Earlier this week, Josie Morales, a Starbucks barista was fired after he tweeted an image of a complicated drink with 13 modifications! “On today’s episode of why I wanna quit my job,” he tweeted. The original tweet has now been removed for breaching Starbuck’s social media policy. When asked if he regretted tweeting it, “No, because I feel like it brought some light on the viral TikTok trend, you know, how crazy orders can be,” he said.
Viral drinks are a Barista’s bane!
Morales is not the only one struggling with this viral TikTok trend. Several Starbucks staff feel worn out in the last few months by the complicated TikTok drinks. These viral drink orders take more energy and hold up the line.
“These orders are driving us insane because they’re so long, so specific, and it requires you to do much more work than you should be doing for one single drink,” said a Starbucks supervisor in New York.
Custom drinks are the latest viral trends in TikTok and Instagram. They need more labor and time. It seems impossible when “the company is pushing for drive-thru times under 40-50 seconds,” said a Starbuck employee in Pennsylvania. “People will get very mad over sort of little stuff when you’ve made the drink almost perfectly, and it’s frustrating to feel like you can’t say we can’t really make it that way, so people treat us like coffee-making robots,” they added.
Viral drinks are confusing and not always the same
However, Starbucks does not limit the number of modifications one can make to their drink. This leads to a lot of confusion as it’s difficult to understand what customers want on their mobile and delivery orders.
If you’re curious, here is the complete order of this complicated viral drink,’ The Edward’
Vt Crml Crnch Frap
- 5 Banana
- Ex Caramel Drizzle
- Extra Whip
- Extra Ice
- Ex Cinn Dol Top
- 7 pumps Add Dk Crml Sauce
- Ex Caramel Crunch
- 1 pump Honey Blend
- Ex Sltd Bm Btr
- 5 pumps Frap Rst Cof
- 7 Add Frapp Chips
- Heavy Cream
- Double Blended