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