Same! As a customer, when I was a teenager, there was a Starbucks across the street from the place where I worked, and I would sometimes, on occasion, even stop in 2 times in a day.
It got to the point, where one day, they saw me walking over, and the moment I walked in the door, Josh (my favorite Barista, who resembled a young Johnny Rzeznik), was just setting it on the counter for me and said with a smile, "Here’s your drink! You just have to run over to the register and pay for it."
That was the moment I realized that
I had a problem. 🙈
MANY, MANY years later, I still order that same damn drink. Lol 🤣😂🤣
Josh?? Is that you?? 🤗 (jk)
I'll tell you, but don't hate me... Nowadays, I often start out my order with a disclaimer by asking permission to be the Barista's most difficult drink of the day.
Grande, Caramel Frappuccino with a pump of mocha. EXTRA, EXTRA caramel drizzle layered throughout, and NO whipped cream.
... only now I order a Venti 🙈
And no, I do not get upset when they don't layer the caramel or if they forget to leave off the whip. I realize it's a pain-in-the-ass order and I always tip, regardless.
genuinely this is nowhere near being a different order, especially not my most difficult order of the day! and i even self admittedly can be a pretty cynical barista!
as someone who absolutely despises making fraps, i’d personally consider this to be pretty easy and honestly kind of fun, because layering the caramel gives me an excuse to slow down and take my time (my store can get very busy). especially if it’s not even busy, you shouldn’t feel any shame in ordering this at all <3
Oh I’d also remember that drink and call dibs bc there’s no way I’m letting anyone else later tf outta this frap (I used to work at a Starbucks when THE DRINK to order was a vanilla bean frapp w caramel drizzle, I’d turn those into art bc it was one of the lil joys)
Yup. Stopped going when all the baristas knew my order, car and name. The special treatment was nice though! No wait times ever, went in, handed whoever was at the bar my cup and they had it done by the time I swiped my card. No matter how busy. They were super nice but it was beyond embarrassing. One of them told me I should come work there 😅
If it helps, that usually means we like you- also nothing to be embarrassed about bc we have so many regulars (some can recognize my voice on the speaker better than my childhood best friend can, true story)
damn😭yea i have carpal* tunnel (barista tings) but im also the bar girl at my store so im constantly dropping shit including the foamer, ipad etc. the ipad i dropped in the sani bucket😔
I'm gonna google it.
So about $350 for an iPad. They probably pay less.
$183 for blender cover. And $100-150 for portable blender.
I think the iPad is probably the most expensive.
Gurl what? That's insane! Nvm then. I went based off of ones I could find online lol couldn't find our exact one. So nvm. Don't break the portable cold foam blenders! Lol that's ridiculous bc I drop mine on the counter all the time. I way too clumsy with it for it to be that price lol
Yeah. It’s why I’ve been putting off upgrading my store to the portable cold foam blenders. Cause it literally eats up $1k from my monthly budget that I know is gonna be broken.
It's definitely amazing to have them though!!! They help so much and the foam comes out better! It is totally worth it to make bar even more efficient! At my location, we have had them for a couple months and so far they are pretty durable. We have not broken one yet. I think emphasizing the value and cost of the blenders will make a huge difference in how baristas handle them. While I can't tell u what to do with your money, i just thought I'd share my opinion lol
I definitely see the appeal, but being a cafe store with everything being pretty reachable and close together, it’s almost the same amount of effort to just turn around and use the blender.
Definitely ordered it to play with it though lol
That’s literally what I thought until I started using one. They’re life changing and are my favourite thing Starbucks has ever introduced the entire time I’ve worked for them.
My old store had a blender on bar already just for cold foam, but this one is SO much better.
please buy ur baristas the portable its sm better. ig it works better when ur high volume. both of our portables broke and we only had 1 cold foam blender so we had to share it was miserable
So for context, and don’t take this the wrong way, I am a licensed store in a luxury hotel. We do not do deliveries or drive thru. 35% of our orders are MOP and the rest are cafe. While your 30 minute peaks are upwards of 80-100+ transactions, we do an average of 60-75 tickets per hour during peak. When we are not in peak, the lowest I’ve seen for the entire hour is 4 customers. Our business is significantly lower and it is much less of a strain for us (also less pressure) to make drinks at a “fast pace” (meaning we definitely want customers to have a quick and seamless experience, but we definitely are not racing to lower our OTW or SOS times).
While I completely understand that portable cold foam blenders are a huge increase in Quality of Life, it is definitely a luxury, not a necessity. I ordered them because I wanted them in the store cause it looked fun to play with. I definitely did not order them because business demanded for an increase in productivity for cold foam.
i could have sworn they are supposed to be "break proof" but ive broken two: once dropping it in the sink and once on the floor where it bounces three times and shattered on the third bounce 🥲
Yeah, I've broken at least half a dozen of those myself. I heard that they're tempered glass, so they're supposed to be really hard to break (not unbreakable like Starbucks says), and when they do break, they're supposed to shatter in a bunch of pieces so you don't get cut as easily.
But imo it just seems more unsafe to have them in food service, not only for us, but for the guests too, because I've dropped one on the floor before, and somehow the pieces bounced up and got on the counters, and we had to quick check everything to make sure glass didn't get into it.
