Rawleigh proudly handing out a drink to a customer

Rawleigh triumphantly calling out the drinks

Oscar Lamont reading

Once Upon a Time, When I was a Starbucks Barista...

As a Starbucks barista anywhere, you have to be ready to deal with incredibly difficult customers. People paying $4-5 for a coffee expect perfect results. Understandably so.

Top that off with a typical Hamptons customer, and you have yourself quite a rough day. Sean Glazebrook of the Bridgehampton Starbucks certainly got it from a belligerent Hamptonite a few weeks ago.

Shortly after restocking the ladies bathroom with toilet paper, Glazebrook rushed back to the bar station to help speed up service to the long line of customers that extended out the door, as usual. About 45 minutes later, a customer came up to him and complained that the bathroom was out of toilet paper.

“What kind of store are you?” she said. “Can’t you be responsible enough to keep you bathrooms stocked with the essentials?”

‘Wow, how much toilet paper do these customers need?’ thought Glazebrook, as he had just supplied the women’s bathroom with two rolls prior to working at the bar station.

“Sorry, m’am,” he said. “I apologize for the inconvenience. We’ll be sure that doesn’t happen again.”

“Oh, and what idiot doesn’t have enough sense to put my bottle of water in a paper bag so that I don’t have to carry it with my bare hand?” she said.

Glazebrook turned around to fetch a bag, rolled his eyes and handed it to her.

“Of course, I have to put it in myself,” she said and walked off angrily.

This experience reminded me of an awful barista shift of mine a few summers back.

Exhausted from a 6 a.m. shift start, I was excited about going home in an hour when the clock struck 1 pm. That hour proved to be one of the most tortuous of my short barista career.

A woman wearing gaudy jewelry and armed with a Louis Vitton bag walked up to the counter and ordered a decaf non-fat latte. “Fill up the cup with milk to the “S” in the Starbucks logo,” she said. ‘Oh geez, one of these,’ I thought.

My coworker made the drink as requested and placed it on the bar table. “Decaf grande non-fat latte, milk to the “S,” she called out.

The woman walked up the bar to pick up her drink. She took off the lid, sniffed it suspiciously, and declared, “This smells funny.”

“I can make it for you again, ma’m, if you like,” my coworker said.

“No, it would clearly be too much trouble for you to do so.”

“Not at all, ma’m, it would be no problem,” my coworker replied.

But the reassurance was in vain. As she cast a cynical glance to my coworker, she dropped the drink onto the floor next to the bar.

“Oh, look at that, what a shame. Now I guess you’ll have to make it for me again.”

I couldn’t believe this nasty behavior. If my boss weren’t right next to me, I would have cursed this woman out and ordered her to get out of the store.

But instead, she got everything she wanted. My boss instantly ran to her side to sweep up the mess in front of her – of course, she didn’t touch a thing – and asked me to remake the drink.

“Are you kidding?” I thought. The very first thing that came to my mind was to spike the drink with multiple caffeinated espresso shots.

Fearing that I’d lose my job—or, worse, sued by this psychopath of a customer-- I made the drink exactly as she had ordered it, just as my coworker had done the time before.

Just as she was leaving, the woman came up to me and said, “You don’t seem to fit into this type of job. You shouldn’t be here.”

Completely baffled, I watched her walk out the door. At that very moment, I would have given anything to punch her in the face.

Every time I visit the Bridgehampton Starbucks, I feel a pang of empathy for all of those baristas who, one day or another, will suffer some kind of abuse from a Hamptons customer.

The Band-Aid Barista Fiasco

Between freshman and sophomore years of college, I was in need of some quick, easy cash. So I began searching for a summer job. Becoming a Starbucks barista seemed like the best option—good pay, easy work and close to home. So I stopped in the Bridgehampton Starbucks, filled out an application, met with the manager for an interview and was offered a job on the spot.

At the time, I was thrilled to have my first “real” job. That is, before I knew what I was getting myself into.

Well, it wasn’t all bad. When I look back, I do value my work experience for having introduced me to the working world. It gave me first-hand exposure to the sometimes harsh realities of serving others. And not just any others, but bratty, spoiled Hamptonites.

Having to deal with belligerent customers was, at times, the least of my problems. One day, I was cutting open a package of mocha powder with a pair of scissors, and I cut my finger.

I ran to the back room to run it under cold water and wrapped it up with a band-aid.

A couple of hours later, I was going about my business when I noticed the band-aid was no longer on my finger. Hardly thinking twice about it, I continued making the frappacinno mix and shelved the bin in my part of the fridge.

