daisyblog

Recently, a customer comes into the coffee shop I work at and wants to order two drinks, one being some kind of latte with an add shot, but with the add shot on the side. Cashier says "Ok," asks the manager working nearby how to ring it up. Manager says, "Ring it up as a single espresso," which costs something like $1.50-$2. Customer says, "Wait, why can't you just charge it as an add shot?" Which is about 80 cents. Manager says, "Well, it's because you want it on the side, not in the drink, which means we will be putting it in an extra cup, lid, etc. Those have cost and need to be accounted for in inventory, so they need to be rung up." Customer thinks this is unreasonable, says, "Nevermind, no add-shot, thanks."

Some minutes later, the drink is made, customer takes it, goes back to sit down. Comes back soon after, says, "So apparently she wanted this iced, can I just have some ice to pour this over?" Manager says, "Do you want me to remake it for you?" Customer says, "No, just some ice is fine." Manager informs him again that we charge 25 cents for extra cups, customer gets irritated, starts kind of another tirade, so manager says, "Yes that's why I'm offering to make it again for you for free, because it was a mistake and we can correct that, as per company policy, but we're not allowed to give away cups for free."

Customer REALLY doesn't like this. "So you're saying that you want to charge me 25 cents for a cup, but you'll remake the drink for free, which also uses an extra cup AND more drink ingredients?? Where is the logic here?" Manager states again, "This is just the company's policies, sir, this is what I can offer you to help you with your situation." Customer says, "FORGET IT," and storms back, saying loudly to his friend or whoever, "They're a bunch of ROBOTS!!"

So, I'm not a bootlicker to any degree, I don't think this policy makes perfect sense and see similar issues the customer does. However, as a person who has worked in customer service jobs and particularly food service for many years, the customer's choice to make a variety of protest statements here is extremely irritating. Because the way I see the situation, customers like this are exactly the reason both of these policies are in place, even though they seem to contradict each other in some ways.

First off, why charge for extra cups at all? We throw away multiple cups per day simply making the odd mistake, when a customer fails to pick up a drink that was ordered, and as this customer points out, when we remake drinks which are wrongly made, whether because of customer error or barrista error. (More about that in a sec.) Why not give away all extra cups for free? Well, part of the reason is that if cups are free, customers do in fact frequently use them up like they're an infinite resource. They'll ask for double cups on a single drink, they'll ask for large drinks split into two cups instead of ordering two small drinks, they'll ask for separate cups with ice, a cup of hot water for their own tea or an instant noodle cup, cups of ice with no water to pour an outside drink into, etc. This results in a lot of extra trash, and a lot of unaccounted for product for the company (which I care less about, but hey everybody wants to know what's happening to their money and why they're spending so much on cups that aren't getting used on drinks because you can only blame so much on barristas).

Firstly, getting coffee to-go (or any food to-go, or almost any item at all actually) means accepting the fact that you are buying trash to throw away. Some factory (or rather dozens of factories across the world) is manufacturing all those cups, boxes, drink stoppers, lids, sleeves, napkins, sauce packets, plastic cutlery, takeaway bags, shipping boxes, packing peanuts and protective foam, and so on. If you're worried about waste, it's definitely a good idea to bring your own cup or thermos and many coffee shops, smoothie places, etc will even offer a discount for this. If you are going to want extras, bring... well, extra cups or containers. The barrista might be a bit eye-rolly if you want a coffee in your thermos, an extra shot in a mason jar, and some extra milk in another mason jar, but they will likely do it and you won't be charged and again, may even get a discount. If you're worried about takeaway waste, there are things you can do about it and more people probably should do it if they get takeaway often. In fact, California now has a law that restaurants are no longer allowed to simply provide throwaway utensils and sauce packets by keeping them out for anyone to grab or by placing them into takeaway bags by default; the customer has to ask for them. The idea is to prevent waste because, well, who else has at some point had a space in a kitchen drawer full of disposable forks, chopsticks, and sauce packets they didn't end up using? No, we're not going to solve climate change or clean up the already fucked up pollution by not getting cups from coffee shops and we can't consume our way out of a consumption-driven problem of excessive trash on the planet. But I do think if you have environmental concerns, there's little harm in being better where you can.

