My roommate works at Starbucks here at State and she often comes back from work with a plethora of complaints about the overall job, but mostly about the GrubHub ordering system, previously known as Tagingo. She vents to me about the extra stress of having to accommodate double, sometimes triple the volume of typical in-person orders with the same amount of employees on staff. These apps have made it so simple for us to get in and get out of busy food and beverage establishments, that it is easy to forget about the employees working there. And the establishments themselves are far from automated. So now, employees are not only faced with a rush of in-store and online customers, but with having to navigate the system’s structural and performance flaws, as well as deal with the new culture of “tap then go” patrons.
These complications exist in any establishment, on or off campus, that offers an online ordering service, but for my purposes I am going to stick with Starbucks. My roommate, who has worked at both a corporate and licensed location of Starbucks (the latter of which we have here at State), has told me that use of an online ordering app such as GrubHub or Starbucks’ own ordering app can take a regularly overwhelming rush to a highly pressurized and unrealistically stressful experience. Just the other day, she came home from her last day at the corporate location and told me that she and many of her colleagues (her boss included) cried (actually cried) due to the staggering amounts of orders they received from their Starbucks ordering app on top of in-store and drive through customers. These employees are standing on their feet for hours, working non-stop to accommodate and make countless more drinks in a timely manner than the store staffing can handle.
This issue isn’t even the half of it. The technology itself, while astonishingly convenient for the customer, is far from perfect. Once the system receives an order, it is up to the cashier to prep the cup for the baristas on bar, on top of taking orders from in-store customers. This can often lead to mistakes for either the in-store or online customers, further leading to confusion and frustration down the production and reception line. And the system itself can only handle and display so many orders on the screen at a time. At any given moment, there could be 5 to 10 to even 20 stickers or orders in queue waiting to be prepped. Once the barista completes the order they have to tap it off of their system so that the customer may receive a notification that their order is ready. And if the customer ordered food as well, the barista will often tap off the drink anyways so that there is space for another order to appear and the process will, in the long run, be more efficient. But this can lead to confusion for the customer as they have one portion of their order done when it says it will be done but not the other. These ordering apps can often loose orders in translation or lead to mix ups or unexplained cancellations on both the ordering and receiving ends of the technology, often resulting in perhaps the worst aspect of the online ordering app – the developing culture of the online customer.
Yes, online ordering apps were created for the convenience and ease of ordering and picking up and moving on with your day. But this technology is still in need of constant improvement. And this is at no one’s fault, especially not the employee’s. But customers who find that their order was slightly off or that they have received a notification that their order was ready but they are still missing a part of it or even that feel they have been waiting too long to receive their order do not see it that way – the impatience that has been created by these forms of ordering builds up and the only person to take it out on is the employee. But what most patrons don’t realize is that these baristas are on a schedule and have a very specific method of getting their work done, so interrupting them isn’t necessarily going to help you or anyone else. It is their job to serve the customer, but it is not their fault if something goes wrong, and they are doing the best they can to maintain some semblance of efficiency. And most baristas don’t mind when a customer has a question about their order, so long as they don’t ask it as if they are the only customer in the store.
I am not saying that apps like Starbucks or GrubHub are inherently bad or that you shouldn’t use them. As an avid consumer of coffee, I have certainly made use of GrubHub on my way to class many times. What I am saying, however, is that when you do use this epitome of convenience and efficiency, try to be a little more patient.