The next afternoon was a madhouse. The customer line was going out the front door, and the fraps seemed to be the most popular.

Quickly running out of mix in the front area, I called out, “Can someone grab me a full mix bin from the back? I just made some yesterday.”

“Sure!” said my co-worker, Jenn Horowitz.

She came back looking very disturbed. “I need to show you something in the back,” she said.

“Are you kidding? The line’s out the door. I can’t just abandon my station,” I said.

“It’ll just take a second,” she said.

“Fine, one second,” I said.

I was now quite intrigued as to what momentous thing Jenn had to show me that couldn’t wait.

I followed her to the back room.

“When I was pouring your mix into the pitcher, I found something in it,” she said.

‘Oh no,’ I thought, ‘it couldn’t be…’

And, alas, there it was. My soggy, bloody band-aid loosely hanging from the side of the mix bin.

Frozen, I stared at it, not having a clue what to say to Jenn.

Completely humiliated and grossed out, I muttered, “Oh…thanks for catching that,” washed out the bin full of mix, placed it in the dishwasher and hurried back to my station.

I came in to work the next day with a queasy stomach. What if Jenn hadn’t noticed the band-aid? What if we had served a frappacino with that mix?

As I quietly went about restocking the coffee bag section, my boss walked in for the first time that day and instantly approached me. “Good morning, Aline, can we have a talk?

“Sure,” I said, thinking, ‘Shit. Now I’m getting fired from my very first job. This will look great on the resume.’

We sat down in the back room.

“Aline, I was informed this morning about the band-aid incident.”

“Yeah, I figured you had been,” I said. “I was going to come and talk to you about it, but I didn’t see you yesterday or this morning.”

“Look,” he said. “It was a potentially disastrous accident that could have led to the closing of our store. But, all’s well that ends well. Just be a bit more careful next time.”

Phew. I wasn’t fired.

“Thank you so much for your understanding,” I replied. “I was mortified beyond belief about it.” Not knowing what else to say, I added, “I will never let it happen again.”

And that was only one of many nightmarish experiences during my time as a Starbucks barista.

Congestion at the East Hampton Starbucks

It's been five minutes since I entered the East Hampton Starbucks, and I already feel cramped. Unlike in the Bridgehampton store, where you can spread out as much as you please and find our own little nook, you're lucky to find a chair at this store.

As I stood on line to buy my iced tea, I noticed a barista standing at the bar, calling out the drinks that were coming out from the espresso section.

"Iced grande chai latte," he announced as the customer scampered to the bar to pick up her drink. "Here you go, Kate," he said, smiling as he handed her the drink.

As I sat on the windowsill next to the bar, I managed to get a few words out of the teenager at his station. Mike Rawleigh, born and raised in Springs, the neighboring town, has been working at the East Hampton location for two and a half months.

The new barista task, which, he claims, was created just a few weeks ago, "make(s) the drinks come out faster—instead of (the barista making the drinks) have to worry about call(ing) them out correctly."

Rawleigh also commented on the much-needed barrier the new barista duty creates between the customers and the baristas making the drinks.

"If something's wrong with a customer's beverage, they can simply talk to me about it and not distract the bar barista from making other drinks," Rawleigh said.

When asked which shift he prefers, the barista responded, "I like the announcing job. I get to actually interact with the customers," he said.

A group of kids Rawleigh was well-acquainted with swarmed around him and perched besides me at the windowsill.

"See? I even get to see my buddies!" he said, shouting to his coworker, Max Crogan, "Come on, I'm in a dry spot here," commenting on the lack of drinks coming out from the bar.

Oscar Lamont, an Englishman visiting his grandmother's East Hampton home for a week, has been coming to the East Hampton Starbucks for three or four years.

A soon-to-be college student at Edinburgh, Lamont came to the shop today to do some leisure reading. On his list today was a children's book entitled "A Little History of the World."
Lamont told me about the differences between London and New York Starbucks he has noticed during his annual trips to Long Island.

"It's definitely more expensive in London," he said. "Everything's about a dollar more than it is here."

Well, we all know that London has become unaffordable. "Other than that," Lamont said, "they're pretty similar."

When I asked about differences in popularity, Lamont asserted that people are "similarly divided" about the corporate chain.

"Loads of people hate it for its corporate nature in both countries, but everyone seems to still go there," he said.

How true. You speak to nearly all Starbucks customers, and most will say something about how they resent the shop for its monopolistic ways. Yet, they're there—not at Dunkin' Donuts or at their local coffee shop-- buying the non-fat latte!

Despite the growing popularity of Starbucks in Europe, Lamont said that the stores don't get quite as packed with customers as they do here.

