Tag Archives: Basilisks

Ohl-gah’s Menu Mishap

Happy Easter y’all.

I’m sorry I’ve stopped posting on Wednesdays. I recently got into a relationship, and Wednesdays are our date days.

JUST KIDDING.

Yo ho, it’s the single’s life for me! (In case y’all didn’t catch that… ’twas a riff on a Disney reference. 10 points of Gryffindor if someone can figure out which movie it’s from)

ANYWAYS, today’s post is (hopefully) going to be brief.

While toiling away at a 9 hour shift today, I had a customer come up to me ask me about our cold drinks. I did not get her name, so I have decided that she will be called Ohl-gah

“What cold drinks do you have?” she asked me.

Given that we have a whole feature menu devoted to different types of cold drinks, I told her she could take a quick peek at that and ask me questions if she had any.

“I know, but can you tell me what cold drinks you have?” she says.

Swallowing a deep beleaguered sigh, I give her ALL the options.
“If you’re looking for coffee, we have iced lattes, iced cappuccinos, iced espresso, iced coffee, and cold brew options. If you want tea, we have iced teas and tea lemonades as well. If you are looking for blended options, we also have those.”

“Okay,” she replies. “What type of flavours do you have?”

Note that at this point, a line has formed to the door, and this lady has decided that this the BEST moment for her to go spelunking through our menu.

G R E A T.

Like, I understand wanting to try something new, but if you have NO IDEA what you want to order and are obstructing my ability to service other customers… just WHY.

So after I painstakingly spend another few minutes walking her through ALL the syrup / flavouring options (there are at least 17), this woman seems to ponder her options.

“Hmmm,” she muses.

I look at her expectedly, ready to write down her order.

“I’ll just take a hot water, thanks.”

And then. SHE WALKS OFF.

Okay. I get it. If the options I have just given you do not appeal to you, TELL ME. Don’t let me just recite shit like it’s entertainment. I’m not a performer. I’m a barista.

Also. Why would you ask me to go through COLD drink options with you if all you wanted from the get-go was a HOT water. Those are drastically different temperatures lady. They do not sit the same way in your body.

On top of that, you stood there and let me spout information that you knew you did not want or need for at six minutes.

Here are some words of wisdom from the great Stephen Colbert.

All you have to do y’all, is KNOW your order. If you don’t know, DON’T WALK UP. Take your time, stare at the menu. Ponder an eternity away.

Also, do not make your friendly neighbourhood barista go through the hassle of having to explain the entire menu and then have the audacity to walk away with a free water. Chances are, that barista will hulk out at you.

Just saying.

The post Ohl-gah’s Menu Mishap appeared first on Beleaguered Barista.

Steev-uh the Stupid Solicitor

Happy Sunday y’all. It’s been a wild week for me, but I managed to post, so I count that as a win.

Steev-uh’s one of the creepy customers that come into my store. Apparently, he is harmless, but all the creeps start off that way… And given that he is a non-paying customer, I really just cannot be arsed to deal with him.

Being Followed from my car:

So one morning, 4:20 am, I exit my car to walk towards the entrance of the cafe. My opening supervisor had not yet arrived, but I usually like to feel the crisp cold air against my face and enjoy waiting a little bit outside the shop (yeah. I’m weird like that). As I am approaching the walkway, a man dressed in a hoodie and cargo shorts approaches me swiftly from the side.

“Good morning,” he aggressively greets me.

I am immediately on edge. He is not someone I recognize. His hood is drawn up and his face is obscured from view. His cargo shorts are also suspicious-looking.

Anxious, I choose not to reply to him and I speed up my walk. He too picks up his speed. He is quickly approaching me from behind. If I am outside the store, there is a chance the cameras in our store can pick up any nefarious interactions I experience. My phone is clenched in my hand, 911 pre-dialed in case I have any problems.

“Good morning,” he says again and again. Each time, he grows angrier and more aggressive.

I speed-walk to the door and pull out my phone. He stops and waits, glaring at me. I feel as though I am about to live out a Criminal Minds episode – in a bad way. No Penelope Garcia humour and wit to save me.

Luckily, at the same moment that he takes a step forward towards me, my manager pulls up in her car. He greets her, just as aggressively as he did me, but this time, he gets a response.

I am still feeling the adrenaline from being scared out of my wits. So I enter the store and lock the door before he can even ask if he can sit in the store before we open.

Every open after that, I refuse to leave my car until my opening supervisor has arrived and exits their car.

Steev-uh Solicits

Steev-uh usually waits a half hour outside our doors before we open so he can get an iced water. It’s strange and something I don’t quite understand, but it’s a thing that he does.

