“I guess Karen’s little sister ordered today”

• A barista posted a video of a Starbucks order of 22 drinks on TikTok, and it went viral.

• The Starbucks employee is one of many complaining about complicated online orders.

• Baristas told Insider that TikTok-inspired drinks and mobile orders have “overwhelmed” stores.

• See more stories on the Insider business page.

A Starbucks order of 22 drinks posted late last month has gone viral on TikTok, as workers struggle to track orders online.

“I guess Karen’s little sister ordered today,” barista @ sarai.camp0s said in the video, showing the Uber Eats ordering tag for “Katie”.

The June 28 TikTok has since received nearly 2.5 million views. In it, the user said the long order prompted workers to quit. Insider was unable to confirm whether a member of staff at the Starbucks store in Hayward, Calif. Had resigned or whether the statement was made in jest. A Starbucks spokesperson, as well as the TikTok user, did not respond to a request for comment.

The user said the order included three large bags and two full-size bags and included 18 small strawberry acai lemonades.

Ordering online has opened up a host of concerns for baristas. Last month, several Starbucks employees told Insider that mobile orders were out of hand and resulted in in-store delays as well as complicated “secret menu” drinks inspired by TikTok and Instagram. At the time, a Starbucks spokesperson said the delays were “not representative of the customer and partner experience in the majority of our stores.”

“I can’t forget how many times Uber Eats orders have been nothing but chaotic and demanding,” a former shift manager at a Starbucks store in Baltimore told Insider. “There is no limit on Uber Eats orders. When it comes to a giant delivery order, it can get overwhelming.”

Alexis Rivera, a former shift supervisor in New Jersey, said once her store was so overwhelmed with orders that staff “had to lock down the store” and stop serving new customers until things got better. calm down.

The story continues

Earlier this month, another TikToker @mrleighteaches showed how he and other Starbucks employees learned to make items unavailable on the Starbucks app in order to make it a “slow day.” The video was viewed over 150,000 times before it was deleted, and the user’s account appears to have been deleted after a series of negative comments appeared on the video, The Daily Dot reported. A Starbucks spokesperson said at the time that the app correctly displays what is available and stores can turn it on and off.

Another Starbucks barista was fired in May after he tweeted a photo of a complicated drink order that included 13 edits, HuffPost reported. He captioned the image, “In today’s episode Why I want to quit my job.”

Some Starbucks employees have repeatedly told Insider that they don’t think their stores are staffed to fulfill complex mobile orders with many modifications.

Erika, a shift supervisor at Starbucks in Ohio, told Insider that as the company has changed to focus on customizations through steering wheel and mobile controls, the company has not adjusted the staffing needs of appropriate way to deal with the new volume. Heavily modified drinks require more staff to make and move the lines forward, she said.

These requirements create an “unattainable standard for partners” with “great pressure on partners,” a supervisor from Pennsylvania previously said.

Starbucks is not alone in facing a labor shortage, making these influxes of orders more difficult to manage. Retail workers currently find themselves in a unique position, with more influence than at any time in recent history. Restaurants often can’t keep locations occupied at pre-pandemic levels, so they have to compete for workers with connection bonuses and other perks. The labor shortage in many sectors of the economy is a boon for some dissatisfied retail workers who are suddenly able to seek new jobs.

Read the original article on Business Insider