Starbucks — Restaurant in Austin

I just had one of the most profoundly disturbing customer service experiences in recent years. For context, I live across the street from this location and walk here occasionally. I’m out of coffee at home so decided to walk across the street for coffee today.

Upon arriving, the lobby is closed, but they are serving guests at the side door - no big deal. Attempt to place my order at the door but am told it has to be done via the app… which is a bit odd that I’m talking to a human but they need me to tell them the order in a phone app.

I pull out the app and try to place the order. This location is down in the app, so not able to take orders. However, the drive thru line is moving appropriately so I know at least some of their machines are working.

My obvious next request is to just have them take my order and pay using the working terminal at the drive through window. The manager tells the nice gentleman helping me that this isn’t allowed then comes over to the side door I’m standing at and very condescendingly tells me, “you need to get in the drive thru like everyone else and if you don’t want to do that you can find one of our many other locations to choose from.”

I’m a very easy going and honestly gentle person, so know that I was not being hostile or confrontational (although looking back perhaps I should have been more so…). At this point, I again asked if she could just take my order and pay for it at the working terminal. She got very rude and nasty towards me and told me to go somewhere else then asked if there’s anything else she could do to help me. Again, in that power-hungry managerial condescending tone that we’ve all heard in customer service. I chose to leave.

Did not get her name, but she was about 5’4” dark black hair and not thin. She was probably having a rough morning and saw me as some sort of threat and decided to take frustrations out on me.

Moving forward, let’s do better to treat all of our guests with respect and go the extra mile. Even if that means doing things that are less convenient. Such as, in this case, taking an order and running a credit card at a terminal 15ft away instead of one directly in front of you.

I will do my best to avoid going to this location in the future. Fortunately, I’ll be moving slightly further away in a few weeks so this shouldn’t...

The only reason why I'm leaving 2 stars instead of 1 is because there's usually a really nice person working the drive-thru.

I placed a pickup order through the mobile app. I went into the (nearly empty) store to pick it up and stood at the pickup counter. I could see one of my drinks sitting there, but the other wasn't ready even though it was ready for pickup about 10 minutes prior.

There were 4 employees working. None of them greeted me, acknowledged me, or even looked me in the eye. The two ladies were making drinks for another inside customer, but there were two guys literally just standing around goofing off. One was playing on his cell phone and the other was standing around twiddling his thumbs. I could see the drive thru line from inside - there was no one in line. I stood there for a few minutes and finally said I was here to pick up my order and that I saw one of my drinks, but the other one wasn't there. That's when one of the ladies chimed in to say "oh, we don't make nitro drinks until you come to pick up your order."

Okay?! Well, I'm here! If anyone had even taken a second to acknowledge that, you would've known to make it!

I have worked in customer service my entire life It is SO SIMPLE to just look someone in the eye and acknowledge them instead of texting, goofing off, and completely ignoring someone for several minutes when it isn't even remotely busy.

Even though I work in the same shopping center and go here all the time, I probably won't be back. I should've waited in line at Epoch...

According to the manager at this Starbucks, if you place an online/mobile order you don’t have to wait in the drive thru and you can just walk up to the drive thru window to pick up your order. These were her words not mine. I just wanted anyone who goes to this Starbucks know this so they don’t waste waiting in their long drive thru line like I had to today. According to the employees, they are nice people and will not refuse service to someone who walks up and essentially cuts the line while everyone else is waiting for 30+ minutes in the drive thru. But they haven’t informed everyone of this unwritten rule so I thought I’d share it with the rest of the world.

While waiting in the drive thru I noticed that a car got out of line parked and walked up to the window and got served their drinks. I felt that was a little odd. So when my turn came after waiting about 30 minutes in line, I asked what the drive thru rules were and if I’m allowed to walk up. The people working there, including the manager told me that you are not allowed to walk up but if you did they’d give you your drink, because “they were nice”. I asked why they didn’t tell all their customers this. They said they couldn’t officially say so. When further proved they said that their drinks were getting cold. I asked what about everyone else waiting in line. They said we could all also walk up to the window if we had online orders...