The coffee shop napkin math that blew my mind

I was counting out my tip jar change during a slow shift at the cafe downtown, and I noticed we throw away about a dozen paper cups an hour from drive-through mistakes alone. That's like 96 cups a day, just from people ordering then changing their mind before they even pay. I looked up the cost and it's around $0.07 each, so that's nearly $7 a day, or $2,500 a year, all because the register screen is too small to read the size options. Has anyone else worked a register where the UI makes you misclick stuff like that constantly?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_claire1mo ago

We had a guy order 17 espresso shots once, worst day ever.

cole3561mo ago

Man those tiny screen UIs are the real villains of the service industry, I once hit "extra caramel" instead of "no caramel" and got a drink that looked like a melted candle. My bad, the customer just stared at me like I was trying to poison them on purpose. Honestly, $7 a day sounds cheap compared to the therapy bills for all the side-eye we get.