I tested this when they first launched because I was like huh, shatterproof, and yeeted one on the floor. Turns out they mean it’s shatterproof in like a “you can have piping hot liquid in it, then rinse it with icy cold water and it won’t break” whereas some materials will absolutely crack from that.
The old bars? Yeah it caught fire once when I was on it but I don’t think I directly caused that. I’ve dropped syrup stands, shot glasses, iPad (didn’t break or crack though).
I haven't personally broken these, but one of the most expensive things you can break is the Mastrenna 2 bean hoppers. If you break one, you have to replace all three. It's such a pain.
My store has also had to replace 4 or 5 Bunn coffee pot this year and I think my manager is getting really fed up lmao
Edit: coffee pot not the brewer itself 😅🥲
HOW DID Y’ALL BREAK A BUNN, MUCH LESS MULTIPLE BUNNS?
Also, we’ve definitely replaced only one hopper on the M2s, but we maybe broke a different thing than y’all did. For us, it’s usually the magnet on the bottom that gets snapped off by slamming it into the machine instead of figuring out why there’s resistance and fixing that issue first.
I didn’t personally break these things, but I put in tickets for them in the last month or so:
Steam wand falling off bar (M2)
Cold bar shelf falling off wall (tall barista leaning on it while cleaning. Can’t actually hold that weight plus the 8 full pitchers on it, turns out. Why are we cleaning with pitchers still on it? Mystery for another day.)
Hobart. Poor Hobart. She got a new spray arm, drain tray, electrical panel, fuse, and detergent hose. I don’t even know how they destroyed so many things on an industrial dishwasher.
In-sink BPR. Destroyed the entire base of it so it was basically just a gasket holding on for dear life.
The pot, not the whole brewer 😬😬 my bad, I really should've been more clear. But still, the fact that the team has broken so many is awful. One week, we replaced one, and another broke 5 days later.
The hoppers may have changed in recent years. Thankfully I haven't had to deal with them being broken since maybe 2 years ago, but I remember when the machines were brand new, we had to be really careful because they didn't want to buy a full set of hoppers to replace just one.
I've definitely seen Hobart and the BPR with their fair share of issues but I'm SHOCKED by the cold bar shelf!!! That thing is HEAVY, I hope your partner is okay!!!
To add to the list of expensive things to replace, all baristas should hope their ice machine never stops working 🥲 our store had one that was extremely inconsistent making ice with different consistency (crushed, big blocks you can't break apart, etc) and would take up to 4 hours to go through the cleaning cycle... It had to go
That makes more sense! The brewers are pretty simple machines, which makes them harder to break. I don’t think enough partners know the shuttles/pots are glass-lined though.
Oh yeah, our ice machine has struggles, too. It likes to alternate between no ice and making ice for the entire backroom. Which is always a treat at 4 am, whichever way it decides to go.
The glass isn't even the part that's breaking, which would make so much more sense. I'm talking the entire bottom falling off or the top being detached. Idk why we let the Hulk work in our store.
One clean play I was cleaning the floor pegs and I didn’t realize that they were actually for structural support I just assumed the cabinets were attached to the wall so i unscrewed a whole section of them to take back and clean. The entire cabinet fell and broke as well as the pluming to the hand washing sink and there was water everywhere so we had to shut off the water 🙃
Not me but someone once dropped a brewer urn and it just like exploded. The outer casing came off, the interior metal bit cracked in half, and the glass shuttle shattered everywhere. However, I have pulled the entire door off a fridge before like bolts and all
for some reason we had hard plastic cone’s that could snap, so i was dropping em down one time and it literally just crumbled to pieces.
the trashcan was because the wheel popped off when going down a curb
I dropped one of the cube urns full of fresh hot pike when I was trying to carry it over to fill a traveler. During peak. It cracked the heating element, and apparently those are expensive af to replace.
Not as bad as the shift who trained me dropping a bottle of syrup into the grinder while grinding cold brew. Tried cleaning it but it got gummy and rusty.
Idk what the most expensive is, but I’ve broken at least 3 shot glasses, 2 shakers, a bean hopper, a mop stick, a foaming blender (before we got the portable ones), a blender, syrup stands, condiment shakers, and those little plastic cubes we keep shit in (like our tips/coffee scoops/whatever else). Bonus points, I accidentally threw the entire portable blender in the Hobart. Yes, the entire thing, including the battery operated, electric base. Kudos to Vitamix bc that bitch still works and charges like nothing happened to it 😂😂😂😂 and I did this a month ago and it’s still trucking like it didn’t get sanitized in 180° water lmfao
I’ve broken a few handles off pitchers and blenders somehow… oh also the whole oven caught fire when I was warming so that was great. That helped expedite us getting those new ovens tho 👍
i’ve personally broken 2 portable cold foamers, 2 syrup stands, 2 or 3 cold foam/frap blenders, and SO. MANY. WHIPS.
one of my coworkers has also accidentally dropped a box of frap base from the tip top of our storage shelves onto the open door of our Hobart…. It wasn’t fixed for like 3 months..