"I try to zone out with my headphones and music here," he said, "but it's hard, 'cause, most of the time, people are having very loud conversations.

The proof in the pudding was three jabber-mouthed women sitting diagonally across from me and chatting so obnoxiously loud that every word they uttered resounded in my head and nearly made my ears ring.

Amazing what a difference a larger space makes!

As I was frenetically typing away, a woman with a stroller bumped into the back of my chair. "Oops, sorry," she said, "but could you move your bag so I don't run it over?"

"Sure," I said, thinking, “I guess I had to come to the East Hampton Starbucks to get the true Starbucks experience.”

Barista Sean Glazebrook at the Bridgehampton Starbucks

Julie Falk and her two adorable kids, Lindsay and Ryan

My Chat with a Lovely Barista

Starbucks, July 22, 2008.

Screw “we don’t talk to the press.” I used my valuable insider connections to have barista Sean Glazebrook break that rule. Glazebrook is a buddy of Claes Brondal, the assistant manager and my former co-worker at the Bridgehampton Starbucks.

Glazebrook, a 22-year-old from Sag Harbor who has been working at the Bridgehampton Starbucks for 2 ½ years, is baffled as to why Starbucks has become such a worldwide phenomenon.

“I don’t understand how any coffee place could have grown to what (Starbucks) has become,” he said. Finally, an honest answer and not some regurgitated “money” phrase about why Starbucks coffee is as crucial as water.

Well, as a veteran barista, Glazebrook had to tack on some of that. “Starbucks is called your third place, after home and work,” he said.

Just because the Hamptons is the Hamptons, the Bridgehampton Starbucks is a hotbed for celebrity spottings.

Any yet seen by the barista this summer? “Jodie Foster was in here yesterday,” Glazebrook said nonchalantly. “And last week, we had Jerry O’Connell from the Sliders TV show.” Saturday Night Live actress Amy Poehler has also been seen a few times since the beginning of the summer, Glazebrook noted.

I asked the barista what he thought of the closing of 616 Starbucks nationwide. He noted that the number of stores closing amounts to only 8% of Starbucks stores around the country, and therefore will have little impact on the well-being of the company.

The small impact the cutback might have, however, would be most noticeable in the rural areas, Glazebrook said. “Places like this might suffer more than city stores,” he said, since there are Starbucks stores at nearly every couple of blocks in Manhattan, for example.

“It does affect the 12,000 baristas, though,” the barista said, who will be forced to re-locate to a different store or to find a new job altogether.

A neighboring store, the Southampton Starbucks, is one of the ones that will be closing soon. “Its underperformance is the reason why it’s closing,” said Glazebrook. “It didn’t exceed its standards.”

Glazebrook doesn’t think its closing will affect the Southampton community in any significant way. “It’s in such a bad location, right on Montauk Highway…which is why it wasn’t doing well,” he said. Glazebrook added that Starbucks would like to relocate on Main Street in Southampton in a few years’ time—if they find a preferable location, that is.

Any fear of the Bridgehampton store being closed? “No way,” said the barista. “We’re a high-volume store.”

And what about those new protein shakes? Where did those come from? “It’s a new beverage platform, ‘cause lots of customers and partners alike voiced concerns about healthier options (on the Starbucks menu),” Glazebrook said.

Ahh. So people are getting tired of filling their guts with several-hundred-calorie frappacinos.

Though introduced in the summer to help cool off customers, these new beverages will be offered throughout the year, depending on their success in the other seasons.

The two shakes offered on the East Coast—the orange mango banana vivanno and the banana chocolate vivanno—are doing extremely well so far in the Bridgehampton Starbucks, Glazebrook reported. They’ve been neck and neck since introduced to the menu—“the orange mango banana is doing slightly better, just ‘cause it’s so tasty,” the barista said.

The West Coast Starbucks chains are cutting down on the calories with the sorbettos, a healthy menu item comparable to the vivanno.

Frappacinos have taken their toll on the company in urban areas of the country. In New York, for example, all stores are required to post the ingredients of each item, which surely makes customers think twice about ordering their usual high-calorie beverage.

Glazebrook mentioned that the new city law has also affected the sales of food, especially the bakery items.
Hopefully the coffee chain won’t be swept up so much by the calorie-avoiding hype that it would evolve into one of those anal health food shops that won’t offer one iota of fat-filled snack or beverage. God help us, we have plenty of those places in this paranoid-of-calorie-consumption country.

Slices of Life at the Bridgehampton Starbucks

Starbucks, July 21, 2008.

