I was a 5+ yr partner who left in the past couple months. There were other factors (a better opportunity came up) but by the end of things... man was I frustrated. Bad store management, and upper management that either wasn’t validating, or whom themselves were breaking covid regulations.... There’s only so much you can do at the barista and ss level.

Add in that good customers are more likely to stay home, and problem customers don’t care as much about being at a coffee shop in a pandemic, and everyone’s on edge, and we suddenly have to find a line between being a customer service coffee shop representative and treating every customer like a five year old who needs to be taught how to wear a mask correctly....

I can say as a SS when I left, covid also only seemed to make SS to SS and SM communication worse. Trying to implement block scheduling, weird availabilities, etc, I rarely knew what was going on, or saw my SM, or saw half of our SS team. You see so many things not getting done or getting done wrong at your store and it’s like... Either you don’t hold people to standards because no one else is, or you become the shift no one enjoys working with because you have to remind / coach someone of something every five seconds. Having to coach so much can be a serious mood killer for all sides honestly.

Yeah I left twice due to overall poor management by corporate plus bullying from managers. I'm at a licensed store now and although we aren't allowed to tell customers to put masks on, I'm lucky to work in a state where like 99% of them wear masks voluntarily.

I've been able to coordinate with the other lead baristas (we aren't officially recognized as SSVs because our store hierarchy sucks but we have the additional training it's stupid) and we have really good communication. We're actually allowed to follow policies and standards, and there's almost no drama. Best decision I ever made, and I make 50% more than I did at corporate.

Corporate is a mess. Make the moment right used to mean 'find a solution for the customer within our rules so they can have a satisfactory and consistent experience.' Now it means 'do whatever tf they want regardless of policy. If they complain you get in trouble, and if you break policy you get in trouble.' They say they want to provide a consistent customer experience, and yet they continue to drive out the experienced baristas while refusing to allow you to enforce company policies. There's no winning.

I wish I had better advice for you, but this is what I have:

1. None of this is unique to Starbucks. Most of the places where you will work will be like this in one or more ways. A lot of working is learning to not take things personally and let things roll off your back.
2. Sometimes people micromanage and are generally shitty because they don't know how to manage their own stress. It's not an excuse, but an explanation, which can go a long way to helping us deal with them.
3. You will probably never get paid enough to deal with the shit you encounter at work.
4. Feel empowered to ignore certain comments and to make your own choices. If you get fired, at least you'll know you did it with your instinct intact. But I highly doubt it'll come to that. Can you tell a customer to put on a mask? You decide. Got a crap comment about your shirt? Ignore it, make the SM make it a formal complaint if they really mean it. Remake today, or another day? You choose. Do what makes the most sense. You don't be rewarded for making sense, but you'll feel less crap about it later.

I don't know if this is helpful, but this is the sort of advice that will get you from one day to another at almost any job, this one included.