So by asking for extra cups, you are on a certain level creating MORE trash waste and signalling that the company needs to buy more cups to accomodate the demand, and these have an environmental cost that needs to be reflected in pricing (just as it should with gasoline, tbh, though this is not a popular opinion in the US). The customer didn't want to do that, which on the surface indicates that he doesn't care about creating more trash. Fine. Most people don't and it's just one more cup, right?

Skip ahead to the free remake of the drink. Obviously, this consumes overall more resources than simply an extra cup; it consumes the cup, lid, sleeve, drink stopper, and the coffee, milk, and sugar inside. If you charge for an extra cup, how could you conscionably offer an entire drink remake for no cost at all? Well, I think the honest answer is, "because people make mistakes." Barristas make many wrong drinks every day as part of the whole "being a human being" thing, and customers regularly order wrong drinks or forget to mention an important detail (decaf, half sweet, no-sugar-added sweetener instead of sugar sweetener, whole milk instead of nonfat, etc). It's considered (rightly) to be a pretty awful work environment if the worker is asked to pay for literally every single cup that's wasted on their mistakes. Customers riot if you ask them to pay for a mistake made by the barrista, who is (techinically) an extension of the company, so the company pays for it by doing it for free. Customers also riot if asked to pay for their own mistakes because, well, it feels bad to fuck up I guess, and takeaway is expensive, so paying for a drink you can't even drink because your stomach revolts against your body and you don't sleep for days if you ingest caffiene, and then paying again to order a whole new correct one, feels excessive. You probably would stop going to a coffee shop that charged you to remake your drink for simple mistakes such as these. The company considers the cost of completely losing a customer to be greater than the cost of remaking the drink so the company does it for free.

There are limits to this of course: if a customer forgets to mention they needed an expensive add-on like a milk substitute, extra syrup or powder sweeteners, extra shots, and so on, they do get asked to pay for it since, well, they didn't pay for it in the firtst place. Also, lots of people do this to try to skirt the extra charge; order the drink, receive the drink, and then ask at the end if it's made with almond milk or something, and then ask for it to be remade. It seems like a silly scam, but man living is expensive and people gotta get it where they can I guess, so if they can avoid spending the extra 80 cents or a dollar on oat milk, they'll sure as hell try. I get it. So the company prepares against that sort of thing and most people understand that yes, I need to pay for extras that I didn't order from the start.

The customer also didn't want the drink remade for free, and simply wanted to pour the existing drink over ice, which on the surface suggests that he DOES care about creating waste, which he also vaguely indicated with his wording in the conversation (I won't try to remember the specifics). So for him at least, concerns about waste are selectively applicable and only relevant when it's personally inconvenient, I guess.

This all isn't even to mention the less theoretical and more real-world reasons for the "throw free stuff at the customer until they stop complaining" business model of fixing mistakes (including customer mistakes): employees are less productive when their time is being held hostage by an angry abusive customer over whether they should pay for this or that because they ordered a completely wrong thing to begin with. The more time spent arguing with the customer is time not being spent working on making more drinks and taking more orders, and making the company more money. The company also would like to avoid bad reviews and even would prefer for bad customers to come back and buy more stuff over losing a customer permanently if possible, so eating some costs in the name of good customers service (even when customers are clearly in the wrong) is worth it a lot of the time. That's why even when customers successfully order their correct drink, acquire it from the barrista, fully exit the store, and promptly drop and spill the entire thing in the parking lot, every place I can think of will still simply remake/replace it for free. (Even when I worked at a grocery store, if someone drops their eggs and they all break, we would just give them new eggs.)

