Starbucks

This location manages to find the most miserable people to work the counter… captive audience, right? I figure as long as I can Unilocal and they can hire the sour puss faces, I’ll keep reporting out what my experiences are at the Portland International Jetport Starbucks location. The products are top notch — tons of choices!

Loud, obnoxious staff.

Things that do not make me happy:
— getting up early for a flight
— grumpy people at airports
— the weak coffee drinks that cost a small fortune at airports that don’t pep you up; they just act like a diuretic faster than when you’re at home
Enter Starbucks.
There’s a couple reliable things about Starbucks whether you’re a fan or not. It’s always expensive and tastes the same pretty much across the board. Who doesn’t love consistency like that, eh?
The Starbucks at my beloved airport hits the mark every time. I get a tall iced double soy latte (not gonna lie: I get real sweaty when I fly, so I’m always downing cold beverages at airports), and it’s painfully strong and bland. But that’s what I need to wake myself up! And the people who work here have this down to a science. They’re fast, polite, and make your brief encounter with them a positive one!
Meaning:
— even though I’m a sleepy bugger, I won’t be in about ten minutes
— I can conquer the perpetual sour puss faces because I’m soaring high on espresso
— my coffee tastes just about exactly as it did the time before, and before that, and before even that
GIMME THE BUX (sorry, the caffeine has kicked in)!!!
(Side note: I once met some older women who either manage this location or something, and they told me I could ask Starbucks to fill up my bottle with ice and water if I wanted to avoid the public faucet. Kinda generous, right?)

On my flight into Portland International Jetport, I was jonesing for some caffeine before heading down to the Hertz Car Rental counter — so I stopped here for a cup of coffee.
They did not have a dark roast that day, so I went with the medium roast. Coffee was still pretty good!

Listen. I prefer not to go to a Starbucks but this one really saved the day for me. I had to head back to NYC after an amazing several days in Portland for a wedding. I was very sleep deprived and felt like shit but I knew that I couldn’t pass out on the way home because that would totally disrupt my sleep schedule (because I never nap) and it’d be rough waking up the next morning for work at 7am. I was very grumpy and wanted to kill everybody. Well, the ladies at Starbucks brightened my day. They genuinely wanted to get to know me and my story (maybe because I looked like death and that intrigued them). Though they may be the oldest Starbucks employees that I’ve ever encountered, they offered superb, friendly service that was a common theme in Maine. It was nice to leave Portland in a good mood!