or when they complain about simple modifications like soy milk or blonde shots or light ice. none of those things takes that much extra work. Im not bothered by any customizations unless the customer is rude. that’s our job?

i agree so many baristas at my store are just nasty like leaving milks out or not caring if they pull the wrong shots, cleanliness etc. Honestly, would you want YOUR drink served like that..? Just awful!

and like the amount of times i’ve seen ppl jus do straight up gross shit like not wash their hands after handling money and touching customers food with their bare hands…. and they find a way to blame all of this on anyone but themself.

“i wasn’t trained” “my store manager makes us have fast drive thru times” bro shut the fuck up!!! stop making excuses for urself!!! ur gross

As a Shift supervisor that started out at 16, and now 19, it is really hard to lead when the baristas just don’t care. Like I get the whole
“Fuck this job, I hate it here, let’s just leave”
But we still have a job to do and we are getting paid some good money to do so. The bare minimum isn’t even done anymore. It’s really hard

I think it’s funny when people at my store want to get paid more but never do their job correctly. I’m like you want to get paid more when you mess up now? Right….

I hear you and agree with most of it. But if I can’t have my phone out, I’m going to wear my watch. Too many shifts won’t keep track of breaks/lunches being ran, and I’ll be damned before I work 6-7 hours straight with no respite.

Also, it’s not like my watch is going to fall into somebody’s drink. Nail polish might, sure. But not a wristwatch lmao

Some weirdos in this bih 😭 can’t forget the mf who held a dead fly over someone’s head and complained that they got fired 😭😭

Soooo true. I worked for Starbucks for 7 years and it was so exhausting taking pride in my job and making things correct and doing things the way they’re supposed to be done, meanwhile watching coworkers half ass and inconsistently make customer’s drinks poorly and not care at all about it. Now as a customer I can totally taste the inconsistency. It sucks spending 5 dollars on an iced coffee that is watered down because they brew it on top of the ice instead of adding the ice after it’s brewed. But then there’s that part of me that doesn’t want to complain because I know that baristas get treated poorly on a daily basis but it’s just become a poor company at this point.

Sometimes I’ll get on bar and a few baristas will leave a huge mess. I remember there was a huge pool of mocha and milk. I had to take the time to clean up after them :,) My supervisor always tells me it’s not my responsibility and I should tell them to clean after themselves because what they are doing is unfair to me. I just hate confrontation. 😭 She told me I could say “ (enter supervisor name) said you have to clean after yourself” if it helped.

i’ve worked at tim horton’s, taco bell, and cane’s and they were all MUCH more strict about dress code and jewelry and for example at taco bell we had to wear hair nets and a hat or visor every day. starbucks has the LEAST strict dress code i’ve EVER worked. don’t get me wrong, starbucks could do better in a lot of other aspects. but dress code isn’t one of them in my opinion. i mean, we don’t even have uniforms!!! we get to wear our own clothes and beanies !!!?!? that’s incredible to me. as far as not shaking drinks, if it’s like a tea with no sweetener and no water, i don’t always shake it. but that’s about the only time. if it’s a water base refresher, i’ll shake it 5 times instead of 10.

I agree with most of that. Like, the actually shaking drinks and making them to standard, it irks me when other baristas don't bother to. Or touching food with their bare hands 🤢

I just can't find it in myself though to disagree with people who wear watches or nailpolish/fake nails. I don't personally because I'd rather not take the risk of getting in trouble, but it's a stupid rule. I know it's "against health code" but really, I can't possibly fathom how that has anything to do with a health code. Our fingers aren't in the food and drinks so why does it matter.

no fr they all talk about not making things the standard way because their manager enforces fast dt times but how come my store has low times AND everything is made to standard??? 🧐

Yuppp this is why we all got trained. I get batch blending etc, but genuine harmful things is just not ok. Also the amt of times I’ve had to remake a now angry customer’s refresher/shaken drink bc a barista didn’t shake it so it tastes bad is astounding.

“if you don’t care why should you get paid more” is such a bad faith argument because obviously the vast majority of people would care more if they were paid more. that’s the whole point

edit: dumbfounded by these downvotes. this is literally so general and true for any paid position in any field

Yes and when u call them out on it they say ure rude etc like ok

I work at an independent coffee place and we are allowed acrylics, bracelets, jewelry etc. and we get perfect scores from the health inspector. I personally think the policies at Starbucks are too strict on that front, the other stuff I agree with tho

Thank you for this! As a very seasoned partner I was seriously worried if Starbucks could survive the people it had been hiring the past couple of years. In my own store I see a few of these types and I try to instill some ownership and pride if not the basic you are being paid to do this job. Your post and the majority of the comments I have read give me hope.

no forreal people will be like “i’m gonna act my wage” ok then do the bare minimum of your job and make the drinks correctly?? or don’t commit health code violations??!!