Recently though, Steev-uh has taken to soliciting other customers to pay for his coffee. He will wait outside, creepily chat up anybody that is also waiting for us to open, and then feign forgetting his wallet in order to elicit pity.

He even does the whole frantic pat-down of pants pockets. It’s quite ridiculous.

But every time, he gets a generous human being to buy him a coffee.

I hate it. JUST BUY YOUR OWN DARN COFFEE. Also, soliciting is prohibited.

The post Steev-uh the Stupid Solicitor appeared first on Beleaguered Barista.

Hairold and the Disguised Latte

Basilisks aren’t a lot of fun. In the words of J.K. Rowling:

“Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size, and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken’s egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death.

To sum up: basilisks are kind of like massive and deadly pet peeves. One, they’re really big snakes, and two, the basilisk featured in the second Harry Potter film (and novel) was most definitely a pet-like creature for the horcruxed (yup, that’s 100% an adjective) Voldemort / Tom Riddle. Plus, pet peeves really do kill you – spiritually, emotionally, and sometimes physically.

If we’re going by this definition, Hairold is a big ol’ basilisk.

Now, Hairold is one of those regulars that you have to be nice to because your manager is looking at you and you need to keep your job. He’s a pleasant enough man (by that, I really mean not-at-all pleasant), severely round around the belly, balding, hairy, loud, rude, and all-around insufferable. Just seeing him makes your eyes retreat into the back of your head.

Hairold comes in on my shifts and orders a small doppio espresso macchiato with no foam in a medium cup. Some of you may be sitting there scratching your heads wondering why the heck I’m so bitter about this. Let me explain. An espresso macchiato (or café macchiato – which it’s also called) is simply espresso with a LITTLE BIT of milk, usually foamed. So, this order simply makes no sense. It’s like ordering a cappuccino with no foam – stupid and nonsensical.

Anyway, back to Hairold. I was confused with his order, and asked him to clarify what he meant by no foam. Did he simply want a doppio espresso?

Alas, no.

Hairold wanted me to fill the medium cup to the top with steamed milk. In other words, he wanted a bloody MEDIUM LATTE and didn’t want to pay for it. The first time he pulled this on me, I let him slide. I get it. Coffee is a very expensive addiction to feed, and my store isn’t known for selling cheap drinks. But Hairold consistently does this. And it drives me up the wall because he gets increasingly rude about it. He will peer over the bar and shout at me:
“Make sure you pour the milk all the way to the top!”
“I don’t want any foam on that drink, ya hear?”
“There better not be a drop of foam on that drink!”
“The milk better be at the top when I get that drink!”

If ever there was a customer I would tell to go to hell, it would be Hairold. Yelling at your barista because you don’t know how to be inside like a functional human being is:
a) incredibly rude
b) incredibly condescending
c) incredibly irritating
d) incredibly stupid – I control what goes into your drink man. You might end up with decaf.

On top of ordering his disguised latte, Hairold also likes to buy our bottled coffee and add shots of espresso to it.

One morning, he walks in and demands that we throw in two shots of espresso into the glass bottle he just picked up from the refrigerated section of the store. He screws open the lid and looks at me expectantly.

I ring in the bottle and push the button on the POS that adds the two shots to his drink. Apparently that was a mistake. He immediately takes one look at the price and throws a temper tantrum about it.

“That’s NOT what I get charged. What is wrong with you? I normally pay $3.40. Not what you’ve charged me”

Uhm other than the fact that I have to serve you? Nothing. I wish I could have said that to him. Or pulled a Rihanna and rolled my window up on his serpentine ass.

Hairold keeps shouting that I have wrongly charged him for his espresso, and ask that I do it “properly” and “right.”
Exasperated with my supposed incompetence, Hairold calls out:

“Where’s Ted’s wife?! She knows how I’m supposed to be charged!”

The fact that this man doesn’t even know the barista’s name and has to identify her based on her marital status is pretty sad. She’s more than someone’s wife you idiot. She’s an actual human with a name… just saying.

My manager, hearing the commotion from the back, comes out and looks to ameliorate the situation. She clears the transaction and tries again to ring it in the way he wants it – it doesn’t happen.

He gets increasingly frustrated, until I magically find out that ringing in a cup of water and adding in the two espresso shots after produces the price that Hairold wants to pay for his coffee. Thank the lord. After that, he pays for his drink and leaves.

Yesterday, I saw Harold again. It was superbly painful and just all-around not fun. He must be a wizard at this point, given how much he keeps ordering those damned disguised lattes.

Just. Ugh. Someone needs to sick Fawkes on this guy’s ass so the regal phoenix can poke this snake’s eyes out.

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from "PUB 101: Publication of Self in Everyday Life"