Improving

Today was the first day I felt like I could actually make this Sbux gig work. I didn't feel like a complete idiot, so that's an improvement.

Today, after setting up the pastry case, I was assigned "front support." This meant I was responsible for taking orders for all the café customers, and providing "support" for drive through orders. Here's where it gets tricky . . . We all wear headsets, which allow us to hear drive through orders and also allow us to talk privately with each other. If I'm across the store and a customer has a question I don't know the answer for, I can talk into my headset and any other partner can provide the answer for me. It's kind of like being telepathic. Or crazy. Because sometimes I'm laughing at something a partner said in my headset, and the customer in front of me has no idea what's going on.

We all hear the drive through orders, which can make life confusing when I'm trying to listen to the customer standing in front of me. I have to tune out the headset to fulfill the "live" customer's order. When I'm done with that, I need to remember to start listening again. This is the hardest part for me!! The other part of front support is to grab items from the pastry case (and heat them up, if needed) for drive through orders. If I'm not taking a café order or grabbing a food item, I'm checking the hot & cold bars to see if there are any pitchers or blenders I can rinse. But I still need to be paying attention to drive through orders. I can't stress how difficult this learning curve of multi-tasking listening and action is for me. I think it's because I still have to think through each step of each routine as I do it - it hasn't become second nature yet.

But today . . . today I did OK. For the first time I felt like I was an asset rather than a liability to the team. And that feels really, really good. Now, let's see if I can do the same thing tomorrow . . .