Yeah baristas can be really entitled to their shitty behavior or breaking of health code because the job is difficult which isn’t an excuse to be bad at it

starbucks is so toxic. i feel the majority of people that work here either don’t care at all about this job or it’s almost cult like on the other end of the spectrum. luckily i work with fairly normal people right now.

to play a bit of devil's advocate here (not saying anything to health code violations, don't mess with people's safety), we make often times north of 20 dollars of profit for the company in as little as 1-3 minutes and only make 15/hour. so i'm not gonna say shit about taking shortcuts here or there. using the wrong ingredients is kinda crappy, but like as long as the drink tastes the same and looks the same why care?

at this one store by my house, the baristas are ALWAYS wearing acrylic nails and it drives me insane. not only is is nasty, but my manager would send us home the instant he caught us with fake nails, we couldn’t even wear gloves over them… (we did keep a bottle of nail polish remover in the back for normally painted nails tho)

don’t get me wrong i can’t stand those people on tiktok that are like “baristas complain too much” but i also can’t stand when baristas are like “ugghhhhhh somebody MADE me put 4 pumps of raspberry in their strawberry açaí 🙄🙄 why do customers have to be so difficult 🙄🙄”

I’ve covered for stores in the past with baristas like this and it’s usually because of the atmosphere unfortunately. Look at the interaction with their shifts and SM. Look at how they coordinate with one another during a rush (9/10 it’s a disaster). Anything that looks like that is not working makes these baristas stop caring.

From all the commenst ive read it sounds like some of the people you work with are lazy but my coworkers are great. Idgaf if theyre wearing a smartwatch since we cant have phones too check for dates or important messages. And when our store doesnt take shortcuts of any kind our times are usually hella long, but we are one of the busiest stores in our state (im just telling you what pur DM said).

fish rots from the head down.

why aren't they getting coached over their acrylic nails or other dress code violations? Why aren't they being retrained on drink SOP when seen not making them to standard? Why aren't they coached on attitude?

Not everyone has the same work ethic and it's up to store managers to find the right people as well as cut anyone that isn't up to expectations. Leads are responsible for making sure standards are being met on their shift and work with management on having the right staff.

Management is also responsible for proper and on-going training. Trainers are responsible for setting up staff for success and keep the staff up-to-date on new recipes, etc.

Corporate is responsible for making sure all that happens on the store level.

​

Basically, the reason you're seeing partners like that is because starbucks is operationally a hot mess right now. Good staff leave bad stores because they don't want to be carrying all that dead wood. Only people left are indifferent or new and it's like a riptide, that store will be bad until the DM cleans house.

So glad i posted this here and not on the other starbucks subreddit. cuz it would’ve been locked the second anyone started arguing

literally

[deleted]

[deleted]

[removed]

[removed]

I'm not with Starbucks anymore but I feel bad cos I was one of those partners in some ways, like I made sure to take off jewelry and such and would use the right milk, but I would just swirl refreshers in the cup instead of shaking them or halfass some drinks. I know it's not an excuse really, but I had some not so great SSVs, two of which got fired after HR was called on them for hateful comments against minorities (including myself!) and they used to leave the store for over an hour and leave me on my own, then get after me if the times were high or I had a line lol. I wanna have my own coffee shop someday and I'm gonna make sure to focus a lot on quality, even at the cost of speed, cos I do love making drinks and I wanna make them right.

i will keep my watch on idgaf starbucks wont stop me from knowing my daily calorie burn

Starbucks company reaps what they sow? People of this generation will work at the pace they are paid and act accordingly as they are treated, ever store varies but you don’t know what that person has been through at the hands of Starbucks

[deleted]

i used to work at a high volume drive thru and i will say not shaking the refreshers is not lazy when you get like 12 of them in a five min period

Eh you don’t have to shake most of the drinks. Pink drinks sure, but even the shaken espressos taste just as good stirred/swirled around.

[removed]

[deleted]

Oh baby you do not get paid enough to care this much

okay i’ll admit to being guilty to the london fog being made with black iced tea one. i never ever do this unless i’m solo barring and busy. i’ve only done it *maybe* 3 or 4 times at most. but otherwise, i steep the earl grey bags