It’s already such a good morning…

Nothing like waking up with Federally mandated jet-lag, but at least I know that the rest of the country’s going to have it as well. It’s going to suck when my body catches up with the time change and I’ll wonder why it’s so hard to get up in the morning again. But I managed to make it out the door and start the commute with no fuss, but you could tell that everyone was experiencing the same feeling. Metro platform was packed and when the train got to L’Enfant Plaza, people just kept crowding in. There may even have been a little bit of shoving.

So as I was really early, I was looking forward to getting my latte and hitting my desk to knock out some work. Well wouldn’t ya know that the Starbucks was a little jet-lagged as well. I’ll let my letter to customer service this morning fill you in:

This is a new store, which doesn’t even show up on your locater yet at 1200 New Jersey Ave SE, Wash. DC. This morning was the second time I’ve visited where you were out of either cups or lids and all you could serve up were tall sized hot drinks. I’m fine with this except that the barista was continually telling the cashier to only take tall orders, and he insisted to me that they had grande cups too, so I ordered a grande latte. Turns out they can’t give me the grande latte as there are no lids, so he overcharged me albeit not by much. When I asked him to just credit my card the difference he kept saying “I already charged you, hold on.” Well I waited, and I got my drink, and I waited and he continued to serve customers, so I didn’t see how he was going to help me at all. Eventually I had no more time to wait and I left.

I understand when you don’t get a supply to a store, but inform your customers (and employees) of this, and offer them some kind of discount on their next drink. I normally order quad venti lattes, this morning I had to settle for a double tall, so chances are I will need to go back for another drink, possibly another tall, which I’ll have to pay full price for when a single venti this morning would have sufficed.

I appreciate that I have a new Starbucks near me, but it’s been plagued with lack of supplies, late openings, apathetic staff and overall doesn’t exemplify the level of service and quality that I’m used to from Starbucks.

If the prices were equal across the board by ounce for the lattes, I wouldn’t care, but they ain’t, and I know for a fact that one tall latte isn’t gonna cut it for me. Also, I don’t know why the cashier wouldn’t listen to the barista and just ignored me when it came time to credit my card. I even used a debit card, so he maybe could have given me the cash difference. Instead I’m standing there for 15 mins while he serves other customers and eventually I figured it was pointless. There was no manager around and I didn’t see the business card holder with his or her contact information on it. They probably removed it due to complaints, or maybe the flirtatious people are using them to exchange phone numbers.

In the long run, I’m hardly going to suffer from less caffeine, but it will throw me on a day when my circadian rhythm (I use big words ‘cuz I is edumicated) is already off-balance. And frankly, one does have expectations of the Starbucks brand. If the guy needed more time or needed a manager, just say so, and most importantly, after your barista shrilly shouts that they only have tall cups, follow it up with an apology for the inconvenience. Sure it’s boilerplate, but it does give people the impression that you acknowledge the unexpected change, however slight, in their routine.

Or maybe I’m just whiny because I haven’t had enough caffeine. Mmm, it’s gonna be a good Monday!