To preface this I have worked at my Starbucks for almost 2 years now and before covid I really enjoyed the job. It is hard and my store is a very high volume store in a suburban area in Texas, but my coworkers have all been amazing and are the reason I have stayed despite being in school and the difficulty of being an almost exclusively bar partner at a crazy store.

Sorry for the rant. :)

Ever since covid started my store has been not enforcing temperature checks, just having partners check themselves and not go through the iPad program or be verified, covid wipe downs occur once daily at best sometimes not for multiple days, my manager and other partners wear masks that are not cdc approved and some even take them off when we close. Partners make their own drinks and drink them on the floor. I am the only person in the store who will tell customers to put on masks or to wear them correctly. Not to mention starbucks won’t require masks in drive through and we don’t have a barrier. Very few people in our drive through wear masks and yet we are still encouraged to make small talk with people who are less than three feet away from us. Partners and managers also eat in the lobby when our city won’t even let us let customers eat inside.

I am so tired of no one caring about covid even after multiple covid scares, my manager getting covid himself, and our city having an extreme covid problem.

I go to work every day with two masks on, wash my hands constantly, only eat and take breaks in my car and I am still terrified about bringing covid home to my family. At this point I either want to quit or write to my DM about the issues but I do really love everyone at my store and it’s hard to feel like I am telling on them and my store is severely understaffed at the moment. Further, I’m not sure she would really make changes to enforce the protocol. We also recently had a partner complain to the DM and everyone talked shit about them for weeks...

I know working at starbucks already puts me in a bad position for covid but I don’t think I should feel this unsafe every day. Has anyone else felt like their stores aren’t doing enough and/or talked to upper management about it?