Every time I walk through the back doors of the Starbucks on Main Street in Bridgehampton, I have feelings of bittersweet nostalgia.

It was my very first “summer” job—working as a barista the summer between my freshman and sophomore year at Barnard College.

And, boy, do you see all types of “slices of life” in this location.

Here’s what I witnessed on this Monday afternoon:

One woman in her 30’s was biting her nails as she sipped her iced coffee and was engrossed in an Allure magazine. Perhaps if she stopped reading garbage, her life wouldn’t be as nerve-wracking…

Another girl in her 20’s, Christina Loghin, was viciously typing away on her MacBook. “My internet’s not working at home, so I just came here to work on a project,” she said. A Manhattan resident who has been weekending at her family home for three years, Loghin seems to have found a comfortable niche at the store. “It’s upbeat—quiet enough to work, but still lively,” she said. “They need to update their playlist, though.”

Another middle-aged woman, Joanna—she refused to give her last name--was wearing dark glasses and was avidly reading the NY Times, waiting for her friend Bruce to join her. Shortly after arriving, Bruce pulled out a series of photographs taken on his recent trip to New Mexico, where he’s looking to buy a lot.

A semi-regular resident of Sag Harbor, Bruce values this Starbucks for its convenient location.

“It’s a nice layout…I hope it’s not on the hit list,” he said, referring to the recent closing of several hundred Starbucks nationwide due to the weakening economy.

Joanna commented on the quality of the coffee, claiming that she prefers it to the Golden Pear’s, which she described as bitter. “(This Starbucks location) could be cleaner, but otherwise it’s nice,” she said. She wished the music were softer and “more relaxing,” however.

Meanwhile, some of the barista were chatting amongst each other, while others were setting up the music stands and restocking the coffee bags. They were not available for comment. “We’re not allowed to talk to the press,” one of them said curtly. Since when are blogs considered part of the “press”?

It was just another daily visit to Starbucks for Julie Falk and her children, 6-year-old Lindsay and 3-year-old Ryan. Upper West Siders in the off season and Bridgehamptonites by summer, Julie and her kids have been hooked on the chain since its first Manhattan appearance on 87^th St. and Broadway, close to their home.

“(Starbuck’s) a huge mommy magnet in the city,” Julie said, admitting that she and her kids frequent the shop approximately 2-3 times a day.

“Devastated” by the first location’s closing a few years ago, the Falks were forced to walk to the 93^rd or 95^th St./Broadway locations until a Starbucks location was added to the first floor of their apartment building.

“The proximity has certainly worsened my addiction (to Starbucks coffee),” she said.

Though very appreciative of the new location in her building, Julie prefers the Bridgehampton location to any of the urban shops. “In the city everyone has strollers—the space is confined, and it’s often very crowded and noisy,” she said.

Julie alluded to the Bridgehampton loction as “the crossroads of the Hamptons” due to its central location on Main Street.

The stay-at-home mom also commented on the wide range of regulars at the Bridgehampton location. “You see the same people here every day…from celebrities, to landscapers, to moms—it goes by the clock. You see the waves passing through,” she said.

With regard to the competing coffee shops, such as the Golden Pear or Hampton Coffee, Mrs. Falk feels more comfortable at her second home.

“I don’t feel the need to be at Hampton Coffee, ‘cause it’s the local place. And the coffee is generally not as reliable. Golden Pear’s coffee sits on burners—it gets old and stale,” she said.

The Falk family has been coming to the Bridgehampton Starbucks since the late ‘90’s, when they were renting a house right in back of the coffee shop.

“When I was a baby, I used to organize the coffee bags and get everything into shape,” Lindsay said.

The Falks also enjoy the Bridgehampton Starbucks location for the pre-Starbucks bank items, such as the safes. “We love sitting on the couch in the back and admiring the big safe door,” she said. “When (the kids) were smaller, we used to try to guess the combination of the safe in the front,” the mother said with a smile.

The only missing component, according to Julie Falk, are diaper changing tables.

Mitchell Iden, another weekly regular of the Hamptons Starbucks, is an attorney in Manhattan and has been coming out to his East Hampton home for a decade now. “This location is bigger and brighter than the East Hampton location,” he said, mentioning the vault as one of the signature attractions of the Bridgehampton space.

Iden criticized the Golden Pear for being overpriced. “You get better value (at Starbucks),” he said. “You get more for your money. A smaller iced coffee, for example, is sold for the same price as a grande here.”

Iden also prefers the quality of coffee at Starbucks. “It’s a stronger, better taste,” he said.

Just another summer weekday at the Bridgehampton Starbucks.