Monday mornings are the worst. It’s always a struggle to get out of bed for your first class. You get dressed, put in your earbuds and slowly begin walking to class.
On your way to the Academic Quad, you quickly realize that there’s no way you’re going to make it through the day without a nice, hot cup of coffee to get you going, so you decide to go to Starbucks.
As you arrive, you see that the line is going out the door into the lounge, and you become miserable, annoyed that the baristas are moving too slow and wish that you had gone to Connections.
As the rush hour begins, the baristas brace themselves for the multitude of caffeinated drinks they are about to create. Baristas play a pivotal role in the eyes of students. But what it is like to be one?
The University of Rochester Starbucks is open seven days a week, opening at 7:30 a.m. Monday to Friday and closing as late as 2 a.m. on weekends. Openers are at work earlier than that to make sure everything is ready for business to run smoothly.
With the high demand for coffee in the morning, those morning baristas have to be wide awake themselves to make sure they can make the drinks to perfection.
As the day tolls on, more and more baristas contribute to achieving their endless mission: to provide the University community with quality Starbucks coffee and tea drinks.
Senior Teresa Oh worked at Starbucks for over five months and had an interesting time there.
“My experience has been both fantastic and horrendous,” she said. “It’s fantastic because it’s a fast-paced work environment that requires the barista to interact with both their fellow employees and the customers in a positive manner to ensure that Starbucks is offering quality service and drinks.”
“Unfortunately, it has been horrendous for the same reasons, as customer service isn’t always the easiest thing to offer on days with difficult customers,” she continues. Customer service can always be tricky. With any business, the customer is always right, and that can cause stress on the baristas during their shifts.
No matter how complicated the order may be, the baristas work hard to make it come out right.
Junior Tia Shipman worked in the food industry before coming to UR, so being a barista and dealing with the demand of customers does not faze her.
“My favorite thing about being a barista is free drinks during my shift. My least favorite thing is the lack of communication/training.”
While getting free drinks is definitely a valuable perk, unfortunately, Shipman does not appreciate the lack of training and communication in the workplace. Poor communication and training can lead to an inefficient barista staff that only causes further frustration for those anxious customers.
When asked about how they handle rush hour, Oh said that she does not think about the pressure and the very long line that’s “outside and down the stairs.” She says that if she just continues to do her job, the line eventually dies down.
Shipman said that she typically does not get overwhelmed because she is used to the large crowds from her previous work experience. This so-called “rush hour” is generally in between classes, especially in the morning right before the first time slot for classes. Post-lunch hours are also busy, especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays–remember this when you are about to make a Starbucks run during these times.
For learning new drinks, Oh made the procedure seem relatively easy for all baristas.
“There is a recipe card that gets added to our rather large booklet, and we just learn it. There isn’t much training that is required, as most unveiled new drinks generally follow a similar recipe as the other drinks similar to it, with the exception of the syrups. We find out about it ahead of time, so we can agonize over how many drinks we’ll have to make during rush hours and mentally prepare.”
Knowing what it is like to be a barista can help students relate to the hard work they put in to give the best service possible. Additionally, baristas are students just like us who can understand our frustration.
Oh has one request for our campus community: “Please be nice to our baristas. When I didn’t work at Starbucks, I used to get frustrated at how long I had to wait or how horribly incorrect the spelling of my name was. Now that I’m on the other side, I know for a fact that everyone is at work to ensure every customer receives their order in a timely manner and are satisfied with the service, I promise.”
Gulston is a member of the class of 2016.
