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| - Saturday morning rush. I'm sure it happens every Saturday as hordes of conventioneers grab breakfast before heading to the airport. I understand a rush. I am also a generally patient person. (I am fine with waiting an hour or more for a table at good restaurants.) But...
When there is a continuous line of people between the order station and the register, half of whom already have their food and just want to hand over some money, you call for a second cashier. When you *are* the second cashier, instead of walking out of the back, looking around like Punxsutawney Phil on February 2, and then crawling back into a hole, you actually spend 10 minutes clearing the line. Maybe dedicate someone to making all the coffee concoctions people order so you don't have the one staffed register empty for 4 minutes at a time.
It took me about 15 minutes to get to the register, by which time my bagel was getting cold. I stood waiting for about 4 minutes as employees dawdled at the prep station, ignored the call for a second cashier, plodded through coffee orders, etc. The last straw was when a woman from the back of the line came up and asked for two coffee cups and an approximation of the cost so she could just leave cash... and the woman behind the counter (who was working on a fancy coffee order at the time) actually switched to the other register to ring her up! I was done. I picked up the register pen, wrote "Nevermind" on the order slip, set my overpriced bagel and expensive orange juice on the counter, and walked out. (Yeah, Einstein Bros, that was me.) If you don't want my money, you aren't getting it.
Instead, I am at Starbucks a couple blocks away. My order? A bagel, orange juice, and a banana. And all cost considerably less than what it would have at Einstein Bros.
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