Amer Delic
My buddy Amer Delic now has an official website up. Go check it out. (www.amerdelic.com) He also has xanga blog. He’s fairly new to this so go and leave him an encouraging note! (www.xanga.com/amerd) Thanks!
STARBUCKS
Starbucks has been accused by many to be too expensive for everyone’s budget. Even as an employee for Starbucks, I would have to agree. I am amazed by our loyal customers who visit us once, sometimes twice on daily basis and spend on average of $4-5 bucks on a drink.
With that said, there are ways to save a few extra cents each time you visit. You may already know some of these things and it may not be much, but if you are a frequent visitor, it will add up soon!
1. Bring your own cup. You can save 10 cents off your drink.
2. If you just drink regular coffee, as for a tall coffee in a grande or venti cup. They will charge you for just all size and fill it up to the right amount in the bigger cup. Most times, they end up putting more than the tall size. If you add cream, it will usually fill up to the next size so essentially you are getting the bigger size for the price of smaller one. Also, refills only cost 54 cents and if you have venti cup, they will usually fil it up to the top for you for refills.
3. For cold coffee drinks, same rules apply. What ever size you really want, get a smaller size and ask them for it in a bigger size cup. If you have little bit of room, walk up to the condiment counter, then fill up the rest of it with the milk (whole or skim) at the counter. Don’t worry, we change out that milk every 3 hours so it’s fresh. (at least we’re suppose to)
4. For frappuccinos, again the same. When we are usually done making the frappuccinos, we always have a little bit left in the blender. Unless the barista does not like you, he or she will most likely dump the rest of it into the cup since you have so much room at the top.
5. Kid’s drinks. These are not just limited to kids. Just like McDonald’s Happy Meals, adults can order them too. They are 8oz drinks (short size) and only reason we call them “kids” drink is that we don’t steam it as hot as we do normally. So if you just want something small to drink then this is the way to go. They only cost a buck!
I can probably think of few more ways, but hope this helps! If other Starbucks baristas out there have more tips to add, feel free to add them here.
APPLE CUSTOMER SERVICEI always joke around with students when they are wrecking their brains out studying for an exam by telling them to not study so hard because “education is overrated.” Of course I’m just joking around but in some cases I wonder if it’s true. Afterall, aren’t professors the elites of education society suppose to be “smart?” For instance, you would assume that an arrogant UI professor who considers himself a Mac savvist would have some common sense but not in this case:
If you didn’t know I work part-time at the Apple store on U of I campus. Today we had that professor call and yell at us for selling him a piece of junk (apple cinema display) claiming that the monitor did not work. Of course using our well-trained customer service skills, we tried to help with through troubleshooting to find out why it wasn’t working. But the whole time he was giving us an attitude insisting that we give him a brand new one. Now technically we can’t do this unless we can actually prove that there is something wrong with the product. So we told him to bring in the monitor and we’ll see what we can do for him. 15 minutes later he walks in with the monitor all pissed off. Just to make sure, we asked him to go through the steps that he went through in setting up the machine. Then we sat back and watched this mac genius set up his display to our mac computer. Here’s how our conversation went:
Mac Savvy Professor: “See it doesn’t work!”
Us: “Sir, you did everything right except for one thing.”
Mac Savvy Professor: “What are you talking about? Everything’s set up right!”
Us: “You are right sir. But you forgot one thing.”
Mac Savvy Professor: “What’s that?”
Us: “You forgot to push the ‘ON’ button.”
Mac Savvy Professor: silent
After realizing how stupid he was, he then goes on defending himself claiming that he did press the on button when he was at home and it still didn’t turn on. Uh huh, sure…yeah, right, professor. Any ways, I hope I don’t get in trouble for writing this. But I just had to let this out. To all those people working as customer service technicians out there, my hat goes off to you for all the stress you get dealing with the “smart” people out there.
