Training Days

After three weeks of intensive Starbucks training, I'd like to report that being a barista is a lot harder than it looks. It turns out that making lattes and chatting with customers is only part of the gig. There's also spinning (Starbucks-speak for wiping tables, dumping ashtrays and sweeping up muffin crumbs), hauling big buckets of ice, mixing up pitchers of mocha and Frappuccino base, even mopping and cleaning bathrooms.

And then there's the lingo to learn. Having taken years of Japanese, a high-memorization pursuit if ever there was one, I've been surprised and downright humbled by the subtleties of cup-marking. For example. You'd think by now I'd remember that CRM is caramel mocha, not caramel macchiato, which is simply CM.

It's challenging, too, to learn all those buttons on the video register. Screen after screen of buttons. Oh sure, they're all laid out in semi-alphabetical order, but somehow that doesn't seem to help when you're facing a line of eight people, all desperate for their morning caffeine fix, and somebody orders a triple grande 140-degree half-caf tuxedo with 3 splendas, no whip. So then you toggle back and forth among the beverage, syrup/milk and modifiers screens, hunting and pecking like mad to enter all that before you forget it. You forget it anyway, of course, and then you have to ask again. Sometimes more than once. This is ridiculous. Granted, Starbucks is built on the concept of custom drinks and legendary customer service, but it seems to me that in drinking coffee, as in writing fine prose, modifiers should be kept to an absolute minimum.

Baristas also have to learn dozens of drink recipes and be able to recall them almost instinctively while juggling two, three or even a half dozen orders at once. This ability alone immediately separates the veterans from the novices. While my colleagues are whirring around, filling rows of Frappuccino cups, I'm moving in slow motion, trying to remember whether it's one or two pumps of mocha in a grande. At times like this, a simple spinning assignment comes as welcome relief.

Of course, I am being paid for my efforts. In fact, my first paycheck, covering my initial 16.25- hour week, topped a hundred dollars. Two more like that, and I'll have my initial investment in black Dockers and white polo shirts covered. But at least I can drink like a La Jolla socialite. From half an hour before a shift until half an hour after, my usual grande, decaf, nonfat lattes--or anything else I can dream up--are free. Which makes it tempting to splurge. Today, for example, I think I'll ask for organic milk.