Have a new partner at my store who did a no-call, no show and has missed several days of work. Ever wonder why baristas are allowed to break all kinds of rules and do no-call, no-shows and not get fired? (No-call, no-shows are a firable offense.) I decided to drop my retail facade today when I got to work and saw what kind of day we were gonna have when a regular customer came through the drive-thru. She could tell something was wrong by my demeanor, and she said, "I get it, I'm a manager of a retail store." (She manages an Old Navy.) I blurted out, "I get tired of this company not firing baristas who need to be fired." She said, "The reason they do that is they're scared of getting sued for wrongful termination." "But I've been fired from companies for all kinds of little reasons." "Have you ever worked for a global, multinational corporation?" "No."

I was also assigned on the daily coverage report to work both drive-thru register and drive-thru order during peak. I'm pretty sure that my manager does those assignments. We were projected to have sixty customers an hour and had an out the window goal of 45 seconds. We had a ton more customers than that. Also, my manager has been scheduling baristas for noncoverage hours when they're really working coverage.

My boyfriend's advice was to let the customers feel the brunt of the understaffing. If they have a bad experience, they may not come back to our store, which will hurt our store's profits. Companies like to understaff because it saves money on labor, and a few recovery cards is cheaper than keeping a full staff. Don't give out any recovery cards. Now that I think about it, it's strange that Starbucks even has such a thing as a recovery card.