Endless Thread - Snacktime: Long Orders, Secret Menus

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

One of the things that makes Starbucks so liked by people everywhere is the amount of customization you can do with your drink. But is there such a thing as too much customization? On this week's Snacktime, Amory tells Ben about the viral "Edward" order as well as the recent TikTok trend of ordering a drink from Starbucks' "secret menu."

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Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. Ben, I feel like we've talked on this show about some of the odd jobs we worked in our youth, like how you sold handbags on the streets of Florence. I did, I did. I know about that. You know that I made balloon animals in a past life at birthday parties.

I took a clowning class with my dad. Oh, that's terrific. Yeah. So I did some balloon animals myself from time to time. Okay. We've never had a balloon off. We should rectify that. I'm pretty sure all I could do now is make a sword. Okay. And even that would be a little dicey. Maybe a poodle.

Oh, yeah. Anyone can do your basic dog poodle. Right. And giant squid. Oh, okay. Well, I would like to see that someday. Just kidding. That's not a... I don't know how to make a giant squid. Wow. Wow. Okay.

But what's the most basic job you worked in your teens or early adulthood? Most basic. Oh, gosh. I mean, I was a terrible busboy and waiter. Just a garbage. The worst. Believe it or not, I had the charm. But I didn't have even the most basic understanding of,

special orders and using a credit card machine. Mm, perfect. Okay, this is a good setup. This is a good setup to my most basic job. Okay. Which requires great specificity and attention to detail and very specific orders. Uh-huh. I was a barista at the most basic of coffee establishments.

No hate, just truth. Starbucks. Yeah, yeah. Now, according to my dad, there are only two drinks. one can order at Starbucks. There's black coffee or what he calls a hoofy-fluffy. I can already tell him a hoofy-loopy guy. Yep, a hoofy-fluffy.

Hoofoofy-fluffy is everything else. Most of us are hoofy-fluffy guys, I think. The minute you add anything to black coffee, in my dad's eyes, it becomes a hoofy-fluffy. And I was going to say, we've only been to Starbucks a few times together maybe, but I was pretty sure you were in the hoofy-fluffy territory. Yeah, I mean, thunderbends a hoofy-fluffy guy.

I'm so glad you brought that up. Hold that thought. I'm going to make you tell that story at the end, okay? Just because I think it'll bring people joy. And we need joy. I made a lot of hoofy-flu-fis in my one year that I worked at Starbucks. Okay. Like you, I did not make them very well.

I was not a good barista, if we're being honest. Also had the charm. I was great at the register. Yep, you take care of people. You take care of them, but you don't know how to make a nice coffee drink. I know how I just execute poorly and without gusto. But every once in a while, you'd get someone who really wanted to exercise the full breadth of Starbucks's customization options. The full floofy, if you will. The full floof.

And that's right. And there was this one woman who had come in right before we closed, probably every day, at least every shift that I worked. She'd order, it was like a variation on a white mocha. It had extra pumps of syrup, extra whip, little of this sprinkled in, little of that drizzled on top. And after she'd order, she'd reach into our tip bucket, pick up all the bills and coins in the bucket, drop them back in there and go, there's your tip. Oh, my God. Right. Get her out.

Get her out. Yeah. That's it. That's the type of person that at least these days, I feel like she would have whatever name. But like behind the counter is Karen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have to admit, a hoofy-fluffy in the mid-2000s when I worked there and a hoofy-fluffy in 2021.

Not the same thing. And on that note, I bring you the story of the hoofs possibly ever in the history of Starbucks. Oh, I think I saw this. Ooh, okay, good. So I present to you the Edward. The Edward is a venty caramel crunch frappuccino, which, again, was not a thing when I worked there, but this drink, he requests five bananas,

extra caramel drizzle, extra whip, extra ice, extra cinnamon dolce topping, seven additional pumps of dark caramel sauce, extra caramel crunch, one pump honey blend, extra salted B.M. butter, I thought, I don't know what that is. Five pumps, frap, roast, cough, whatever those abbreviations mean. Seven additional frappuccino chips?

Or servings of frappuccino chips? I don't know. Heavy cream and double blended. I mean, just order diabetes. Right. Just say, I'll have the diabetes. Yeah, I would not, I would not want to know the sugar, the sugar content. But this drink, the Edward was ordered.

by a guy named Steve. J.K., it was Edward. It apparently costs $14. And the barista who had to make this drink is a guy named Josie Morales. Oh, God. Josie makes it. Yeah.

