there was a huge storm in my city overnight last night, causing major power outages. as a result my store had no internet meaning no credit card payments, very unreliable sbux app, no mobile orders, and no label stickers.

i work at a very high volume store and because everything had to be labeled by hand, drive thru line was out way into the street and people were parking on the street because the lot was filled. cafe was eventually temporarily closed but wasn’t until well after peak and by then we had improvised our way into at least somewhat of functional system.

the store nearest to us had an entire power outage, so their SM (who my SM is dating and lives with) as well as their entire crew of morning partners, came to our store. with peace and love, a relatively large number of partners who are not experienced in a store setting and high volume and busy as ours just got in the way. more people doesn’t bring the internet back

we opened at 6, an hour late to begin with, and for the entirety of my 8 hour shift we were giving away huge amounts of product for free. like, several thousands of dollars worth by the end of the day. when people caught wind of this, they would try and add on items and get upset when we would refuse. people were confused as to why the people who had cash or the app (seldom, if it worked) had to pay but the card people didn’t. then people caught wind of THAT, and suddenly less and less people happen to carry cash on them.

my SM was unreachable until about 8:45am when she finally showed up. she needed up going out to the drive thru, taking orders, and TEXTING them to a barista who would then label cups and food bags.

my question is, how were we even open? how is this running a business? we just all struggled immensely to get through our shift while customers still bitched and got free product after free product.

furthermore, if this affects our labor and our hours, which i wouldn’t be surprised if it did, that would be the final straw for me and admittedly, a lot of partners at this store. a lot of us are just waiting for some bullshit like this to go down before we walk the fuck out. this was handled incredibly poorly by management and the lowest payed employees took the brunt of it. it’s fucked.

EDIT: to add, my SM pulled at the SSVs into the back (we really needed them on the floor) and proceeded to talk to them like children about how their attitude at work is souring everyone else’s, and how their negativity is ruining morale. unbelievable.