By Peter Jackson

Been to the new Starbucks yet? Great, right? Norris. It’s like Jesus, back from the dead. Everyone’s talking about it. I was there just a few days ago. I was slumped in a chair the color of a Bobb bathroom floor on a Saturday morning, clutching a soy latte, when some people took the seats around me and started praying. I mean it.

The seven students in front of me, devoted, I later overheard, “to awakening Greek students at this campus to encountering and embracing Jesus,” were praying to, you know, God.

That’s right, folks. Baptisms, now free with your biscotti.

Clearly the Starbucks thing is a huge success. Even the Evangelicals are there. But what I’m wondering is why Norris doesn’t employ more students to work there.

There certainly isn’t a dearth of students on campus who do or used to work at Starbucks. I know two, and I barely know anyone. One of them, who works at the location in Evanston, is about to strangle the Norris employees.

After enduring a 10-minute wait, she said she had to tell her “barista” how to make her drink. She wanted to jump behind the counter and make the drinks herself.

Which got me thinking. If they hadn’t taken 15 minutes to make my soy latte, I might have avoided my collision with Christianity. Nothing motivates me like the idea that I’ve been personally wronged, so I trekked down to Norris again to get to the bottom of things.

Waiting to get a word in edgewise, I saw a manager spend five minutes creating a mocha Frappucino. He decorated the whipped cream with chocolate syrup as though it were a wedding cake. The line yawned.

Then General Manager Chris Gargiulo stepped over to talk to me.

Just three of the nine employees are students, he said. None of the non-Northwestern employees have any Starbucks experience outside the past week.

“We encourage as many students as possible to work,” Gargiulo said.

He noted that many students who expressed interest fall quarter couldn’t complete the two-week, Starbucks-mandated training program new employees had to go through. It’s required even of former employees who haven’t worked in more than 90 days, meaning most students with experience would have had to do it as well. The course lasted through part of winter break, he said.

Norris was so interested in hiring students they scheduled the required training during vacation. How considerate.

Sodexho, the company that owns the license for this location and manages it, advertised openings in the Chicago Reader, with its reams of NU readers, in addition to The Daily.

Still, Gargiulo said students had filled out more than 20 applications since the store opened and he hopes to fill as many positions as possible with students. He said the nature of the store’s shifts – at least two a week, of four hours each – was more than many were willing to work. (Similar other jobs on campus only require seven hours a week as a minimum, he said.)

As I spoke with him, the manager informed Gargiulo that one of their employees wouldn’t be able to make it in for her shift.

“She couldn’t find a babysitter,” he said.

Pity they didn’t have a student they could count on to come in.

Medill freshman Peter Jackson, a former Daily staffer, can be reached at [email protected].