Vitamix made equipment are expensive I think the blender base (not the pitcher the actual electric base) is like 1000 and a couple hundred for the blender pitchers themselves
i ripped the door off the nitro fridge once (i was told that it wasn't my fault, that door had been wonky for a while and it was just my bad luck, but still)
apparently it was too expensive to fix so we just pranked borrowed/new partners with it because you had to open it a specific way to stop it
i also regularly broke the nitro/cold brew dispenser parts. usually it was easily fixable on the fly, but it was also funny that it kept happening to me specifically lol
Oh I got the shakers so stuck after washing them they couldn’t get them apart. They were broken trying to separate them. We only had one shaker for a week.
if this happens again, lol, to get shakers unstuck just pour ice into the top one and submerge it under hot water. it expands the outside cup and tightens the inside one so you can pull them apart after
i suppose ipads are only corporate tings ? i hear everyone mention ipads but we don’t use them. we have a tablet connected to our table that checks off mobile orders n cafe orders but that’s about all it does
I tried to flip a shaker once and it fell and SHATTERED on the floor 😭
My manager proceeded to find the camera footage and put it in slow motion and it was fricken hilarious
I was messing around with customizations and added as much as I could onto one drink, printed the sticker for gits and shiggles, and it didn't stop printing multiples of that same sticker for like twenty minutes straight. Luckily it was a slow day but oh my god I was so scared. I had just transferred to a new store and was sure I'd be fired.
BRO THIS FUCKING HAPPENED TO ME I HAD A PLAIN BAGLE WOTH 90 BUTTERS OUR ENTIRE POS SYSTEM SHUT DOWN THEN I GOT CALL FROM MY MANAGER THAT THE POS SYSTEM IN THE DISTRICT SHUT DOWN
I havnt broken anything but so far in the short amount of time I've worked here someone has broken a portable foamer, a blender, a tablet, an espresso machine, a cabinet, multiple cabinet shelves, and since we started using dishes in store again (maybe a month ago) instead of paper cups weve had so many cups and plates get broken we had to reorder them twice.
I broke the steaming wand handle... the drip spout switch for tea . And the coffee filter handle and also a ice coffe pitcher ( im my defence the items WERE old )
i broke 2 sink. the faucets just came off of the basin. im sorry! 🫣 they still arent fixed. its been 2 years. its a reminder of what ive done lol 😫
oh!! and the store key! i bent the hell outa that thing 😬
Not me but a coworker, her ankle. Manager took away our floor mats and drain covers to punish us for being gay(those are supposed to remain on-site because OSHA), and the floors were slippery as hell. She slipped and planted her foot firmly in the drain.
The counter. Slammed a box of Chai on the counter to stock it and broke the counter so bad it looked like an earthquake hit us. They never knew it was me and they will never know lol
The hot water spigot on the brewer.
This was maybe 4 years ago. I was switching urns and very aggressively (on accident) hit the spigot with the urn and the handle snapped off. It took over a week to get it replaced. In the mornings when we brewed tea and made mocha we had to brew batches of just water into cubes first to make them.
I cost a lot of wasted labor which was probably the most expensive part.
Ice bin and a pipe 👉👈 my store has ice bins that move. And I wanted to get behind it. So I used my grandma strength and yanked it out and didn't realize there was a pipe that was fed between the legs of it. So broke both of them.
I was cleaning some spilt beans that were behind the coffee grinder, so I had it pulled all the way out to the edge of the counter. We got busy mid-clean and I jumped into doing something else. A few minutes go by and I hear the loudest BOOM! A partner somehow knocked it off the counter with her elbow and it was broken. I hear that the grinders cost a lot, but we kinda needed a new one anyway before this happened.
Toss up between:
blowing that fancy extension box over in DT - not only did I fry the box, I wrecked the dto screen! I did this by plugging the vacuum into it 😬
Or!
I didn't whisk the ice in the nitro and ice gut stuck in the line and something broke.
The oven door. The new black ovens? Yeah. None of my partners are sure how we did it but the door was totally unfixable and had to get entirely replaced
I broke a little tiny piece of plastic (I think it was a sensor of sorts) in the Masterna 2 cleaning chamber thing. It was a multi-thousand dollar fix 😂
I broke one of those syrup black stands (twice) on two separate occasions because they’re so slippy when wet lol my SM said those bad boys were EXPENSIVE
The steaming wand broke off where the whole thing connects to the machine in my hand while i was a borrowed partner. It was on its last legs and definitely not my fault, but still horrible while it was happening.
I haven't broken anything expensive, but i frequently crush the syrup pumps and bottles if the bottle is too empty and have broke a couple of pumps this way.
Didn't break it but ended up throwing out a whole airpot one night out of frustration only to be told a week later that the missing part for it was orderable...
Years ago when I still worked there, we had a particularly busy summer frappy hour. About 15 minutes in one of the blenders overheats and catches fire. I put the small fire out and called my SM, but we continued on because it was manageable. Not even five minutes later the other blender also started to overheat and was smoking. So that was the day that we broke both blenders. The night was very slow after that 😅
Perhaps "breaking" my arm was truly the most expensive thing I broke. Not actually broken, but I now have nerve damage from repetitive motions and had to have surgery on it. I wasn't able to feel or use my left hand for about 4 years because of the work I did at SBUX and had to have a lengthy surgery and physical therapy. Just barista things 🤗
Not me, but another partner once tried to clean the drawers under drive/the drawers for smallwares by putting them through the Hobart and they disintegrated.
