Today was a rough shift, I work at a mall bucks that gets crazy numbers and is known to be extremely busy. Background on me is that I have worked for the company for about five months. Due to the prior dysfunctional shifts and partners as a green bean I was usually left with another green bean on our own within the first week after we were fresh off of training, alone for an hour or more because the shift would disappear.

In that time I learned how to make hot and cold drinks very quickly just out of necessity, because I was brand new and alone constantly. My first actual shift was a Saturday 10-5 where I was on bar all day and had a giant line and many angry customers. I was almost reduced to tears twice by two separate belligerent customers. I mean obviously it’s just apart of the job and I understand there’s always someone. And the only reason I’m giving this background is because being with the store through this growing process has made me pretty protective of it. I’ve also learned so much, and want to learn more, while being someone my coworkers come to when they need something and the one the shift leaves “in charge” when they’re away, I’m proud of my progress and proud of my work and mild and small leadership accomplishments.

Anyways, the mall clientele is not always great and my store isn’t either. But I am happy to say with recent hiring improvements my store is getting better. But that means a lot of the staff is new, even newer than me, or the prior baristas actually don’t know how to bar. Just because they never had to and/or refused. My boss has complimented my efficiency and attention to detail and recipe countless times, I am obviously not perfect nor claim to be but I do think I have a handle on what I’m doing.

And that is why I think I’m so indignant about today.

A SM was just hired for some store in my district. He has never worked at a Starbucks in his life, he seems himself “operations” based and balks at being used for bar while he is training in our store with our SM. I was not on shift with him the first two days he was there but I had heard enough from my coworkers.

The man does not know the recipes, does not know the sequencing, or anything about customer relations. Meaning on hot bar he was slower than anything I’ve ever seen from anyone, even our new partner who is still being trained. And you know what, no big deal. I was on cold bar and had the majority of the drinks anyways. We’re very busy by afternoon peak, the man starts moving the cups out of order, “out of his workspace” and is now unabashedly messing up the order.

I tried to politely tell him that the stickered cups always go there so we can both see what’s next in line. He looked at me, he moved them anyways. So now I’m trying to maneuver down, down the counter to get my cold cups. He gets tired of me dancing around him and everyone else and then starts putting all the cold cups on the cold bar counter. Which can’t happen because we have our cold bar directly next to our brewers, there’s no room. He does it anyway, but I am so swamped and lost in the cups I just try to make the cold drinks ASAP.

Then I get an iced americano in my line, and as nice as possible I say that he makes the espresso drinks even the iced ones. And I’ll take care of all the teas, iced coffees, refreshers, frappuccinos, and even the cups of water. He is again very rude with just his expression and scoffs and just mumbles something about how weird we do things here.

This is now the second time the grown adult has rolled their eyes at me, a teenager who is trying her best.

My shift comes back from pull and is asking general how is it going questions and checks who's on cold and who’s on hot bar. The new SM exclaims, loudly, “Well right now I’M DOING BOTH” and I just cut him off for my own hearing by starting the blender. Also during all of this, whenever I have given him a frapp to finish he refuses to do it because he’s doing a hot drink, or says he doesn’t know how, OR “that's not how it’s done.” I thought that was universal.

But even if I’m wrong, which probably could be, that’s just what we’re trained to do at my store because of the fact the cold bar is always in higher demand. But by the off chance it isn’t, the extra bar person immediately hops on the other hot bar to help. Because we know if we don’t work as a team and support each other, there’s nothing possible without it.

But I continue to bar and throughout the shift I keep asking him to not move the cups, please do the iced espresso drinks, and when he only had one drink in line and I had eight to get the ice waters that just came out. Which he refused of course and just stood smug until one more hot drink came out. All of his behavior did not seem like a viable SM’s and I was upset and frustrated, also hurt due to the fact as someone in a higher position than me, he was supposed to be an extra piece of support but was weighing me down instead.

To top it all off someone came back and was holding their vanilla bean frapp up saying it was bitter and they needed extra caramel drizzle. He went to intervene but I got there first and said, “Hey I’m so sorry about the fact it doesn’t taste right. And the extra drizzle costs more, but this time we’ll do it free with your remake.” Because that’s our store procedure and I didn’t want this guy to make anything worse, so I go to take the frappe and dump it but this girl then looks shocked and yanks it back.
“You’re gonna dump it?”
“Yes, sorry I have to because you drank out of it and would like a remake.”
“Can’t she have it?” She points to a friend, I say no and she huffs and gives it up. I groan mentally knowing there was nothing wrong with the frapp she just wanted a free extra. Cold bar was backed up as is but I remade it anyways.
The SM though taps my shoulder, “You need to check the quality of your drinks-“

I don’t think I even acknowledged it because I was so busy and it didn’t hit me until they stopped doing hot bar to go out of the kiosk to my shift, who was stocking the food case, and began to go on and on to them about checking the quality of my drinks.

The thing is, I had been coaching him through the number of syrup pumps and espresso shots all day. I hadn’t even minded all too much, but now he was practically telling on me for not knowing how to do my job. My shift watched me make a few Frappuccinos pretty close to me then had me make her an extra frapp to taste. She said it tasted fine and I had been doing everything right.

The tension was still there after the fact and I felt uncomfortable and almost guilty for this new guys attitude. I left shortly after but it still left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Why and how does this haughty and rude guy get a SM position when he doesn’t care for others, can’t perform, refuses to take advice, or aid in anything? I am genuinely worried about his poor partners...

This is too long and probably rambling but I just wanted to get this off my chest.