A Starbuck's barista has complained that the social media platform TikTok is ruining the hot beverage industry as customers are choosing to order 'ridiculous' drinks, according to The Mirror.
Jose Morales took to Twitter to post a picture of one order, placed by a customer named Edward, who requested a total of 13 changes from the original recipe.
Morales captioned the image 'on today's episode of why I wanna quit my job', but Starbuck's staff noticed his post and he was quickly stood down from the role.
Other barista's worldwide have also spoken out against the ludicrous orders, saying that customers are finding the bizarre inspiration and trying to recreate the drinks seen on TikTok.
TikTok allows videos to go viral, meaning these recipes are circulating globally.
The order Josie, from California, lost his job over was a traditional Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino, which is made with coffee, milk, ice, caramel syrup, caramel sauce, whipped cream, caramel drizzle, and a crunchy caramel-sugar topping.
But the customer, Edward, added 13 changes to the recipe, including extra caramel drizzle, seven pumps of caramel sauce, extra ice, extra cinnamon dolce topping, and heavy cream.
Speaking to The Guardian, a spokesman for Starbucks said: "Our 200,000 partners across the US are the best people in the business, and their experiences are key to helping us make Starbucks a meaningful and inspiring place to work.
"We offer a world-class benefits program for all part- and full-time partners and continued support for partners during Covid-19 to care for themselves and their families, and we continue to have an industry-leading retention rate.”
But after tweeting about the drink in a post that went viral, many people wanted to try the new recipe and labelled it 'The Edward'.
Other US baristas from Starbucks say they are treated like 'coffee-making robots' thanks to TikTok, as more and more customers come in and order elaborate drinks.
Speaking to The Guardian, one said: "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 and they’re not being adequately translated into our labour hours."
The coffee chain doesn't limit customers to the number of times they can change a recipe, and a worker said that customers can get angry when they don't get what they want.
A Starbucks worker said to The Guardian: "With mobile order or delivery, we can’t always clarify what they want and 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."
Another employee added: "Starbucks definitely took this turn to become just another fast-food drive-thru. They want us to just be these robots that move fast, we’re just little drones to them that just need to pump out as many lattes as we can in a half-hour."
After Josie shared a picture of his drink order online, both customers and employees of Starbucks commented their thoughts on the issue.
One barista shared a picture of a Frappuccino with 29 additional changes, adding: "This order comes in every other week."
And one customer wrote: "I was behind a woman who had an order that ridiculous and insisted it is heated to 37 degrees celsius., 'not 36, not 38–I will KNOW the difference'."
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