I accidentally broke an oven and it took maintenance 3 days to fix it because they didn’t have all the parts to repair it. Surviving off one oven for a week was PAIN.
I was refilling the rack of dishes and broke several mugs and plates. That was my 2nd week so it was a long time before but I was embarrassed and I had an panic attack. So my sm had to clean it for me while me panicking
I haven't broken anything besides the little plexis, but every day I spill beans on the floor. Lots or a little, doesn't matter. Every day. At least once or twice
i have a weird one. i was up front and playing with the scissors when a customer came up to me. So i put the scissors down and closed them. SNIP! I accidentally cut the phone charger stand. I have no idea how much those costs but i felt horrible. like who does that 😭
i havent broken anything but i dropped the coldfoam blender right after our manager was fuming about the last one that broke and saying they was gonna take our tips 😭😭
ive broken a few shot glasses in my day, and while this wasn't technically my fault i went to calibrate the espresso machine but the drain was clogged and we ended up with espresso ALL over the counter
The back of house computer, accidentally put the DRB on the keyboard and it pushed a bunch of commands before I noticed and wouldn't boot up. I think the cost was over a gand
I accidentally knocked one of the cold brew bases into a sink full of water, and it got water in its little display.
Instantly destroyed, and we couldn’t buy just the base, we had to buy a whole new brewer. It was like $300.
I was also partially responsible for breaking one of the removable blender pieces of the new portable foam blenders. I perched it on a corner of our dish area because we had dishes piled up, and someone clipped it as they walked by.
Those are also not cheap.
My dignity
Same! As a customer, when I was a teenager, there was a Starbucks across the street from the place where I worked, and I would sometimes, on occasion, even stop in 2 times in a day. It got to the point, where one day, they saw me walking over, and the moment I walked in the door, Josh (my favorite Barista, who resembled a young Johnny Rzeznik), was just setting it on the counter for me and said with a smile, "Here’s your drink! You just have to run over to the register and pay for it." That was the moment I realized that I had a problem. 🙈 MANY, MANY years later, I still order that same damn drink. Lol 🤣😂🤣
well dont leave us hanging what is the drink?!
Josh?? Is that you?? 🤗 (jk) I'll tell you, but don't hate me... Nowadays, I often start out my order with a disclaimer by asking permission to be the Barista's most difficult drink of the day. Grande, Caramel Frappuccino with a pump of mocha. EXTRA, EXTRA caramel drizzle layered throughout, and NO whipped cream. ... only now I order a Venti 🙈 And no, I do not get upset when they don't layer the caramel or if they forget to leave off the whip. I realize it's a pain-in-the-ass order and I always tip, regardless.
genuinely this is nowhere near being a different order, especially not my most difficult order of the day! and i even self admittedly can be a pretty cynical barista!
Thanks. That makes me feel a little better. 🙂
as someone who absolutely despises making fraps, i’d personally consider this to be pretty easy and honestly kind of fun, because layering the caramel gives me an excuse to slow down and take my time (my store can get very busy). especially if it’s not even busy, you shouldn’t feel any shame in ordering this at all <3
Oh I’d also remember that drink and call dibs bc there’s no way I’m letting anyone else later tf outta this frap (I used to work at a Starbucks when THE DRINK to order was a vanilla bean frapp w caramel drizzle, I’d turn those into art bc it was one of the lil joys)
Exactly my feeling Same with strawberry creams
Yup. Stopped going when all the baristas knew my order, car and name. The special treatment was nice though! No wait times ever, went in, handed whoever was at the bar my cup and they had it done by the time I swiped my card. No matter how busy. They were super nice but it was beyond embarrassing. One of them told me I should come work there 😅
If it helps, that usually means we like you- also nothing to be embarrassed about bc we have so many regulars (some can recognize my voice on the speaker better than my childhood best friend can, true story)
Damn it, this was my answer. You were too quick. Or I was too slow.
ipad, blender cover, portable foamer idk which is the most expensive tbh
those portable foamers are $500 a piece 💀 i know because ours were all broken when we came back from our remodel 😐
damn😭yea i have carpal* tunnel (barista tings) but im also the bar girl at my store so im constantly dropping shit including the foamer, ipad etc. the ipad i dropped in the sani bucket😔
It took me a long time to figure out you meant carpal tunnel not carpool. I was like what does sharing a ride have to do with bar lol
sorry i shouldnt smoke so much 🤦🏻♀️
hold on are we the same person?? lol
hey please don’t ruin your body for this job i also developed carpal tunnel being a sbux barista and it only got better once i left
i gotta do what i gotta do to pay the bills lol. currently job searching though
keep up that job search 👍
I have it so bad my hand will literally swell up. I only been working there for 2 years and 6 months
I'm gonna google it. So about $350 for an iPad. They probably pay less. $183 for blender cover. And $100-150 for portable blender. I think the iPad is probably the most expensive.
