Extra hot coffee and other wrong things
When will customers stop asking for stupid things? It makes them look stupid. It makes us look stupid because we care about what we serve. I am sure other people in different professions have something similar.
All coffee machines are set to produce coffee to a certain temperature. The barista cannot make it any hotter. If you have a milky drink like a latte, having it extra hot means burned milk.
We can heat the cup you are drinking out if with hot water but that is it.
Any other people want to rant about their experience?
All coffee machines are set to produce coffee to a certain temperature. The barista cannot make it any hotter. If you have a milky drink like a latte, having it extra hot means burned milk.
We can heat the cup you are drinking out if with hot water but that is it.
Any other people want to rant about their experience?
Comments
What used to annoy me when I was posting web content was that a lot of the organisation's staff assumed it was some automatic overnight process, and not one of a tiny team coming in at 7 am and hammering a keyboard. Own bloody fault for actually managing to process everything within 24 hours.
Similarly where I used to work. We would be given unfair deadlines and always pull it out of a hat because that was the ethos of the place, even if it meant working late and starting early. Consequently it never stopped as "They'll manage. They always do."
They should have said that to the people at the former coffee stall at Oxford Station. You'd be given a blisteringly hot coffee there that wouldn't cool down until you arrived at your destination.
Yep off the boil. 96 degrees centigrade is the top, some would say optimum heat. When I am working in the public dining at work (I am usually cheffing) I use sight and feel to get the milk right.
Having done time at the Golden Arches I can verify this. It not just MacDonalds. Most places do it now. We once bought some chocolate coated Brazil nuts that said “may contain nuts” on the packaging. It was the May that got me.
Does it? Or does it just make them look like they don’t understand how the fancy machines work?
No, it doesn’t make you look stupid in the least. Depending on how you react to the requests you deem stupid, it either (1) makes you look like you understand the business importance of satisfied customers, or (2) look like a snob and a jerk.
I have been in the catering business for about 40 years. I never make customers look or feel stupid. I generally say ok and make the best coffee for them I can. If one of our team do follow the instruction the customer often brings it back and they say we made it wrong but we didn’t we followed their instructions. That makes us look like we can’t do our job. It makes them look like they don’t know what they are talking about. We just make a new one the way would normally do. It never comes back.
I do get taking pride in one’s work and wanting to produce as good a product as possible. But I’m afraid I just can’t work up much sympathy when the whining/whinging starts with “when will customers stop asking for stupid things?” They won’t.
So the thing to do is tell them you're going to follow their instructions and then make the coffee the way you normally do.
* someone didn't read the instructions† properly
* someone couldn't be bothered to read them at all
* someone decided to take a shortcut, and here we are
* what instructions? there were instructions?
* I know that's what it says but I should be able to...
* it's not on the list of options but can I have it anyway?
* this is item X, it should do Y and Z. What do you mean X doesn't do that and I should have bought one that does Y or Z?
You will never get away from people being people.
† leaflet, label, guidance note, helpfile, description on the packaging, whatever
My mother liked her coffee black and very, very hot, much hotter than the average person. Perhaps she did have an asbestos tongue.
A significant fraction of public bathrooms don't have operable doors at all, but have a "u-bend" walkway entrance to prevent lines of sight. Walking in to a bathroom with an open door and just urinating away is practically a conditioned response.
Having doors that auto-lock when they are closed sounds like a misfeature that would guarantee that pre-teen boys would run denial-of-service attacks on your bathrooms.
Tolerance for hot drinks must also be affected by whether you intend to sip or gulp it, but I'm not sure by how much. Anyone fancy getting that study past an ethics board?
Hmm - you can generally find bogs that don't have an actual door by, erm, just following your nose.
No need to give a helpful "I'd give it ten minutes if I were you" warning to the next person in line...
Or perhaps the other way around.
One of the abilities my dad has developed over decades as a priest is being able to down tea or coffee almost regardless of temperature.
Back in my lawyering days, we had a couple who wanted to buy a house "in the country, within ten minutes walk of the city centre." They had driven up to view houses, but even when they were actually in the city, the penny still hadn't dropped that there is nowhere "in the country within a ten minute walk" of any city, anywhere, and that Scotland does not have cute miniature village-like cities. They were still convinced their dream cottage-in-the-country existed somewhere withing strolling distance of the main street, and that a half-way competent firm of solicitors and estate agents could find it for them.
My mother was always on at me to drink my tea while it was still hot. Both our cups were poured at the same time and she was fine with drinking it then, but it would always burn my mouth if I didn't wait for it to cool down for a while. Once the water's boiled it needs about 10-15 mins cooling time for it to be the right temperature for me.
My mother is the same with coffee. When the kids were small I got into the habit of putting my coffee out of reach for ten mins and then drinking it lukewarm. I don't do that now, but I'm still happy to drink lukewarm coffee. If Mum spots an undrunk lukewarm mug, she pours it away, so that when I go to drink it, it's gone. Sometimes I've made myself a second mug, only to have it poured away because I wasn't fast enough, too. I don't think Mum's ever poured away three consecutive mugs, possibly because if I'm expecting a hit of caffeine, and been thwarted twice, my humour while making a third mug is ... tetchy.
As to other Wrong Things, there are so many of them in these days of the End Time that it's hard to know where to start.
Get thee behind me!
Horlicks?! 🤣
(Do they still make that?)
In Satan's bladder, I believe so.
https://www.horlicks.co.uk/
Fuck you.
I should have been more specific. Supplying whichever organisation is responsible for Coors and Budweiser.