Why People Are In An Uproar About The Starbucks App

It's no secret that many of us rely on that first cup of coffee to help us face the day. Luckily, with the introduction of apps, the time between the alarm blaring and being able to take that first sip has gotten even shorter for those who prefer to have someone else make their cup of Joe. In fact, Starbucks drinkers have long had the luxury of using their phones to pay for their Iced Caramel Macchiatos ahead of time, avoiding those long, morning rush lines since 2014 (via Geek Wire).

Though mobile ordering has made life easier for some, there is one group that may not be exactly head over heels about the process. Starbucks baristas have expressed their disdain over mobile orders in the past — in one TikTok video, a barista bemoans customers who place mobile orders while they're already in the drive-thru lane. Regardless of baristas' disdain for some customers' mobile ordering etiquette, 25% of all orders at company-owned US Starbucks stores in the second quarter of this year were made through mobile ordering, Business Insider reports. A large number of customers have clearly made the app a part of their Starbucks routine, which is exactly why people weren't so happy with the app today.

In what the U.S. Sun referred to as "coffee chaos," many would-be Starbucks customers woke up on Saturday morning to find they were unable to secure their lattes digitally due to the mobile app being down. Some of those mobile app users took to Twitter to express their frustration, including someone who helps the rest of the country start their day: "Good Morning America" producer Tony Morrison. "The Starbucks app being down on a Saturday morning when you have a shoot is really quite something," Morrison tweeted.

For many others, the technology failure hit close to home. One Twitter user wrote, "The Starbucks app not working rn feels like a personal attack," while another took a stand, tweeting "The Starbucks app has been down all morning, and I refuse to walk over there and order in person." As devoted Starbucks fans may already know, this isn't even the first time there have been issues with the app this month. Business Insider reported the Starbucks mobile app was also down on May 19. While there's no telling if the app will have better reliability in the future, the outages have brought some Starbucks fans to the other side of the digital divide, like @velvet_vivey, who tweeted "had to order at the register and pay with my debit card like some kind of boomer."