I wish I could give this place zero stars. Usually, the service is fine and the employees are kind, but one employee is consistently rude, aggressive, and completely unwilling to help. Each time I've gone into the store with him working, he has made the experience unbearable to the point that I refuse to return to that specific store. First of all, I wish I could name him, but he seems to never wear a name tag, which is definitely against protocol. He is a short, bald man with facial hair.
My first interaction with him was when I stood by the register and had to wait a good 10 minutes before he came over and took my order because he was too busy microwaving food and eating it. He made no apologies and seemed to enjoy the fact that he made someone else's day more difficult.
He is also blatantly misogynistic and will say things like 'are you sure you want that' after placing an order. I've been to other Starbucks that absolutely do not tolerate that, as it is rude to say to customers. He regularly talks down to women (which I can say from personal experience and from seeing how he treats other customers), yet someone manages to be halfway decent when a man is present. Each time I've been there while he is working, he makes snide remarks and has a serious attitude problem. It's clear he hates his job and would rather be anywhere else in the world than have to treat the customers with respect.
The 50% green box promotion, which is currently going on, clearly states that you can get 50% any regularly priced green box items, which presumably includes non-cup items, as the sign does not indicate any special requirements to get the percentage off. When I tried to buy one of these items, I noticed that I seemed to have paid too much for it, so I asked him to check it, since I was supposed to get 50% off. He told me that he wouldn't give me the percentage off because 'the machine wouldn't let him,' which was clearly not true, since I asked him to just give me the cash he owed me instead. He then told me no again. Throughout all off this, I tried my best to be polite, but he was incredibly rude. Instead of offering solutions or trying to make it right, he simply told me no, and that I would either have to pay full price or remove it from my order. So, I asked him to remove that single item off of my order (I was very specific about my wording, since I fully intended on still getting the drinks we had ordered). However, once the 10 minutes of him struggling to work the register (because he's clearly incompetent), we walked over to the sign so I could take a picture of the promotion for future reference. We picked up our drinks and as we were about to leave, he yelled across the store "you can't take those drinks, you didn't pay for them." For some reason, he was either too dense to understand that I still wanted to purchase the drinks, or removed all of the items off of my purchase for the sake of being a jackass. Either way, he yelled across the store, clearly trying to embarrass us. Anybody in the service industry knows that, even if the customer is wrong, it's the employees' job to make it right. He made no offers, didn't try to come up with a solution, and was curt and aggressive.
He is consistently rude and a sad excuse for an employee. I have never, in all of the Starbucks I've been to across the country, had to deal with a worse employee than him. Frankly, he is by far the worst employee I've had to endure at any establishment, period. He's an embarrassment and rude, refuses to make any effort, and clearly does not care about his job, nor does he deserve it.
It's unfortunate, because all of the other employees at this Starbucks are lovely. There's a young man who always makes conversations and is always very personable, and all of the women I've encountered have been lovely, helpful, and kind. This one employee, however, has ruined this Starbucks for me, and I fully intend on never returning, and telling everyone I know to make the trip to UTC or Fruitville and stop going to the Lakewood Ranch location, because at least those Starbucks know how to run their stores and don't have clearly angry, aggressive, unhelpful employees ruining the experience for everyone. read more