A Starbucks employee wears a face shield and mask as she makes a coffee in Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, on May 12, 2020.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
  • Starbucks workers told The Guardian that customers are ordering increasingly complicated drinks.
  • Inspired by TikTok trends, these drinks take longer to make, and slow down drive-thrus.
  • One worker said that customers get "very mad" when drinks aren't made perfectly.
  • See more stories on Insider's business page.

Josie Morales, a Starbucks barista in Los Angeles, was fired earlier this month after posting a tweet of a complicated drink order that had 13 modifications. He captioned the image: "On today's episode of why I want to quit my job."

He's not the only one feeling the strain – Starbucks staff are being worn out by increasingly demanding customers who order complicated drinks that slow down drive-thru times, according to a report by The Guardian.

Some staff blamed the complex orders on viral TikTok videos where users share "secret menu" drinks.

"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," a Starbucks shift supervisor in New York told The Guardian.

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This echoes reporting from Insider's Mary Meisenzahl earlier in May. "Custom drinks from social media like TikTok are also increasing the need for labor," a supervisor in Pennsylvania told Meisenzahl. "These drinks are getting more and more complicated while the company is pushing for drive-thru times under 40-50 seconds."

The number of Starbucks orders is falling, but each costs more on average, driven by larger and more complicated orders.

Starbucks doesn't limit the number of modifications customers can make to each drink for mobile and delivery orders, and a barista in Maryland told The Guardian that it can be difficult to understand exactly what customers want.

"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," the barista said.

Erika, a Starbucks shift supervisor in Ohio, told Insider's Meisenzahl that the chain has strict limits on wait times in the drive-thru, and customers expect Starbucks to act as a quick-service restaurant. She said that simplifying Starbucks' menu and restricting modifications would improve its speed.

Do you work at Starbucks? Got a story to share? Email this reporter at [email protected]. Always use a non-work email.

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