I’m a shift who has had a series of escalating issues with a barista in my store, with little recourse through our store manager. I know our SM means well giving them many chances, but at this point, I don’t feel comfortable working with this barista due to a long history of retaliation and I feel unsupported and unprotected, and now that this barista is finally facing consequences, I have reason to believe they’ve started retaliating against our manager.

Who do I go to to protect myself in this situation? DM? Do I call the partner line? I’m genuinely afraid they’re going to file a false report against me with no paper trail about their conduct and that I’ll be left facing consequences for an incident they made up. They’ve only had one corrective action in months of problems. I have no issues with any other baristas or supervisors or with my manager, no write-ups/corrective actions or complaints. I’ve worked at several other stores and have working relationships with baristas, SSVs, and managers at them, and I can say with confidence at this point that I have tried everything to make this tolerable without going beyond my SM. Today the barista outright yelled at me during peak and I frankly can’t take it anymore, knowing they almost certainly will not get in trouble and that if they do, they will lash out. Every time our SM has even had a conversation with them about something they’ve done, they take it out on me.