And then he takes a picture when he's done with the little order ticket on the cup that shows the 13 different ingredients and specifications. Yes. He tweets out this picture with the caption. This is probably what you saw. The caption is, on today's episode,

of why I want to quit my job. Yep. And then this picture. So that tweet has since been deleted, but not before it went super viral. And it started this trend of people ordering the Edward at their local Starbucks. Oh, no. Yes. Which made Starbucks employees sad.

Oh, God. Sad. Because... This is like the Rick and Morty Seshwan sauce all over again, I feel. Oh, God. And people were especially sad who work at the Starbucks's with a drive-thru. Fortunately, I never worked at one of those, but those people are juggling two lines of people who need their caffeine sugar fix. So let's listen.

Yeah, and then one of the large Edwards? The large what? Edward. I'm not sure what you mean, sir. Oh, I saw those on TikTok. I don't know. Yeah, unfortunately TikTok drinks, we aren't, like, trained on, so we don't know the names. You have to tell us what's in there.

Oh, yeah. Hang on one second. I can pull it up and figure out. It's like five bananas. Hang on. So this is a TikToker who goes by the prickly pear. And as you can hear in the barista's voice, this guy was not the only person to order a drink he heard about on TikTok.

There was this other trend taking off of people sharing their custom drink orders and even so-called secret menu items, secret menu drinks. Yeah. Like this one from a TikToker who goes by secret menu drinks. Hey guys, I'm going to show you how to order the Wanda Vision refresher at Starbucks. After you hit order, you're going to go down to the cold drinks. You're going to go to the Starbucks refreshers. So this TikToker, Secret Menu Drinks, she has another video where she says,

Just in text, I don't know who needs to hear this, but your Starbucks order is your own business. Get the drink that makes you happy. But on the flip side, a Starbucks barista who goes by coffee finesse. addicts on TikTok had this to say about so-called secret menu drinks. Why do baristas hate it? It's because how you order it. Since Starbucks did not make the secret menu, there's multiple ways to order the same drink. The cotton candy foracchino, for example, it's either vanilla bean with raspberry or vanilla bean with raspberry and dragon fruit.

And if you get it wrong, then you get a complaint. Oh, man, here's the thing. Yeah. We deserve this. Because, like, we've just been training ourselves. to get any customization that we want of any type of damn product that we want immediately. You know what I mean?

I do, but I also think it's tricky because I think Starbucks, the brand invites this kind of customization, right? Oh, of course they do. They want you to be able to do it. $14 drink? Yes, please, says Starbucks. It's funny that on the other side of a pandemic, We haven't simplified this part of this part of our lives, broadly speaking.

No, we're running back out there. We're like, hell, yes. I mean, think about it. I've been eating the same thing inside by myself for so long. I'm ready to go out and get customized. I'm ready for the Edward. Yeah. You know, give me the Edward for sure.

Okay, well, the Edward, maybe we can all get on board with once we know the recipe for it. But like the Wanda, vision, you know, people might not. There's no consistency. And consistency is what Starbucks prides itself on. But when we come back, we're going to get to Josie the barista's fate, Edwards' response, and a safer place for baristas to vent. More in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

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So Josie the barista who first tweeted about the Edward. Oh, God. He got fired. Of course he did. Yeah. Oh, damn it. Starbucks says he violated their social media policy. I reached out to him through a couple of channels, did not hear back.

But he did tell Inside Edition he has no regrets about the tweet because he wanted to shed light on how crazy people's orders can get. And, you know, when I worked at Starbucks, we didn't have mobile ordering. And I think that makes a difference because if your order was crazy, you had to own it. You had to look the employee in the eye and read them all of your specifications. and now you can do everything online, which kind of removes you from the people actually making your drink, you know?

Yeah, I mean, man, this stuff bums me out, I got to say. It just reminds me of the people floating around in their chairs in Wally. You know what I mean? It's just, it just bums me out. Maybe something that will cheer you up is that Edward, he has owned it. He has owned his drink order. Okay. He says he tips well that, for his first.

$14 drink, he said he would tip about five bucks, which Starbucks tipping is a whole other can of worms that we won't get into right now. But he reached out to Josie on Instagram to say that he doesn't think Josie did anything wrong by tweeting out his crazy order. He thought it was funny. And that he hoped Josie wouldn't get in trouble for it. Oh, well, Starbucks is clearly the villain here. Yeah. But Josie himself seems to be an okay spirits about it. Okay.

