Life at Starbucks

I've been extremely blessed with amazing co-workers and an even more amazing store manager!  I have honestly felt so welcome...even though I don't drink coffee!

It's a different atmosphere and type of person than I'm used to working with though.  Lots of high school and college aged kids.  There are only two other married people and one just quit.  The other is in her 60s.  Other than that I think I'm the oldest one, besides my store manager who's in his 30s.  With that said, the others have been so helpful and nice and I really couldn't have asked for better coworkers!

Just like with any job, there's definitely a learning curve.  I had heard to expect it to take 3 months before feeling comfortable with most stuff around the store.  This was pretty true for me!  I see many people online worried about not being able to learn everything at a Starbucks.  I always comment "If a high schooler can do it, so can you!"  It's true.  All jobs take some time to learn and this is just making coffee.  It's overwhelming at first but anyone can learn to do it.  Even those of us who have never tried coffee in our life!

I'm going to break this down into the specific jobs within the store for those who are thinking of getting a job here.

Register- The first day they put me on the register.  Seems like it should be the easiest job but when people come and order a tall-triple-blonde-skinny-upside down-caramel macchiato....I don't even know where to begin!  I could barely hear the people they talk so fast and on top of that they were speaking a foreign language to me.  AND THEN you have to find the buttons on the computer and there are like 6 screens with at least 20-30 buttons on each of them.  I should count one day how many buttons there are just for drinks...then there are food buttons on top of that!  It's exhausting.

But really I'm being dramatic.  You catch on pretty quick to the basics.  Even after I've been there 5 months I still don't know where all the buttons are and have to click around to find what I want.  As long as you're friendly with the customers, it's not a big deal!

Customer Support- This is my favorite position!  They are in charge of making sure everything is stocked, the back and front of house are clean, that coffee is always freshly brewed, and that everyone else can do their jobs smoothly.  I feel least stressed in this position and I think I'm one of the best in the store at it.  But don't let me get too cocky.

At first I was super terrible at making sure the coffee was always fresh brewed.  I ran out ALL the time.  You have to brew 1-3 types of coffee, depending on the time of day, and there's a timer you use to make sure you brew a new batch every 10 minutes.  And you have to keep track of which kind you brewed so that nothing sits longer than 30 minutes.  But when one runs out quicker than 10 minutes it throws everything off and was so confusing.  I'm at the point now where I don't know why I was ever confused by it, but I totally felt like a failure the first few weeks because I always had to ask what I was doing.

They have really good lists of everything you have to do and a specific order in which to do it so you don't forget things.  Now, I'm not much for sticking to the list because I try to just do things that need to be done, but the list was super helpful at the beginning when I didn't know enough of how the store ran to know what needed to be done.

Food- Pretty self explanatory.  You unpackage food and throw it in the oven.  All of Starbucks food comes to the store frozen so we just thaw and reheat.  It's probably the easiest job!  The only stressful thing it when food starts to back up because it can only cook so fast.  You definitely have to think ahead with what to put in which oven to be most efficient, but overall super easy.  Only downside is it can get sooooo hot standing by two ovens for an extended period of time.

Bar- This is where you make all the magic for people.  I didn't start training on bar for a few weeks, and I've heard of people in other stores that don't get trained on it for months.  It's so overwhelming at the beginning because there's so much to memorize.  And you watch these kids whip up drinks faster than you can ring them up at the register!

For me, it was a definite disadvantage to not be able to taste the drinks.  I felt like tasting them would help me remember what they were and how they were made since 80% of the drinks use the same few ingredients.  But I learned nonetheless!  I still don't love being on bar because I'm not mcspeedy like a lot of the others, but I can hold my own...most of the time....when it's not crazy busy.  I'm also 100% sure I make mistakes on people's drinks every day.  Sometimes they tell me, other times I have no idea.  There's just a lot to remember!