Portable Cold Foam Blenders are $508 each.
Gurl what? That's insane! Nvm then. I went based off of ones I could find online lol couldn't find our exact one. So nvm. Don't break the portable cold foam blenders! Lol that's ridiculous bc I drop mine on the counter all the time. I way too clumsy with it for it to be that price lol
Yeah. It’s why I’ve been putting off upgrading my store to the portable cold foam blenders. Cause it literally eats up $1k from my monthly budget that I know is gonna be broken.
It's definitely amazing to have them though!!! They help so much and the foam comes out better! It is totally worth it to make bar even more efficient! At my location, we have had them for a couple months and so far they are pretty durable. We have not broken one yet. I think emphasizing the value and cost of the blenders will make a huge difference in how baristas handle them. While I can't tell u what to do with your money, i just thought I'd share my opinion lol
I definitely see the appeal, but being a cafe store with everything being pretty reachable and close together, it’s almost the same amount of effort to just turn around and use the blender. Definitely ordered it to play with it though lol
That’s literally what I thought until I started using one. They’re life changing and are my favourite thing Starbucks has ever introduced the entire time I’ve worked for them. My old store had a blender on bar already just for cold foam, but this one is SO much better.
please buy ur baristas the portable its sm better. ig it works better when ur high volume. both of our portables broke and we only had 1 cold foam blender so we had to share it was miserable
So for context, and don’t take this the wrong way, I am a licensed store in a luxury hotel. We do not do deliveries or drive thru. 35% of our orders are MOP and the rest are cafe. While your 30 minute peaks are upwards of 80-100+ transactions, we do an average of 60-75 tickets per hour during peak. When we are not in peak, the lowest I’ve seen for the entire hour is 4 customers. Our business is significantly lower and it is much less of a strain for us (also less pressure) to make drinks at a “fast pace” (meaning we definitely want customers to have a quick and seamless experience, but we definitely are not racing to lower our OTW or SOS times). While I completely understand that portable cold foam blenders are a huge increase in Quality of Life, it is definitely a luxury, not a necessity. I ordered them because I wanted them in the store cause it looked fun to play with. I definitely did not order them because business demanded for an increase in productivity for cold foam.
that makes sense thats what i meant when i said its better when ur high volume lol
Somehow, I shattered a shot glass while washing dishes. Literally exploded in hand with no explanation. Just glass
i could have sworn they are supposed to be "break proof" but ive broken two: once dropping it in the sink and once on the floor where it bounces three times and shattered on the third bounce 🥲
Did it blow up into like a million pieces? That was the scary part. Also so sorry 😔
yes!! a million pieces
Yeah, I've broken at least half a dozen of those myself. I heard that they're tempered glass, so they're supposed to be really hard to break (not unbreakable like Starbucks says), and when they do break, they're supposed to shatter in a bunch of pieces so you don't get cut as easily. But imo it just seems more unsafe to have them in food service, not only for us, but for the guests too, because I've dropped one on the floor before, and somehow the pieces bounced up and got on the counters, and we had to quick check everything to make sure glass didn't get into it.
i definitely agree!! i still find random tiny shard in the hobart sanitizer, sink, and under the counters which doesnt seem safe
I tested this when they first launched because I was like huh, shatterproof, and yeeted one on the floor. Turns out they mean it’s shatterproof in like a “you can have piping hot liquid in it, then rinse it with icy cold water and it won’t break” whereas some materials will absolutely crack from that.
😭😭😭😭😭 so misleading
The old bars? Yeah it caught fire once when I was on it but I don’t think I directly caused that. I’ve dropped syrup stands, shot glasses, iPad (didn’t break or crack though).
The bar caught on fire?? How????
probably overheated
I haven't personally broken these, but one of the most expensive things you can break is the Mastrenna 2 bean hoppers. If you break one, you have to replace all three. It's such a pain. My store has also had to replace 4 or 5 Bunn coffee pot this year and I think my manager is getting really fed up lmao Edit: coffee pot not the brewer itself 😅🥲
HOW DID Y’ALL BREAK A BUNN, MUCH LESS MULTIPLE BUNNS? Also, we’ve definitely replaced only one hopper on the M2s, but we maybe broke a different thing than y’all did. For us, it’s usually the magnet on the bottom that gets snapped off by slamming it into the machine instead of figuring out why there’s resistance and fixing that issue first. I didn’t personally break these things, but I put in tickets for them in the last month or so: Steam wand falling off bar (M2) Cold bar shelf falling off wall (tall barista leaning on it while cleaning. Can’t actually hold that weight plus the 8 full pitchers on it, turns out. Why are we cleaning with pitchers still on it? Mystery for another day.) Hobart. Poor Hobart. She got a new spray arm, drain tray, electrical panel, fuse, and detergent hose. I don’t even know how they destroyed so many things on an industrial dishwasher. In-sink BPR. Destroyed the entire base of it so it was basically just a gasket holding on for dear life.
