The fact that some stores don’t have regular clean plays really bothers me 😬 Thank you to all the baristas/SSVs who are taking the initiative to have a clean store! You guys are amazing 🙌🏻🙌🏻

You should go to the DM is the SM doesn’t do anything. Actually. say to your SM “hey this is a health and safety violation and is putting partners AND customers at risk. If you’re unwilling to “get back to standard” and be clean, I will take this to *DMs name* to be fixed.”

BC it is a violation. Period. End of discussion.

Literally same. For 2 years I’ve worked at a high volume DT store that regularly doesn’t earn the labor it should and hasn’t been successfully run by a SM in YEARS. There have been at least 3 times now that I have single-handedly done massive deep cleans for my entire 8 hour shifts. Unfortunately it never stays that way no matter how many partners verbally appreciate it or recognize how nice it is for ‘x’ to be so sparkly clean. The most recent time (which will probably be my last) I got on my hands and knees and scrubbed *all* of the bar/BOH floors, grout lines and baseboards, under cabinets, machines, everything. Literally 12 hours later I watched another SSV overflow the BOH drain with grounds and do the absolute bare minimum of cleaning it up after he watched me on my hands and knees the day prior. It was then that I decided never again.

so my cafe only store is really tiny. all of our countertops as well as our ice machine are bolted to the floor, so cleaning under/behind them is virtually impossible. i spent eight and a half hours single-handedly scrubbing hard to reach areas and removing mold. the areas underneath the ice machine and the front of house counters do not get cleaned and when i finally decided to peak under there, i was horrified. the floor was black. i have allergic reactions (congestion, body pains, chills, burning and itching eyes, fatigue) every time i go to work and i’ve finally found the culprit. we also occasionally deal with roaches and flies/gnats. i told my manager about it and that something needs to be done, it’s got to be a health hazard right? he just brushed it off and i don’t know what to do. does anyone else work in really dirty stores? any suggestions on how to deal with this?

Omg do I feel for you. Please don’t let yourself become that person or your store will totally exploit you. Also, TAKE PICTURES and document everything in My Daily because if you go over your SM’s head, the he-said/she-said, etc., will not go in your favor without the paper trail.

I’m also my store’s janitor and standards stickler and my newer SM low-key has it out for me because I’m constantly trying to coach people, including her. Her favorite SSV is a mess who likes to say he’s holding up the whole store, and he’s also spun stories (likely with her) that led to me getting written up (30 minutes before my 3-week vacation - my SM came in specially during my closing shift to present it to me - and it made me ineligible for transferring out, which I planned to lock down on my vacay) for being “unprofessional” in that my coaching makes people “feel bad” because I’m not treating people with “dignity and respect” which goes against SBux mission and values. At the same time, I’m the only store coffee master and one of the go-to barista trainers - but I can’t seem to do anything to curb the immediate decay/entropy into all these bad habits because there’s no accountability - my SM and that one SSV just puts all the pressure on the few old-timers (3+ yrs; I’m almost at 6 yrs) who remember how things used to be, lol.

As an example of my SM’s priorities - we turned out to be the only store in our district that was open on Thanksgiving (we all traditionally have Thanksgiving, Xmas, and New Year’s as a purely voluntary work day). Our store also didn’t have enough volunteers. But she didn’t tell anyone and actually scheduled people, anyway (including me), rather than polling other stores for their volunteers, and she didn’t have the decency to be there with us for our forced open. We were so slammed with cafe/mobile/deliveries that our machines started breaking down and the morning/mid was not able to do *anything* to transition to closing shift. No backups, no restock, no cleaning, no trash runs, no tills counted. It happened to be the golden boy SSV on shift that morning, and when the few of us for close showed up and balked at the place being wrecked, he said it wasn’t his problem and we would have to deal with it - they had a sh**** morning so now it was our turn to have a sh**** night.

We did call our manager - and instead of believing what we told her, she said she would have to check the live metrics before shutting down mobiles - which she only did for 30 minutes.

I think she’s angling for a corporate promotion, but she’s doing it at the expense of her staff, and our customer connections score has dropped to the lowest I’ve ever seen at any store. Most of us who care about the store are traumatized and quite burned out, but we’ve all started to get written up for minor infractions or found ourselves scheduled drastically less or drastically more so it’s been difficult to speak out (I cried during my latest one-on-one and told my SM I was burned out - and I have dysautonomia, which flares up with extreme stress and leads to fainting - my SM seems to think it’s a psychological issue, like Victorian hysterics, rather than the neurological condition it actually is - she responded by adding ten more hrs to my weekly schedule, while others are about to miss benefits eligibility in the upcoming audit and lose their ability to pay for school). We’re all being squeezed out, I think.

I don’t know if I can get an ethics complaint started or if it’s even worth it. I’m considering applying for a medical leave of absence to try to get to the end of the year. I qualified for a good ACA insurance plan for 2023 - insurance was the only reason I got a job at SBux - so I will finally be able to hang up my apron at New Year’s, but I’m not sure I can even make it until then with all the callouts and 2-man closes and messes left behind for us closers to try to get back into shape (we’re usually the ones who get in trouble if we can’t get everything back in order by 30 minutes past close). I really wish our store could get in on the union movement but instead we have extremely high turnover and a bunch if new, young part-timers who just aren’t as invested or even realize how bad it is and what their rights are…. I just need to get out!

I did this once and it wasn’t even my current store. I was a borrowed SSV for one of my old stores and realized how much neglect happened after I left. I was appalled that no one had said anything about the state of the store. Floors were literally black, countertops crusty under hardware that hadn’t been moved in who knows how long, brew baskets black, oven stone (old ovens) was practically ruined. I was there for 3 borrowed shifts and spent a big portion of each shift cleaning and taking pictures for the SM.

Bless you.

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Shit like this is why sbux needs to invest in some sort of cleaning service that'll deep clean our store monthly. Mines not this bad because my sm values a clean store, but theres never enough people to do enough deep cleaning where it truly counts because its hard to get to and proper clean in a half an hour, and even the clean plays arent enough during the summer especially.

As a closer I feel like no one knows how to clean even the smallest things throughout the day. It’s so gross when I clock in that I’m clearing countertops of inclusions and toppings and milk and water and ice. The floors are so gross and dishes piled in the sink. And trash can be overflowing everywhere. I used to stay past closing time to do a little more but I don’t care to do that now. I’m leaving by 10:30pm and I’m leaving a note of what I didn’t get to. 😉

I need to do this

That makes me want to throw up