uhmm... this doesn't seem very starbuckian
When we have a new promotion, we’re suppose to share it with our customers and try to get them to buy it. Like over the summer, we were pushing those god-awful vivannos (WHICH I STILL HATE) saying that they were nutritious and delicous, and then the signature hot chocolates came out and we’re all ah so creamy yummy, 4 different cocoas, our hot chocolate’s European cousin. Our promotion right now is coffee travelers. As in a big $15 box of coffee. Thrilling. This is so difficult to promote without coming across like a tool. I tried to offer it to a group of suits getting drips, and they looked at me like I was insulting them. I offered one to the venti coffee refill guy, who thought about it for a second and then asked me “so I’d like… take my coffee in a box and sit it right on my desk?” I almost said “and it has a handle! how convenient!,” but I told him he could be that cool dude with coffee in a box, and he could network in the company via the box o’ joe and totally have his boss’s job in no time. He laughed and said that he’d just go for a refill today. fail. To another customer, I sarcastically joked something like “look what it did for the wine business,” and he started telling me about levels of cork freshness. so… yeah, that was a miss. We’re just really being pushed by my district manager to reach our goal (16 a day!!!) and it is impossible.
Can I have a grande coffee? Sure! Would you like 6x that much coffee and bump your total up $12?
Can I have a tall soy chai? Yeah, aaaand would you like to try a coffee traveler with that? Uhm.. what? A coffee traveler - a 96oz box of coffee! Goes perfectly with a chai!
Uhm, can I get a refill on the bold? Sure.. heyy, would you like TONS of more coffee? like 85 more ounces!?
And then if they DO say yes, you respond with something along the lines of awesome, it’ll just be about 5 minute :)
They’re hard to sell, and we’re desperate. I wasn’t working during this, but one partner was asked to cut out the bottom of a traveler. After she did that, they asked her to wear it on her head while standing outside screaming about the promotion. Holy god, I couldn’t get over that. We’re really expected to deal with so many customers who treat us with zero respect, and now someone’s being asked to wear a cardboard coffee box on our head? That’s just… embarrassing. My psyyyyycho district manager was not happy with the poor coffee traveler results from her stores - especially our store which usually sells triple the amount of our goal. She called the store this morning and yelled at the assistant store manager. My ASM then decided that we’re going to ring people up for whatever they get, and then once the past few transactions equal the price of the traveler, void them all out and ring up a traveler instead. This just… can’t be okay. If we can’t sell something, why should we deceitfully send a message to our DM and corporate saying that we can? And it also made the register partner’s till super messed up, which was AWESOME FOR ME. I’m running the shifts (i.e. dealing with money) for my promotion training, and I’d really rather not get a till that’s $27.83 short. I really would rather focus on getting comfortable delegating and timing everything properly. I could do without feeling like I must be the one doing something wrong to get a number so far off. I could also do without the recounting bunches of times with the hope of finding an extra $27.83 hidden somewhere.
If the 27.83 isn’t found, isn’t the barista technically to blame and not the ASM? She might have just messed up the cash somewhere, but I can’t really blame her when she’s being asked to void things out and ring in transactions as something else. What would The Ethicist say? Someone tell me that this isn’t kosher!
p.s. also maybe some advise on how to sell these without sounding ridiculous or looking ridiculous with cardboard on your head?
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