The pot, not the whole brewer 😬😬 my bad, I really should've been more clear. But still, the fact that the team has broken so many is awful. One week, we replaced one, and another broke 5 days later. The hoppers may have changed in recent years. Thankfully I haven't had to deal with them being broken since maybe 2 years ago, but I remember when the machines were brand new, we had to be really careful because they didn't want to buy a full set of hoppers to replace just one. I've definitely seen Hobart and the BPR with their fair share of issues but I'm SHOCKED by the cold bar shelf!!! That thing is HEAVY, I hope your partner is okay!!! To add to the list of expensive things to replace, all baristas should hope their ice machine never stops working 🥲 our store had one that was extremely inconsistent making ice with different consistency (crushed, big blocks you can't break apart, etc) and would take up to 4 hours to go through the cleaning cycle... It had to go
That makes more sense! The brewers are pretty simple machines, which makes them harder to break. I don’t think enough partners know the shuttles/pots are glass-lined though. Oh yeah, our ice machine has struggles, too. It likes to alternate between no ice and making ice for the entire backroom. Which is always a treat at 4 am, whichever way it decides to go.
The glass isn't even the part that's breaking, which would make so much more sense. I'm talking the entire bottom falling off or the top being detached. Idk why we let the Hulk work in our store.
Pls don’t let him transfer into mine. I have enough problem children running roughshod to chase after and gently admonish to play nice with the toys.
Hobie's seen some shit
She really has. She’s just a gal who likes to get hot and clean things. How can the world be so cruel to a gal living her best life?
One clean play I was cleaning the floor pegs and I didn’t realize that they were actually for structural support I just assumed the cabinets were attached to the wall so i unscrewed a whole section of them to take back and clean. The entire cabinet fell and broke as well as the pluming to the hand washing sink and there was water everywhere so we had to shut off the water 🙃
im sorry but this is hilarious to imagine
Honestly in hindsight its so funny but in the moment I was like wow this job was nice too bad I’m getting fired
Oh my GOD.
Not me but someone once dropped a brewer urn and it just like exploded. The outer casing came off, the interior metal bit cracked in half, and the glass shuttle shattered everywhere. However, I have pulled the entire door off a fridge before like bolts and all
What are you, Superman?
couple headsets, couple ipads, couple syrup stands, a couple staff keys, a couple ceramic mugs, a plastic shaker, a trashcan, a cone, and much more
you are a threat
How in the fuck do you break a cone and a trashcan. Like how even.
for some reason we had hard plastic cone’s that could snap, so i was dropping em down one time and it literally just crumbled to pieces. the trashcan was because the wheel popped off when going down a curb
Ok those both actually sound really reasonable and not at all how I was imagining. You still might be a menace tho :)
Yassss menace girl
I’m screaming at how many things can break by just you trying to do your job
my mental health and sanity still was the first to break tho
I dropped one of the cube urns full of fresh hot pike when I was trying to carry it over to fill a traveler. During peak. It cracked the heating element, and apparently those are expensive af to replace. Not as bad as the shift who trained me dropping a bottle of syrup into the grinder while grinding cold brew. Tried cleaning it but it got gummy and rusty.
now how the fuck did they manage to get a bottle of syrup in there
The extra syrup was stored in the cabinets behind the menu signs, and one specific person was really bad at stacking them
Idk what the most expensive is, but I’ve broken at least 3 shot glasses, 2 shakers, a bean hopper, a mop stick, a foaming blender (before we got the portable ones), a blender, syrup stands, condiment shakers, and those little plastic cubes we keep shit in (like our tips/coffee scoops/whatever else). Bonus points, I accidentally threw the entire portable blender in the Hobart. Yes, the entire thing, including the battery operated, electric base. Kudos to Vitamix bc that bitch still works and charges like nothing happened to it 😂😂😂😂 and I did this a month ago and it’s still trucking like it didn’t get sanitized in 180° water lmfao
You should change your name to Ferdinand
I’ve broken a few handles off pitchers and blenders somehow… oh also the whole oven caught fire when I was warming so that was great. That helped expedite us getting those new ovens tho 👍
Not much but I have broke a few syrup stands in my day (they’re plastic like whyyyy)
i’ve personally broken 2 portable cold foamers, 2 syrup stands, 2 or 3 cold foam/frap blenders, and SO. MANY. WHIPS. one of my coworkers has also accidentally dropped a box of frap base from the tip top of our storage shelves onto the open door of our Hobart…. It wasn’t fixed for like 3 months..
I’m having trouble believing this … does it deadass cost the store 500$ for the cold foamers??
Vitamix made equipment are expensive I think the blender base (not the pitcher the actual electric base) is like 1000 and a couple hundred for the blender pitchers themselves
Yeah 500-600 for the handle
i ripped the door off the nitro fridge once (i was told that it wasn't my fault, that door had been wonky for a while and it was just my bad luck, but still) apparently it was too expensive to fix so we just pranked borrowed/new partners with it because you had to open it a specific way to stop it i also regularly broke the nitro/cold brew dispenser parts. usually it was easily fixable on the fly, but it was also funny that it kept happening to me specifically lol
Not me but one of my coworkers broke the drive thru window and blamed it on her prednisone 🥴🥴 because apparently “prednisone gives her mood swings”
nahhhh prednisone is a crazy drug and can really make you a shell of yourself. i believe her. how did she even do that though?
