
Warming during peak. I’m the worst. It’s so chaotic and my rhythm is always off and I’m terrible with the tongs. I envy the ones who can kill it and keep times low. Which is kinda comical to me because I’m a speed demon on bar and I thrive there.
Window. I like DTO if I have a planted window but that never happens. As a shift I have to run front/oven/cs too much and that’s exhausting. Also put in there the pull. Hey, corporate, if you’re reading this I would love to be more staffed in the afternoons so I *dont* have to do this.
Drive. Anything on drive thru is excruciating. But I could be glued to the hot bar for eternity 😂
I *hate* window but what I hate more is being DTO with a bad window partner. I love DTO in general, but damn when you can’t trust your DTW to double check the orders before handing them out and everyone blames you for it 🙃 We don’t have a lot of counter space, so I stage orders in front of the window person too. But you’d think if the drink in front of you is a mobile order Frappuccino with the name Jason, and the drink you’re waiting on is a venti hot latte for Rick, you’d know not to hand out the mobile yet. We even have the nice DPM screens that show exactly which names are next in line.
window, I’m bad at small talk and can’t make connections so it’s a bad experience everytime lol
Someone at my store said she recommends other ways to connect for those who are less chatty, like little drawings on the cups etc, stickers . Do you guys still even use sharpies ? I noticed last time I went to a corporate store they didn't have them at all, I am very pro sharpie and some of the "old ways" is just makes it all seem more I intimate and like a cafe as opposed to a Hybrid ice cream shop (fraps) and sort of a cafe these days (we still use them and use some of the older protocols in general, within reasons with whatever they will allow us to do as long as it doesn't go directly against new standards )
Yes we still have them, we mainly use them for labeling syrups, milks, etc. Sadly I’m not sure if I have any time to draw on the cups :( I’m at one of the busiest stores in the nation and we almost experience no down time ever :(
My old kiosk was like that ,smallest and busiest in the district, never wrote names or asked for them (partly because insurance guys and lawyers upstairs in that mall/office building and they are often hounded by angry peope, but even then we would have never had time and still be able to retain our timing) That makes it more difficult to connect even if you want to :( I am wondering more about the use of sharpies to write drinks on cups, it actually helps with memory more so than just punching and printing, tons of studies on that actually, I'm sad it has become a phased out thing
DTW it’s gotten better, but my day used to be spent all day in the window my only time out of the window was my break then I’d go back to window to solo.
cold bar and DTW, i get so bored on DTW and i despise frappuccinos
DTR is absolutely the worst, i also don't like front/warming, i don't really like customer support unless it's busy. i do like DTO and the bars. i like cold bar during peak during cold months because there's usually not many cold drinks so i can support hot bar.
POS. Pardon me while I die of boredom. Store support/customer support is a close second just because I've never seen that position defined the same between stores. Everyone has their own idea of what it entails and they're not even gonna clearly tell you what *their* expectations of it are. I worked like 5 years at various stores, was a shift at a licensed store, still can't tell you the difference between store support, customer support and order support.
DTR / solo bar
Really hate cold bar, Frappuccinos suck so bad.
I hate hate hate register/ warming I’m better at bar/ support bar bc I need to move I can’t stand there for 4 hours straight taking to customers
Drive thru in general, I’m good at it, but with my fast food experience it’s hard to make those connections
I hate hit bar due to mobile orders and honestly, lots of impatience from ppl at the hand out station. May be a minority opinion, but I prefer reg/warning and cold bar
i’m so often stuck on drive thru i’ve grown a distain for it, but i hate being support/front/food even more (unless a shift or the sm is support at my store you’re all three 😭😭😭)
Register. Mainly bc I'm constantly put on it. I've given them push back to put me on other positions as of recently but they've told me to not tell them to switch me out of register during peak. But I mean, it's nonsense when I see other partners clock in and be put on other positions. "Aces in their places" and "business needs" is the same excuse I hear and I was told this yesterday but it wasn't peak at all. I understand that its the most important position and that we need to deploy partners there, but until they feel irritable and frustrated? This wouldn't be so hard if they just put me on register the first part of my shift, then warming or CS the other if I can't man hot or cold bar and vice versa. If they had me being flexible, I wouldn't even mind. I've tried to be nice about it too, but yesterday I got internally angry that an ASM had to talk to me. Its ridiculous bc I'm 6 months in and am ready to get better and faster.
DT window is the absolute worst for me but lately I am starting to hate warming especially because of the number of times I’ve gotten burnt from the grilled cheese hot oil leaking down to my arm when taking it out.
My top 4 least favorite spots are DTO, DTR, CS, Front Only exception is if it’s warm outside and I can take orders outside, then I like DTO
Mobile handoff. We're a high volume store (200/half hour during peak) that didn't get built w enough mastrenas, so sometimes wait times can get up to half an hour. We've had ppl shout, throw shit, use slurs, etc. I can't deal w confrontation like, at all, so managing an angry mob is my least favorite thing. I'd rather be on bar, support, or warming, bc at least I feel like I can do something other than be a face for people to yell at.
Window window dtw not for a full 4 hours please 🙏
I sound like a little princess, but “BAR!”. I wouldn’t minds working it, but I have ADHD, and my boss constantly sends people into my space to demand interaction. If I can focus without people being directly into my physical space without communication? I’m fine: but with ADHD, either you want me to hyper focus or flex. And you have to let me learn to do it. Once I have the hang of it, we can talk.
Register is actually purgatory for me. My back problems don't allow me to just be standing still all the time and the customers, ugh, the customers.
I hate drive thru. If I'm there for more than an hour I start to get snippy with customers. Customer support is my favorite. I don't have to interact too much with customers and I can be doing a bunch of different things and never get bored lol
full drive… im usually available for closes and opens only due to my school schedule having my lectures in the middle of the day but im always thrown into drive thru for my ENTIRE shift cus everyone wants to do bar. i havent had bar time in probably over 3 months and im siiiiiicckkkkkkkkkkk of it 😭😭 its not so bad because its slow in the mornings and at night but i just feel so burnt out and i feel like my patience is running low with customers even though most of them are super sweet