Nice story, but my Starbucks barista often gets my name wrong. If being friendly was their intention, rather than matching orders and drinks, they certainly haven't gotten the memo.
What's the error rate, though? For those of us who either find it awkward or just plain incorrect, how many Emily and Johns are there feeling happy that they had a touch of "personal" service?
With an accent, and a short name, giving my name is the part of ordering at Starbucks that I dislike the most, though (presumably due to iterating on the delivery on my part) the retries have become fewer of late. It's especially weird since I pay with the mobile app. No reason my name couldn't be on-screen there for me to point to; some of the smoothest ordering experiences have been while wearing a conference badge, and the cashier wrote my name without asking.
On the other hand, I don't hang out at a specific Starbucks location daily, but I have seen folks who apparently do, and who the staff genuinely do know by name. When my local coffee shop (Red Rock) took my drink order without asking my name I definitely felt pretty special.
Of course, none of this ruins the twinge of embarrassment (is it embarrassment? I'm not sure) I feel whenever a barista loudly yells "LATTE FOR JEN" over the din of an espresso machine.
I give a different name. My problem isn't so much that no one knows how to say mine; it's that no one knows how to spell it, and since someone else reads it, they generally fumble the totally weird series of letters the other barista wrote down. So I started to think of it as less about providing my name -- I don't care about fake familiarity -- and more about providing a uniquish identifier. So I optimize for that: pick a name that everyone knows but few people have. "Art" works pretty well.