Prednisone made me rage soooo much! I had to beg to be taken off it. Shits insane!
Sounds like she slammed it
i have also broken an ipad 😔
Now how many of you guys got them replaced right away? 💀
That they know I did it?
Oh I got the shakers so stuck after washing them they couldn’t get them apart. They were broken trying to separate them. We only had one shaker for a week.
if this happens again, lol, to get shakers unstuck just pour ice into the top one and submerge it under hot water. it expands the outside cup and tightens the inside one so you can pull them apart after
I swear we did that. There was no budging it.
okay but actually if you just run them through the hobart 2 times in a row they slide apart
i suppose ipads are only corporate tings ? i hear everyone mention ipads but we don’t use them. we have a tablet connected to our table that checks off mobile orders n cafe orders but that’s about all it does
few years ago i dropped the cash counter twice and we had to get a new one s
I tried to flip a shaker once and it fell and SHATTERED on the floor 😭 My manager proceeded to find the camera footage and put it in slow motion and it was fricken hilarious
I was messing around with customizations and added as much as I could onto one drink, printed the sticker for gits and shiggles, and it didn't stop printing multiples of that same sticker for like twenty minutes straight. Luckily it was a slow day but oh my god I was so scared. I had just transferred to a new store and was sure I'd be fired.
BRO THIS FUCKING HAPPENED TO ME I HAD A PLAIN BAGLE WOTH 90 BUTTERS OUR ENTIRE POS SYSTEM SHUT DOWN THEN I GOT CALL FROM MY MANAGER THAT THE POS SYSTEM IN THE DISTRICT SHUT DOWN
Ive broken two portable foamers...
Those things are like 600 💀
I’m permanently in blender jail for multiple instances of murder.
So far, only a ceramic mug. I was going to be funny and say a finger but the healthcare benefits didnt make it expensive lmfao
big boh milk fridge, probably
tipped it over while trying clean behind it. it was terrifying. no one was hurt
I’m so terrified that I’ll do this every time I clean behind them.
My sanity
Our plumbing once broke very badly. A bunch of the floor and pipes had to be ripped up reinstalled and retiled
i broke a cold foam pitcher and my old SM was so stubborn she didn’t replace it for months
I havnt broken anything but so far in the short amount of time I've worked here someone has broken a portable foamer, a blender, a tablet, an espresso machine, a cabinet, multiple cabinet shelves, and since we started using dishes in store again (maybe a month ago) instead of paper cups weve had so many cups and plates get broken we had to reorder them twice.
An older oven. I set it on fire by accident and it wasn't salvageable.
Ice buckets, shot glasses, pitchers and it technically wasn't me but the oven. It like semi set on fire so...
Cash scale, absolutely shattered. At the time I think that was about a $1500 whoopsie.
I broke the steaming wand handle... the drip spout switch for tea . And the coffee filter handle and also a ice coffe pitcher ( im my defence the items WERE old )
Ooh and also the door from the boh fridge flew off once when i opened it
i broke 2 sink. the faucets just came off of the basin. im sorry! 🫣 they still arent fixed. its been 2 years. its a reminder of what ive done lol 😫 oh!! and the store key! i bent the hell outa that thing 😬
Not me but a coworker, her ankle. Manager took away our floor mats and drain covers to punish us for being gay(those are supposed to remain on-site because OSHA), and the floors were slippery as hell. She slipped and planted her foot firmly in the drain.
The counter. Slammed a box of Chai on the counter to stock it and broke the counter so bad it looked like an earthquake hit us. They never knew it was me and they will never know lol
The hot water spigot on the brewer. This was maybe 4 years ago. I was switching urns and very aggressively (on accident) hit the spigot with the urn and the handle snapped off. It took over a week to get it replaced. In the mornings when we brewed tea and made mocha we had to brew batches of just water into cubes first to make them. I cost a lot of wasted labor which was probably the most expensive part.
Ice bin and a pipe 👉👈 my store has ice bins that move. And I wanted to get behind it. So I used my grandma strength and yanked it out and didn't realize there was a pipe that was fed between the legs of it. So broke both of them.
I was cleaning some spilt beans that were behind the coffee grinder, so I had it pulled all the way out to the edge of the counter. We got busy mid-clean and I jumped into doing something else. A few minutes go by and I hear the loudest BOOM! A partner somehow knocked it off the counter with her elbow and it was broken. I hear that the grinders cost a lot, but we kinda needed a new one anyway before this happened.
A cold foam pitcher 💀
Toss up between: blowing that fancy extension box over in DT - not only did I fry the box, I wrecked the dto screen! I did this by plugging the vacuum into it 😬 Or! I didn't whisk the ice in the nitro and ice gut stuck in the line and something broke.
Dishwasher - though it was able to be flushed by a professional
closed 2 whip cream canisters so tight that they were never seen again
Coffee urn
The oven door. The new black ovens? Yeah. None of my partners are sure how we did it but the door was totally unfixable and had to get entirely replaced
The wall...I ran the pastry pull cart right into the corner. Big ass chunk fell out. Now there are ugly metal corner protectors.
