I spent a short time at Starbucks and it’s safe to say the best thing about this job was the people I worked with.

Would I recommend anyone to work here? Maybe. Anyone that I truly care about? No. By the end of my time at Starbucks I felt like I was going nuts. The pay is not there for the work expected of us. Starbucks is a fast food establishment with overpriced coffee not a cafe in Paris or the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Corporate is greedy and entitled with their outlandish expectations for how partners are meant to conduct themselves. I mean how am I supposed to “de-escalate” a tweaker running around the store knocking drinks off tables because we won’t give her a free one? I sure as hell am not going to go up to her and tell her my name… I’m going to run up and tell her to get out. The de-escalation training was fucking ridiculous. You’re telling me that if a Pervy man who is making my fellow partners uncomfortable by repeatedly sexually harassing them that one of us has to go up to him, introduce ourselves, ask their name, and tell him we want him to stay but he can’t keep doing what he’s doing? We have to lie and say that we want the weirdo to stay? Hell no. There should be zero tolerance for any kind of freak show behavior. I don’t know about you guys but it’s pretty easy for me to politely order, wait 2-6 minutes for a drink, and get on with my day. Corporate is literally an apologist if it makes them money.

I had a lovely shift lead at my first store be bullied by the SM and the DM when she tried to report various concerns behind a creepy partner that we had.

I had customers speak to me in ways that I have never been spoken to in my twenty-some years on this planet. Not even my parents have disrespected me like this. I’ve been called more names than you’d hear in a boy’s locker room.

My last store had so many crazy houseless people on drugs that when I opened I had to keep my head on a swivel just in case. We had a man outside lighting random trash on fire which lead to a small brush fire outside. Every other day there was someone on drugs making a scene in the store. How does that not qualify us for hazard pay?

Anyway, I’ve made some of the greatest friends working at Starbucks so for that I am grateful I really just hope that things change for partners. My friends (as do you all) deserve the proper pay and treatment for what’s expected of them. I fully support unionization and hope to see some great changes in the next coming years.

Your mental health and safety matter. Don’t let anyone make you feel like they don’t.