RED CUP THURSDAY! AAAA!
Okay, okay. I know I’m completely buying into a marketing scheme here. And really, doing some advertising for a corporation that most certainly shouldn’t get my lovin’ for free.
Still.
THE RED CUPS ARE IN AT STARBUCKS!
And apparently I am Googlefamous for discussing it within a couple hours!
I have loved the red cups for years, long before I worked for the company and survived the mania that is Christmas at Starbucks.
The mania challenged it, really. But it could not conquer it.
Even if it really tried.
When I was working as a barista, I steamed more jugs of eggnog than anyone should have to in a lifetime, especially given that it smells like cat food after about 120 F.
I don’t even want to talk about the rich people giving me five minute lectures on how their children wanted their hot chocolate. Suffice it to say, even a child who can barely walk can apparently ask for extra whip and a milk temperature of exactly 107 F.
The really surreal part was selling thousand dollar espresso machines to people who continued to come in morning and night to buy their cuppa from me. This was a function of serving as my store’s “Red Apron”, which really means that I ran around trying to convince people that they needed more red and green mugs!
More! More!
Oh, well.
That’s ancient history.
And RED CUPS ARE NOW!
I wanted to have a gingerbread latte in my first red cup of the season, but I made the mistake of going to the Twilight Zone Starbucks, where the guy at the counter always thinks he knows my drink and starts making it when I walk in the door.
A different drink every time, mind you.
And never the right one.
But he seems so excited, I never have the heart to say NO I DON’T WANT THAT. Well, a couple times I have, but that’s just because he was trying to slip me some soy.
Which sounds wrong.
Anyway.
RED CUPS! WOO!
November 8th, 2007 at 10:32 am
wet or dry cat food? i assume wet which would have been a HUGE problem for me, wet food is something that can send me hurling chunks in seconds.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:52 am
I am so going to Starbucks for a coffee run this afternoon. I love the red cups. That’s funny that you found it challenging to deal with the customers’ requests when you worked at Starbucks. When I lived in Ontario for school, I worked at a Second Cup for extra money (they’re everywhere out there, much like Starbucks is on every street corner here) and I LOVED that job like no other. I’ve said for years that if that job actually paid you enough to live on, I would have happily done it for the rest of my life. It is possible, however, that I felt that way because I worked in a coffee shop in a university town rather than a major urban centre stuffed full of busy executives with big egos. The student customers didn’t generally order hot chocolates steamed precisely to 107 degrees F for their fussy two-year-olds!
November 8th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Thank you for this important public service announcement. Now I know that I must stop at Starbucks after work for my first eggnog latte of the season. Not my first eggnog, mind you, since I already bought a carton at the grocery store last weekend. I like to get a jumpstart on my holiday weight gain.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Yeah… I think it was kind of an unusual area to be a barista in.
We had 24 people on staff and the second highest income for any Starbucks in Vancouver. The area we worked in had a median income of over $100K a year, so people spent LARGE money on their very specific drinks. And if you got them wrong? Oy.
And I loved the people I worked with and had a lot of fun, but the volume was kind of insane at times.
I once had a 45-drink lineup waiting to be made, a man standing with a $1500 espresso machine at my bar, telling me he did NOT want to wait in line.
45 drinks.
Eight minutes.
I was a rockstar. :-)
November 8th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Soy?? Soy is a gateway drug to powdered non-dairy creamer. Just say “no”.
At my local coffee bar (the fabulous Onion Creek, right here in the Heights in Houston, Texas), the pitchers for additives are always getting shuffled by the customers. If no one else is there, I rearrange them in their proper order, i.e., according to their proximity to the point of origin: half-and-half, which knew the cow intimately, first; then whole, which was good friends with the cow; then skim, which had a passing acquaintance with the cow; then, as far from me as possible, soy, which knoweth not cow.
November 8th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
I envy you all the availability of a local Starbucks. I think the closest one to me is a 15 hour drive away. In good weather.
November 8th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
dude, know what scares me more than the fact that the red cups are in and the fact that you are a googlelebritry over it? what scares me is that i actually personally know someone that is ranked higher than you on google for discussing the red cups.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
I know! I bought a drink yesterday and upgraded to a grande just because they didn’t have any red cups in tall! Isn’t that silly? I just wanted the red cup EVEN THOUGH I THROW IT AWAY! Silly but it makes me happy…I think because it means that Christmas is on the way.
November 9th, 2007 at 7:27 am
The Red Cup! I’ma go downstairs right NOW.
November 9th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Yucky ewwnog.
I usually get a doppio at Starbucks because $2 for my coffee fix is cheap. Tiny red cups! Wee holiday cheer!
November 12th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
paper cups are bad mmkay
November 13th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
We have yet to partake of the ‘nog, but I swear my (usually reticent) partner actually did a little happy dance the other day when he saw the red cups. Oh, it’s full on Xmas season now!