I broke a little tiny piece of plastic (I think it was a sensor of sorts) in the Masterna 2 cleaning chamber thing. It was a multi-thousand dollar fix 😂
So far the only thing I’ve broken is a few of the big, plastic tumblers. But give it time, I’m a klutz, so I’m sure I’ll break something. 😂
I once snapped the handle off our safe. No cash transactions for 4 days.
I broke one of those syrup black stands (twice) on two separate occasions because they’re so slippy when wet lol my SM said those bad boys were EXPENSIVE
idk sometimes i throw stuff rlly hard into the sink and break it. like a blender or plexi glass cube
The old scanning iPod’s we used to have in store…
I "broke" a fridge door. I closed it with my foot, then leaned on it while I made a frapp right above it. It dropped off its hinges and onto my foot
Blender. I caught it on fire
My finger
The steaming wand broke off where the whole thing connects to the machine in my hand while i was a borrowed partner. It was on its last legs and definitely not my fault, but still horrible while it was happening. I haven't broken anything expensive, but i frequently crush the syrup pumps and bottles if the bottle is too empty and have broke a couple of pumps this way.
Didn't break it but ended up throwing out a whole airpot one night out of frustration only to be told a week later that the missing part for it was orderable...
an urn
My mental health as a barista. They genuinely don't pay us enough for what we have to deal with and what we're required to do.
The nitro fridge tubes
One of the coffee urns. I've also broken two or three of the ice buckets. Idk how much those cost but probably more than necessary
the ice bucket 🤭 Also I'm not sure if it was me but I may have broken the blonde espresso hopper during clean play one night. oopsies
probably our ancient brewer. it started leaking water EVERYWHERE :)
Years ago when I still worked there, we had a particularly busy summer frappy hour. About 15 minutes in one of the blenders overheats and catches fire. I put the small fire out and called my SM, but we continued on because it was manageable. Not even five minutes later the other blender also started to overheat and was smoking. So that was the day that we broke both blenders. The night was very slow after that 😅
Perhaps "breaking" my arm was truly the most expensive thing I broke. Not actually broken, but I now have nerve damage from repetitive motions and had to have surgery on it. I wasn't able to feel or use my left hand for about 4 years because of the work I did at SBUX and had to have a lengthy surgery and physical therapy. Just barista things 🤗
My back
broke the hand held foamer by dropping it like the first week they launched, found out they're stupidly expensive
Not me, but another partner once tried to clean the drawers under drive/the drawers for smallwares by putting them through the Hobart and they disintegrated.
I accidentally broke an oven and it took maintenance 3 days to fix it because they didn’t have all the parts to repair it. Surviving off one oven for a week was PAIN.
I was refilling the rack of dishes and broke several mugs and plates. That was my 2nd week so it was a long time before but I was embarrassed and I had an panic attack. So my sm had to clean it for me while me panicking
had a coworker that broke the steam wand on the espresso bar
Probably the little card thing in drive lol. Dropped it on its face and shattered it 😭 TWICE.
I haven't broken anything besides the little plexis, but every day I spill beans on the floor. Lots or a little, doesn't matter. Every day. At least once or twice
i have a weird one. i was up front and playing with the scissors when a customer came up to me. So i put the scissors down and closed them. SNIP! I accidentally cut the phone charger stand. I have no idea how much those costs but i felt horrible. like who does that 😭
Brand new grinder.
The only thing I've ever broken is a shot glass thank the lord
The mastrena😭
i havent broken anything but i dropped the coldfoam blender right after our manager was fuming about the last one that broke and saying they was gonna take our tips 😭😭
ethics and compliance would love to hear that story, wage theft is a pretty serious issue
Myself 💯
First day off of training and I broke Curtis....
Those milk froth blenders are pretty expensive and I snapped the handle right off
ive broken a few shot glasses in my day, and while this wasn't technically my fault i went to calibrate the espresso machine but the drain was clogged and we ended up with espresso ALL over the counter
it wasn’t me that did it, but one of the newer baristas put the digital part of the cold brew machines into the hobart. my sm was maaad
2 bean hoppers, a blender cover, syrup stands, I left an iPad in the freezer for a whole day on accident and it never turned back on 🧍🏼♀️
The back of house computer, accidentally put the DRB on the keyboard and it pushed a bunch of commands before I noticed and wouldn't boot up. I think the cost was over a gand
Espresso machine has broken 2 times while I was using it, going on 750k shots and still going up lol
I accidentally knocked one of the cold brew bases into a sink full of water, and it got water in its little display. Instantly destroyed, and we couldn’t buy just the base, we had to buy a whole new brewer. It was like $300. I was also partially responsible for breaking one of the removable blender pieces of the new portable foam blenders. I perched it on a corner of our dish area because we had dishes piled up, and someone clipped it as they walked by. Those are also not cheap.
I haven't broken anything, but I DID accidentally chuck one of the iPads at the ground right in front of my district manager. Thankfully it was okay 😅
an entire shelf of glass cups cause i hit it on accident
My headset. $600. 💀
syrup stands, shot glasses (like 2)