Yes, Halloween was just 2 days ago, and it was AWESOME! But I will talk more about that in a second.
For any seasoned barista, and that means any barista who has survived the last holiday season beginning around Halloween, we begin to mentally prepare ourselves for the bi-polar lashing of our customers. For many of our customers, the only time you see the whites of their teeth are right before Thanksgiving, and sometimes that can mean MORE tips, but other times, that means they are only showing their grinch-like smiles. Don't get me wrong, the Fall-through-Christmas season is most definitely my favorite, but at the Bux it's all over the place.
It means rollouts, pumpkin spice lattes, red Christmas cups, peppermint mochas, eggnog lattes, gingerbread lattes, cranberry-bliss bars, store decorations, red aprons, and joy joy joy joy joy. But when it comes to the cleaning, it means snow...and snow only means dirty, nasty, street-salt water stained floors that need to be mopped more than once a day. AHHHHH!!! OK, I'll live.
But anyways, Halloween was tight. After 3 years, we were allowed to dress up in our costumes at work again. So that alone made my day. Since Halloween was on a Sunday, and I open every Sunday, I knew it was going to be a quick morning. Obviously, most of our customers either work or go to school on Monday, and that meant they got all their partying and drunkenness done the night before my open....so it was an easy, slow morning. I showed up to work wearing a lot of random clothing and huge glasses, while my fellow barista showed up in her pajamas. The best part of the day, besides for getting to eat candy at 5AM, was getting to make almost every customer including the grumpy ones crack a smile. We looked ridiculous! Sometimes wearing a uniform is uncomfortable, so my first choice was comfort.....hence the picture below.
Outside of Starbucks, this was only my second year of not going trick-or-treating. Yeah yeah, I know. It's still a little sad to think about the fact that I am now passed the age of having to care about anything but how much candy I will get, but also amazing to see my little nieces and nephew grow up. My parents moved into our most recent home only 3 months after I was born, so just over 20 years ago. There are 250 houses in my neighborhood, so 10-13 years ago...Halloween was INSANE. Almost every single house handed out candy and the child population was ridiculous. Back when I was 10 years old, kids were everywhere! We would get so much candy we could barely carry our pillow cases anymore. And back in the day, most of the kids made their own costumes, nowadays, they buy all these slutty nasty costumes and come home with a fourth of what we got. It's still hilarious though. Below is a picture of my little niece Aiyana dressed in her store bought princess costume. You can probably tell where she gets her good looks from. Oh yeah, it was about 45 degrees outside....she was not happy.
Now when it comes to Thanksgiving at Starbucks, the only notable thing to mention is the Thanksgiving Blend Coffee. And it's actually not bad stuff. Also, the pumpkin spice continues for awhile after this. Thanksgiving means a holiday with a time and 1/2 pay rate which is nice for people who work that day, but I tend to not work it because I have personally cooked every holiday meal since I was 13....and I'm not giving up anytime soon. I might actually get to work the opening shift and get off early enough to give me time to cook, but that is all up to my awesome manager.
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I was going to write about that Starbucks hell called Christmas, but it hurts too much to talk about right now....give me a day or two.
Seacrest out!
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