If I go to a juice bar and order a drink made with one orange, one banana, one kiwi, and two scoops of ice, blended to fill a cup, I fully understand that it’s not the ice I’m paying for. If I ask for the same drink without ice, I don’t expect them to throw in another orange and half a banana to fill the cup.

I don’t disagree that with something like soda or coffee, it costs them nothing to replace the ice with more drink. But I also don’t feel entitled to guilt them if they don’t. They’re serving the same amount of drink to everyone - I just prefer mine without ice.

Soda fountains keep being brought up here … The coffee machine in this post evidently measures based on coffee dispensed… If soda were dispensed the same way, it’s likely soda with no ice would also give you a less than full cup.

I’ve worked with those machines before. Most are simply time based triggers. They use knowledge of volume per second to determine pour size. It’s functionally identical to a bartender executing a free pour. The difference however is in why they are doing it. A bartender is doing that to ensure proper ingredient amount - the machine at a franchise is most notibly focused on time saving: a server pushing the button until it is full cannot do multiple things and ‘at best’ can fill two cups at once - (yes, yes, I know you can do more but… let me have this) With the machine a rep can fill multiple glasses unattended and contine working in the background. This is chiefly about efficiency (time is money.) Labor is expensive - coffee is not.

Also, don’t go insulting or blaming the worker in this instance. They likely have to follow the guidelines of the job or risk losing it. “Pre-programmed to not be able to problem solve”? Fuck right off with that.

No. The insult stands. I’ve worked over 10 years in that industry from food service to high dining. I’ve hosted, served, bartended, managed and assisted in opening two start up coffee shops. I have never, in the history of my work, seen a chain or management that would accept that behavior from an employee. Give me the chain number. I’ll call it and speak with the manager - Hell- I’ll speak with a district head. That’s how confident I am in this. I’ve seen similar behavior out of employees and coworkers before- and on days when I was being unquestionably a POS I’ve done it too… it’s wrong. Plain and simple. The marginal cost of the additional beverage is non-existent in the face of future business with the patron whom you kept coming back.

It fails the cost vs profit test, it fails the social test, and it fails the service test.

This is simply beyond reproach. If you feel otherwise please, by all means, explain to us all how a baseline employee was empowered to make a judgement call - that left a customer with such a foul taste in their mouth … that they turned the experience into a social media discussion. That action has now been seen by hundreds of eyes and will effect future purchases. All over arguably pennies in product that likely is thrown out regularly to cycle in fresh coffee.

If the machine is set to dispense a certain amount of coffee, the worker would either need to press the button twice…

(gasp.) Twice? And the problem is solved? See my lack of problem solving statement above. The kid was making excuses and at best was wrong and at worst was being a shit. I covered the machine and the rest of your comments following that above.

I’ve done my time in those trenches: as someone who’s been there: kid was a shit. As a customer, objectively, from the outside: kid was wrong - and likely being a shit. I wouldn’t give them my business following that.

edit:

Punctuation and stuff.

It’s not fabricated, the machine dispenses a fixed quantity, expecting ice.

A subway sandwich is made to have a fixed quantity of deli meat, even if you ask for no other toppings. You’ll find the sandwich is quite empty in that case. Sure an employee could just load that bitch up, but I bet they wouldnt want their manager to “know” actively. In the case of the coffee, they’d have to mix a second portion of drink in s, m or l, and hope it fits in the m cup. That’s way more obvious, and more effort than the subway employee just slapping a few extra slices on the otherwise empty Sammy.

Indeed folks should prefer small coffee chains. The product is way better and the servings aren’t portioned by a machine, and asking for adjustments at such a place doesn’t put the employee in a spot of potentially getting in trouble.

You don’t know the Starbucks employee’s life, and them following the rules isn’t choicefully being a “drone”. They just want their wage, and want to serve customers shit off the menu.

Arguably they have more “common sense” to keep their manager off their ass by just serving from the menu, rather than doing custom stuff

Depends.

In metal general, if you’re making the coffee + milk, then adding ice, you have to make the coffee part “strong” in one way or another, because that ice is going to melt. It’ll melt fast, too, at the beginning, so not adjusting your process is going to lead to weak, watery iced lattes.

If you then reduce the ice, the problem goes in reverse where the concentration of coffee compounds is higher, so it doesn’t taste like it’s expected to taste.

Now, some places chill batches of the espresso, mix it with the milk chilled, and the ice is just there to extend the time it’s cold, with an expectation of less melt.

Afaik, dunkin doesn’t have a chilled container of the latte shipped in, or made in bulk. They could have changed from the last time I talked to anyone that worked there, but at the time it was in smaller batches and stored at the temp it came out in. So if they changed the amount of ice, it would change the finished drink.

If you make your own iced latte, you’ll likely just make it regular, then pour it over ice. It’ll be thinner, and it’s up to you how you like that or not. Stores tend to go for consistency between products as a priority, so they don’t have as much freedom.

I’ve never worked at a coffee shop, but I know our taste sensitivities are different at different temperatures. I’d be surprised if they were exactly identical products to account both for that, and the fact that your product is about to be diluted when it gets combined with ice (depending on the temperature before that happens). The ingredients may be more or less the same, but the proportions and concentrations may not be.