Starbucks on Paul Bryant just can’t figure out how drink orders work

You’re trying to get your caffeine fix before your 8am and your mood is fragile. Any little thing can make or break your day. Your coffee is key in setting your good mood to take on the rest of the day, or even week. Coffee connoisseurs understand the struggle and the importance of a perfectly made cup, or at least close to one.

When you’re paying anywhere between $3.00 to $6.00 for your speciality coffee, you’d expect that what you order is what you walk out of the door with. This is not always the case at the newest Starbucks location in Tuscaloosa on Paul Bryant Drive.

Starbucks opened before the fall school semester started, but the early open date seems to have left most of their employees to train on the job – or wing it. Any given day, you’ll witness utter chaos, wrong drinks and aggravated students.

Even Ella understands the importance of an iced beverage in the heat

Of course you can’t blame the employees. They’re just doing their jobs (or trying to). But unless there is some secret code where ordering a pumpkin spice latte means, “hey, hit me up with a white chocolate mocha,” then something’s gotta give.

Ordering an iced caramel macchiato only to end up holding a hot one in your hand is saddening. Especially tragic when the label says “iced” on it. This could become fatal when students must trek across the quad in 95 degree weather, overheating and craving a chilled beverage to cool them down. Instead, they have a hot one in their hand.

Offering to let you keep the coffee from the wrong order while they make a new one is a nice gesture. But it’s an issue when every time you’re at Starbucks, you see people complaining about their drinks. How many precious coffee beans must be lost? When is enough enough?

And when you go to Starbucks between classes hoping to grab something to give you that extra boost – so your professor doesn’t know how exhausted you really are – you don’t have time to wait around for them to fix your order.

If reading this doesn’t make you weak, you definitely aren’t a die hard coffee drinker.

Exhibit A: a perfectly made very berry hibiscus refresher – take notice on the minimal amount of berries, where the liquid takes up the majority of the cup, how it should be

Once you ask around, the horror stories start to sound similar. Whether it’s students being charged different prices each day for the same drink order or workers refusing to correct orders because they’ve already moved on to the next one, it’s tragic. Truly tragic.

Starbucks, just shut down for a week and train your employees to make drinks. Send someone from another store location to teach them, or just give them a manual on how to make the beverages you actually offer. Going on like this isn’t working for all parties involved. Too many tears, ruined Monday mornings, precious coffee beans wasted and angry coffee dates.

Until then, stick to the Keurig – you know what you’re putting in is what you’re actually going to be drinking in the end. Or just run on Dunkin’ like the rest of America. We have to stick together and wing it until the Starbucks epidemic on Paul Bryant passes and the world is right again. When students can have faith in their baristas once again.

As for me, I hope to soon see the day when I hold a pumpkin spice latte in hand after ordering one.