I hate that this is a thing. This company, and the job, has gone so far off the deep end. I got cussed out a few days ago over a drink. The worst part is, the company doesn’t defend us against this awful behavior and instead encourages it through giving customers who complain and behave inappropriately gift cards and apologies when us employees haven’t even done anything wrong. Even if we’re trying to enforce a company standard that they’ve instructed us to enforce, if the customer doesn’t like it we have to “make the moment right” which is code for this company is spineless and will support customers first and foremost before ever supporting its employees.

I no longer feel like a “partner” working here, I feel like a robot being taken advantage of through mistreatment by customers, I’m never fast enough for the demand of this job, and I’m overworked, underpaid, and defenseless against customers who are rude, straight up mean, entitled, and adult toddlers throwing tantrums over a damn drink. It’s an awful feeling to be so underpaid yet worried I’ll get in trouble and my job will be in jeopardy at any given moment if I don’t please upset customers, who are generally upset because of unrealistic expectations this company has set for the customer experience.

Starbucks wants customers to get their orders magically quick yet still have a high customer connection? Wild idea: staff stores adequately with enough employees during all store hours so we can actually put some effort into interacting with customers rather than being so burnt out try to do 5 tasks at once with a skeleton crew, figure out a store layout that makes some damn sense for store operations, remove the drive thru model since y’all wanna emphasize “hand crafted beverages” with 8 modifications that simply don’t work with a drive thru system or remove insanely unrealistic drive thru time expectations, and stop being so money hungry.

It’s impossible to constantly cut labor, yet keep enforcing unrealistic job expectations and making a smaller team do more work with the same crappy working conditions and minimum pay. Support your employees, put an apron for once and realize the sh**show this job has become so maybe y’all at the top in corporate can make some in-touch decisions for your employees for once.

Sorry for the rant, I’m just over it and I’m over acting like it’s normal that we get yelled at by customers/adult toddlers.