So, of course, the various needs of the customers and the company, amalgamated over time into increasingly complex customer service and loss prevention policies, will eventually result in silly apparent contradictions like charging 25 cents for extra cups but remaking entire drinks for free regardless of whose fault it was. Please consider what things are worth taking the time and energy to bitch about, and are worth inflicting your momentary outrage on the employee's mental health, understanding that they are in no position at all to change or affect corporate policies such as these and are not about to quit their job in protest about it. The world is an absurd place full of silly rules that are necessitated by the adversarial social dynamics between companies, employees, and customers. Consider briefly why that is and whether you are improving the situation or making it worse.

The last thing I want to bitch about is the comment that the employees (primarly the manager, who this customer spoke with the most) are "robots." What I want to say "Yes," every person working in a customer-facing job is a robot. The less you are paid and the more customer-facing your job is, the more you are required to be as robotic as humanly possible at all times. Why? Because customers AND employers both demand it from you. When employees are not robotic, doing things exactly as company policy dictates, customers are eager to punish them with threats of speaking with the management or even corporate. They browbeat us with the old, "Well, LAST TIME I was here, they did it for me this way, they didn't charge me!" or "Well when I was at your OTHER location, they did it this way!" "If you don't make this drink in a 32-ounce why can't I just order two 16-ounces and put them in one 32-ounce cup, like LAST TIME?" Any lack of consistency and predictability will lead to confusion and annoyance of customers at best and will be exploited and weaponized by customers at worst.

And who bears the cost of this dynamic, in every way possible? The workers of course, who will be reprimanded or even fired if the company finds they have deviated from company policy egregiously enough, as well as if they receive enough complaints from customers about "terrible service," "rudeness," "bad attitude," and assertions that "I will never come here again!" (Quite the unwinnable pickle for a worker, isn't it?) So from the company's perspective, every worker must be interchangeable with every other worker across any store and offer an identical experience to any other store that company owns. As long as there are large companies which are not owned by the employees, customers will demand robotic workers and unwavering homogeneity across locations and the employees simply have to conform.

If you have a problem with robotic employees who exert zero decision-making abilities in their day-to-day operations and customer relations, who defer unflinchingly to the needs of the corporate entity and "make excuses," then you have a problem with companies and with customers, not with employees. No one WANTS to be an automaton for a brand for most of their waking life, ZERO PEOPLE are excited to gatekeep paper cups and bathroom access, but EVERYONE is required to work in order to be permitted to exist. As long as people have to work to live, the company controls the behavior of the employee almost absolutely, at least while on the clock and sometimes even off the clock, as in companies who want to control your social media presences or prevent you from discussing your workplace conditions outside of work. In all but the most extreme circumstances, most hourly employees are going to put up with your unrelenting customer complaints about the company policies before they'll put their job in jeopardy by doing things they have been explicitly informed that the company doesn't want the employees to do. BECAUSE PEOPLE HAVE TO WORK, and customers know this, and that's how we get a culture where customers are all but completely free to berate, abuse, insult, and harass employees over disagreements about company policy. Hourly workers become trash receptacles for customers to throw all their pent up rage and confusion into, at zero cost to the customer.

(This is the idea behind the term "emotional labor," which is the unpaid additional mental work being done by employees who have to simultaneously manage the free-flying feelings and responses of the customer, the needs of their boss/company, and also keep their own emotions and responses completely under the radar of the customer who has a hair-trigger sensitivity for any subtle hints of aggression, annoyance, frustration, or impatience from the employee.)

Which is all of course why everyone should be pro-union in all industries, pro-labor, anti-corporate, and anti-capitalist. Companies should not be able to exploit the human needs for shelter, healthcare, food, and social connectivity to coerce them into producing more value for the company than they get back in wages; and customers should not be able to exploit this oppressive dynamic in order to abuse and manipulate workers.

If you are one of these customers who heckles employees over company policies, well, don't be! Go directly to corporate for policy-related complaints, not employees or even store managers.

:)