John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Starbucks Lines

Sometimes when I’m in a long line at Starbucks and in a hurry, I wonder to myself, “Who was the annoying customer who kept complaining that the Barista never asked if he wanted ‘room for cream?'”

That person was probably the cause of the blanket Starbucks policy to ask every customer ever time that same question ad nauseum.

That question, repeated millions of times a day seems to take a lot of time for the Barista to ask, the customer to think about, the customer to answer, the Barista to process and the Barista to respond to. And I’m not sure it’s an important enough question to ask millions of times daily.

I think Starbucks should post a “Room for cream opt out” policy.

In other words, it will be assumed that all Starbucks customers want room for cream unless the order otherwise (e.g. “No room for cream, please” or “I don’t need room for cream” or “I’m utilizing the ‘opt out’ policy for room with cream”—or something like that).

I suggest a pilot project for Louisville. I suspect we’ll see a lot of freed up time to Starbucks customers that is currently time being drained from our local economy. And wouldn’t it be interesting if we discovered that this inane question asked of everyone passing through Starbucks turned out to be the primary cause of our current recession?

Of course, I don’t really believe the “room for cream” question contributed to the recession.

Just aggravated it a little.

I do think that the new additional –and more complicated—Starbucks question, “Would you prefer light or dark roast?” has the potential to seriously undermine out economy.