There’s only one Starbucks in the world where staff are not allowed to ask for your name
Topics: Starbucks
Stefania Sarrubba
Featured Image Credit: Hoberman Collection/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Topics: Starbucks
While most of us have had our names butchered by a Starbucks barista at least once, customers at one specific location of the world-famous coffee branch will never have to worry about having their names spelt wrong.
Starbucks has made asking for a customer's name with their coffee order their signature move. This is both to speed up the coffee line and avoid people reaching for the same caramel latte, promoting a little warmth in the trite customer-employee interaction.
However, there's one Starbucks location in the world where asking for one's name is a big no-no — and for national security reasons, no less.
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The coffee purveyor has a branch inside the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in Langley, Virginia. This coffee shop is referred to as 'Store Number 1' on the receipts, with some officers affectionately calling it the 'Stealthy Starbucks'.
The behind-the-scenes details about what can be considered the most secretive Starbucks in the world were first unveiled in a 2014 piece by The Washington Post that has recently resurfaced. What caught the attention of readers at the time is that baristas go through an extremely thorough background check before landing a job at Langley and can't really say what they do for a living, though probably the most fascinating trivia bit about the CIA Starbucks is how employees are told not to ask anyone's names.
While asking for someone's name isn't formally prohibited — we've all used a fake name at a coffee shop at one point or another — the question has had some undercover agents sweat to come up with a fake name.
"They could use the alias 'Polly-O string cheese' for all I care," said a food services supervisor at the CIA, asking that his identity remain anonymous for security reasons.
"But giving any name at all was making people — you know, the undercover agents — feel very uncomfortable. It just didn't work for this location."
This Starbucks may look just like your regular chain coffee shop but if you spot someone in a corner practicing a foreign language, you just know they're not doing it to hit a milestone on Duolingo.
The shop is also the site of many job interviews for agents looking to progress within the CIA ranks, with one officer saying: "Coffee goes well with those conversations."
One woman working as a barista at the CIA Starbucks back in 2014 said she had applied for a job at a catering company that services federal buildings in the region, but had no clue where she would end up.
After undergoing extensive vetting "that was more than just a credit check", she landed the Starbucks gig, but can't even brag about it with her friends - not in detail, anyway.
"Before I knew it, I realised I was now working for the Starbucks at the CIA," she said, adding: "The most I can say to friends is that I work in a federal building."
As for the no-name rule, she said she would be able to recognise people's faces and their drinks without needing a name (A super-recogniser CIA skill, perhaps?).
"There's caramel-macchiato guy" and "the iced white mocha woman," she said. "But I have no idea what they do. I just know they need coffee, a lot of it." Spies, they're just like us.