To my Starbucks Stalkers,
Your staring is painfully obvious, and your “subtle” flirting makes me want to clock out for the day from the store’s location in the suburbs of New Jersey. There have been 3 too many reports I’ve had to file, 2 of them for 1 guy. I bet he’s still out there ordering the same Grande Vanilla Bean Frappuccino that he would slurp loudly from the Starbucks lobby.
He used to always come in to order the most childish drink, but by that giddy smile, we could tell it was the sort of thing he was into. I remember him saying the drink was as sweet as I was and that he “liked his girls sweet”.
The whipped cream on his upper lip was the most facial hair he could grow, and he’d come in at exactly 5 pm every day to order one. I worked every day at 4 pm. If I didn’t hear that he asked around for my schedule, I would’ve thought it was a coincidence!
If that cream-based white mustache didn’t tell his age, it had to be his balding head and the rectangular black glasses that took up his entire face. He once asked me to guess his age, and I naturally said 50. He said he was 45. My age…times three.
It doesn’t end there with creeps plotting when to come in to see teenagers work. My personal favorite instance was a man who could be my grandfather, greeting me with “If I was your age I’d make you my girlfriend”. Just take your banana loaf and leave sir. And there was no need for him to follow it up with “Can we go on a date sometime?”.
I once had to apologize to a man for never calling him back on his 46th birthday. “Hi, what can I get for you, and yes I ‘accidentally’ threw out the slip of brown paper you gave me with your phone number”.
But I knew someone had to give him the birthday wishes he so begged for, being that he gave 3 of my other girl coworkers his number as well. I have to say when he came in the next day saying he waited all day for my call I had to feel special.
If that wasn’t enough, it had to be the movie tickets.
Zootopia 2
7pm Friday
A man twice my age slid the slip across the counter as if I didn’t have algebra homework or friends my own age to be going out with that night.
My best friend was invited, too, might I add. At least she and I were in it together. I mean, it really bonded us, we did gym class together, math class together, and now reporting coffee shop creeps to store security together.
Getting creeps booted from the store was my favorite work activity next to de-escalating Karens and recreating custom drinks from a picture on TikTok. Seeing these men go from intensely staring to their gaze broken by 6’2 security, makes my shift genuinely go by faster.
They each have a look of defeat as they walk through the sliding doors, leaving their half-finished drinks on the table along with their dignity. Yet they still manage to linger in the ring of whipped cream on the table for me to clean, and in footage of their atrocities in a file upstairs.
Sincerely, a barista who is way too young for you.
Daniella
p.s spare us the interaction and try mobile ordering