Why Starbucks is awesome

I like to brag about my job, and I'm sure a lot of you know that. So I'm going to explain exactly why. I'm also writing this because at the moment, my mom is watching her soap operas..and if I have to listen to one more second of the pathetic lives of those on Days of Our Lives, I might just kill myself a little.

FREE FREE FREE
          So lets start with the free stuff. As a Starbucks barista, we are all entitled to a free beverage on each of our breaks (including 30 minutes before work, our 2 ten-minute breaks, a thirty-minute meal, and 30 minutes after work). Any kind, any size. So as you can expect, when I first started working their back in 2008, I probably gained 10 lbs just after my first week there. And I can bet almost everyone does. It's sort of like Starbucks' own "freshman fifteen". They want each partner to be able to give their own personal explanations and experiences of each beverage in case a customer asks for our opinion. It's actually pretty tight. We get to eat and drink a lot. Eventually baristas get past the point of overload and cut down on their Frappuccino consumpion. Another thing that Starbucks pays attention to is the freshness of their coffee. So we have to dump our coffee every thirty minutes, whether it was touched or not. Dumping perfectly good pastries/mocha sauce/coffee simply because it has passed Starbucks' expiration point breaks my heart everytime. As I pour that "expired" mocha down the sink, I cry out "No! no! nO! NO!"....but in my head. Sadly the coffee giant teaches us how to hide our pain.
           So along with a free beverage on every break, we are allowed to get a free markout EVERY week. That means a free pound of coffee or a free tin of tea. Yeah, it's amazing. It's about $5,200 of free whole bean coffee every year. Now that's a good deal!

FUN FUN FUN
          Now to work at Starbucks you have to be a little sarcastic.....ok, you have to be very sarcastic. We as a group tend to be loud and obnoxious. Depending on what part of town you work at, customers love it or hate it. But our "Customer Voice" scores are amazing. My store usually receives a 100% on friendliness. But like most work places, if the day is crazy, we can get cranky, but if its slow...we really get to do our jobs. One criteria of our job is to be awesome--awesome at making drinks, awesome at giving our opinions, awesome at dealing with crappy rich snobs who think they rule the world, and awesome at selling stuff.--but they best part is, we like to be creative. Creativity flows like fresh hot mocha....it's ALL OVER THE PLACE! We get to be designers, comedians, professionals, kids, da bombs, and most importantly...the best part of your day. Many times throughout our shift, we get people who have lousy days in general, and the second they arrive to our store, they immediately feel better because we are good at putting a smile on their faces. I know it sounds corny, but it makes us feel good that we were able to "turn that frown upside down".

LOVE IS IN THE AIR
So over the last 3 years, I have met a ton of baristas who are either dating or are married to someone they met while working together at Starbucks or who were at one point a customer of theirs. I can count off hand 12 couples who met at Starbucks. It's pretty astonishing. I have always thought that one day, I will most likely marry a woman who was once a customer of mine or a coworker. It's bound to happen, I swear. That's another cool thing about my workplace...it's flocking with woman! Hello ladies....