Your Mouth Says “No,” But Company Policy Says “Yesssssss”

Eeep!

My Most Excellent Starbucks nearly let me down today, the encounter being saved by a partner whom I have heard the big bosses discuss in positive terms.

(Hey, when you do back office business out in the store, the privacy-of-stranger-anonyminity we grant each other is just not the same as a locked door. I broke the social rules, and listened to the animated conversation occurring 18 inches behind me instead of tuning it out! Sorry.)

It was a perfect day for a renewed challenge. I was the only customer in the store at Foothill and D Street in La Verne, California. four Partners were on, and I only recognized two of them.

"May I have a venti Fair Trade drip?" I asked perkily of the boy at the register.

"Uhm. A what?"

Damn. Feelings of disappoint, embarrassment, horror (how could I been so wrong about this store?!?) flash through my mind. Do I march over and pick a pound of the Cafe Estima prominently displayed at the entrance to the store, and grasp the teaching moment?. No. Again I cave; sort of:

"Never mind. Can I have a venti cup of the Mexican Shade Grown Organic that was Coffee of the Week last week?"

"Uhm, were not brewing that right now."

Silently I look the register boy square in the eye and smile. And wait. He looks nervous. Confused.

"Would you please press me a venti Shade Grown Organic coffee?"

Momentary terror crosses his face. I have used some of The Words from the training manual, he has recognized that. But he has no idea what to do. Confused, he turns to read the coffee listings that day.

Mexican Shade Grown Organic decaf is brewing. I clarify: I would like the regular coffee, not decaffeinated. More confusion.

"I, uh I don't know if, uhm, uhm, I don't know if we have any!" he finishes in a rush, relieved apparently at having found an out. I point out that there is a large display of it up front, and that if he doesn't' have a five pound bullet open already, he can use a smaller one.

Oh oh. I have used more words from that long forgotten training. Slightly misused, slightly out of context, true, but my use of the Words of Power makes him look nervous again. Who are you? I can almost hear him thinking, looking for an out.

Register Boy (his obvious fear negates calling him "man") turns to the barista pulling shots: "He wants the regular Organic Shade Grown. Can we do that?" "What?" she says. "Press a cup of that. Can we? " "Sure," she says after confirming that Register Boy has not simply misheard my request for the already brewing decaf. (A not unreasonable assumption, actually. Partly why I threw that twist in.)

Register boy asks the Positive Evaluation girl if they have the regular version; she takes pity on him and says "I've got it."

And she does; she presses my coffee, promises to bring it to me in "about 3 1/2 more minutes" and apparently teaches a different, un-aproned new partner how to do it. Whew.

This encounter, though, underscores at least one non-neferious reason for the uniformity of negative replies. People everywhere want to seem competent and knowledgeable, even if they aren't. If the person doesn't know what Fair Trade is, it can be short hop and skip to "if I don't know about, we must not have it." Similarly during the "will you press a cup" press, if a barista has never been asked to do this, either because they are really new or no one has challenged them, the odds are fair that they will say "Oh I'm sorry, no can do" as a face saving tactic.

This is not an excuse for making me squirm to get the fair trade stuff, just an observation that might help one work helpfully through future challenges.

This, by the by, is probably my last (reported) challenge unless I am in a different Starbucks and feeling really snerky. (Grin). Although I do like coffee, it is not my intent to make this Kitchen Calendar into the "Asking the Hard Green Questions" sort of blog that greenLAgirl and others do so well. And this close analysis of Fair Trade and (for me) organic issues does not fit into the Easy Green format, 'cause, well, it isn't Easy.

I may, however, link back to the Starbucks Challenge as an example, later, of how the simple actions of one person -- aided, abetted and amplified by the marvelous communication facilities of the internet -- can move the immobile, and evoke positive response from even a relatively huge corporate juggernaut.