I saw a tweet from him the other day that said, any baristas in need of some Starbucks aprons? Let me know. I got a bunch, L-O-L. This reminds me of the one day that I worked at Hagen-Daz one summer. One day. It's just one day. What did you do? No, I didn't. I quit.

That's what I did. Oh, okay. And it was like the boss was terrible. Just terrible. Just terrible. I mean, terrible in that like, there were only two of us in this tiny Hagen-Daz store on South Street in Philadelphia. And I was basically like, I will not spend any more time in this small of a space with this one other person.

I cannot do it. But it was funny because he made me buy the Hagen-Daz T-shirt, I think, or he was going to like take it out of my paycheck, right? Like the uniform, you kind of have to, you know, that's how they get you. they like get you you got to pay for the uniform or whatever and I worked one day and then I never went back and I swear to God he was calling me for like a week straight trying to get that Hagenau's t-shirt back and he was such a jerk to me the first day that I was like no you're not getting it back no okay stick it to him so if anyone needs a Huggandau's shirt hit me up noted well Ben any guesses as to what the safe or at least safer space is for breaches to vent

Is it Reddit.com? It's Reddit.com. Specifically the Starbucks subreddit. It has like 174,000 members, at least as of the time that we're taping this. And it's billed as a place for Starbucks friends, fans, and families alike. It's where baristas go when they have no bucks to give. No bucks to. You know what I'm saying?

Zero bucks to give. That, sir. was very good. That was some of your best work all week. Hey, it's only Tuesday. It's only Tuesday. But there are a lot of baristas in there, including one who made a post called, Why Are Y'all Like This? In which she vented about a woman who told her she wanted her Frappuccino, quote, so thick that she wouldn't be able to get it through the straw. And then this woman complained that it was too thick. I hate customers.

I know. I hate all of us customers. And then there's also something in this community that you just don't see out in the real world, which is customers showing support for the baristas. Like this post from a redditor who goes by Lightning and Fig, it's a picture of a long Starbucks line, and the caption is, My heart goes out to whoever works at this Starbucks. If you think waiting in line is a hassle,

can't imagine what it would feel like serving one. Truth in reconciliation. Mm-hmm. I like it. Yeah, it's not just a support group for stressed-out Starbucks employees. It feels more like a community of Starbucks loyalists. And I feel like that would be my advice to the die-hard Starbucks customers is like, pop into this Reddit community and see what the baristas are going through. Because there's a lot of conversation in there right now about mask mandates being lifted and Breastas is feeling nervous about that. Stress over product shortages. the menu being hijacked by TikTok. That is a topic of discussion. And I think the best way to know what it's like to be on the other side of the counter is to work there. But in lieu of that, dip a toe into Starbucks subreddit. Yeah.

Because it's enlightening. Well, it's good. It's like a place where the counter doesn't exist, right? Yeah, there you go. You're coming up with all the new taglines for the subreddit today. The counter no longer separates customers and baristas. No counters here, man. No counters here, man.

We're all on Starbucks together. And now, Ben, you remember the last Starbucks social media trend of people posting pictures of their cups and the ridiculous ways that their names would get spelled? Yes, yes. So do you want to tell the fine listeners of Endless Thread what happened when we went to Starbucks together one day in the before times? Yeah, sure. We went for our afternoon walk and talk to Starbucks around the corner from WBUR. And I think it was a rainy day. Sure.

It was dark kind of like darkish outside. Oh, that makes it even better if it was. Yeah. And we went in together and like I made the order and it was like one of those things I feel like where you and I were both. I was like, I got this one. Yeah. And so they were like, so they were like, okay, is there a name to put it under? Yep.

And I did the thing that I always do because I don't want them to misspell or mispronounce Amory. So I just said, oh, just put it under Ben. Right. And so we wait and we're sitting there waiting for our drinks and someone walks up and they go, Thunder Ben? And hence two-four, I've been referred to by myself sometimes as Thunder Ben. Thunder Ben. And we should just use that whenever we go back in.

You know? I look forward to that trip together. Oh, I do too. Someday. All right. Well, it's been nice to check in with y'all. and we'll be back in the feed soon while we work on our super exciting next season

that we're also excited to tell you that. Okay, bye. Bye!