Its not that baristas hate Harry Potter specifically to spite you, its that people who don’t even work in a cafe come up with drinks without knowing how any of it works, knowing what ingredients the store has, or how any of it will taste together and post it online for thousands of other people to see and decide they also want to try it,
It is absolute hell on the baristas, because we are trained in a SPECIFIC way on how to make drinks. All the drinks made by Starbucks follow incredibly specific recipes with specific proportions of ingredients, so that they taste good, are made the same every time, and stay as that kind of drink. Half the customers I deal with every day don’t know the difference between a latte and an iced coffee, do you really think they’re in any way qualified to be coming up with their own recipes? A good portion of these secret menu drinks, because they aren't made by baristas, end up being impossible to replicate because there is no set standard on how to make them and they end up being something else entirely, with and I am not kidding, more syrup and fruit in them than the original drink, wasting ingredients and tasting like shit.
Its hell on the baristas because its impossible to train staff on how to make these, because there are a shit ton of variations to these drinks because they are NOT made by the company. Just three of the ‘Butterbeer’ ones I found in a few minutes:
All of these are fucking different. All of them will taste different. They’ll all look different. Two of them just say ‘order a creme frappuchino’ which ISN’T A THING. It is NOT a specific drink, it is TYPE of drink and us, the staff, will have to figure out what one you’re looking for and you WILL NOT KNOW THE ANSWER AND NEITHER WILL WE.
Its hell on the baristas, because about 2 dozen people come in daily just at my store asking for things that are not on the menu, never were, or were region locked and get pissed because we have no idea what you’re talking about. Butterbeer is not a flavor. Cotton Candy is not a flavor. Oreo, Twix, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cheesecake, NONE of these are actual flavors and never have been and it gets worse when someone makes secret menu items that depend on seasonal or regional ingredients. These secret menu drinks often use shit that was discontinued YEARS ago and we cannot make anymore, no matter how much you insist because someone on instagram or tiktok said they just got it. We can’t make you the Hokkaido, Tokyo, Ibaraki, or Fukui fraps because those were NEVER available in the USA, they were exclusive to SINGLE locations, but the customers do not listen and they do not care, because someone with thousands of followers said so, so WE must be lying.
Its hell on the baristas, because most of these fucking drinks use ingredients from every single station and end up taking three times as long to make as they should so the entire line of other customers who are also waiting on drinks end up waiting longer and it cascades when a new 'secret menu' drink goes viral and EVERYONE starts ordering it. We end up running out completely of certain ingredients for weeks to months because they get popular and then no one can have any. You know how Starbucks is having nation wide outages of just about every flavor? This is part of the reason why- We literally cannot keep up with the demand for certain ingredients we ordinarily would not use in that kind of quantity, and oh yeah, we're still in a GLOBAL PANDEMIC as people make up random shit when they get bored and want fandom points so they make an imaginary drink go viral.
It’s hell on the baristas, because WE end up getting bad reviews by customers who understand none of this, try to do it anyway and end up with essentially a cup full of vomit or told no entirely, and they get pissed at US and slam us on yelp or outright call our bosses to scream at them because Starbucks stopped using mango syrup 6 goddamn years ago and you REALLY REALLY wanted it for your Harry Potter House or MHA or BTS themed drink that costs four times as much as it should because of how much shit you put in it and you don't want to pay for it!
Its hell on the baristas because you come in, order something that doesn't exist, treat the employees like shit for it, and then get holier than thou on the fucking internet claiming that we must just hate your precious Harry Potter and call us a made up insult after we have repeatedly, desperately, insistently told everyone the Secret Menu is not a thing and neither are any of the drinks on it, especially branded, trademarked things Starbucks did not, does not, and never will have the rights to.
Or if it's easier to understand,
Fuck your Butterbeer and grow the fuck up, you're not better than anyone else because you like a book made by a racist transphobe and want to make a fool out of yourself insisting that it is. The employees are laughing at you the second you walk out the goddamn door.
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