Warning: long story time below, if you don’t read it all I understand but if you work at Starbucks, this is how bad working in one can get….

I worked for my first store for over a year before I decided it would be a great opportunity to be a part of a new stores grand opening. The first step in that process was the become a barista trainer because we needed lots of new green beans for the store. I was super excited because I thought I’d be a great trainer and I eventually wanted to become a shift in the near future. I almost immediately regretted that decision because the very first week I was training, they gave me three, THREE people to train all at once all at different times per day on different days. There was no cohesive schedule I could follow to keep them all on the same page, in fact there were days they were supposed to work/be trained by me when I wasn’t even scheduled. It wasn’t fair to me, but most of all wasn’t fair to them. They didn’t get the time or attention they needed to learn. Two of the three had a very hard time learning hot bar and pos to which they struggled for months after the training period was over. My manager saw them struggle for a long time and decided I wasn’t a very good trainer.

Then the store opened and it was nice and clean and organized for maybe a day or two before partners who got away with doing very little fell back into their old ways. It seemed like the openers had to do everything for themselves while the closers would stand around and make TikToks. But yet no one was written up or even reprimanded, it all just fell onto the shoulders of the openers and mid. We would constantly bring this up to our manager who blamed it all on the shifts who blamed it all on the baristas. But I’m reality the closing shifts were just as negligent at the baristas they worked with, so absolutely nothing was getting done about it.

So me and my naive ass thought maybe I could actually solve some of these issues if I were a closing shift. I got the interview where they asked me about my barista training experience which obviously wasn’t very good. So needless to say I didn’t get the promotion- however they did tell me they want me to get “practice” being a shift by learning how to do food pull, play call, and all the other responsibilities that a shift does. I said sure I would totally be down for that before I realized that sounds very much like they’re asking me to do the job without actually paying me to do said job. I asked other shifts I knew at other stores if that sounded normal to them or if they had to do that before they got promoted and wouldn’t you know it, they all said no.

After that I decided I was just going to mind my own business and just be the best barista I could before I could transfer again (can’t transfer more than once every six months) and for a while things were okay and I was getting a healthy amount of hours. But all of a sudden the cuts came and we were scheduled barely enough people to run the shift. I had a third of the hours I had before I transferred to be a part of the new store opening. On top of that I was being scheduled pre closing shifts where I worked with people who don’t do their job and constantly get away with it.

For the past few weeks I have gotten incredibly angry at least once a day because of how I was struggling without any help. There was never any customer support when I needed it, no one ever helped anyone set up a station before someone else would take it over. Every time I was on bar for the past three weeks I would run out of everything (lids, ice, cups, espresso, sleeves, syrup, milk) and no matter how much I asked repeatedly no one was listening and every time I would have to do it myself which meant stop sequencing just to have the basics to have my bad function.

Today was the last day of all this I was willing to put up with any of this. One of our bars malfunctioned and needed to be shutdown for the rest of the day so there was only one cold bar and one hot bar for the whole store (drive thru I should mention). But when I had to take over bar, I was doing both so someone could go on their ten. I asked that barista to help me stock before they went off. They’re response was “there really isn’t anything you need stocked”. When In reality everything needed to be. I asked if they could at least grab milk before they went, and they just disregarded everything I had to say. I was slammed by both cafe and the drive thru orders, again running out of everything, again not having help even when I was asking. The other partners on warming and pos were perfectly content just chit chatting. I should probably mention one of those people who were laughing having a great old time unaware I needed help was the training assistant manager who was the play caller. He wasn’t wearing a headset or was the shift in the back doing their pull so I had to drop everything to ask for them to get me some stuff I needed. They snickered and made faces at each other when they realized I was angry. They asked me what specifically I needed and I said “I need a cycle, I need everything!” The shift grabbed me a couple sleeves of cups and lids and a few gallons of milk but just stopped their to continue what they were doing so I was still running out of espresso and ice and back ups. And the assistant manager the very one who didn’t promote me to shift, stayed planted on their slow station not lifting a finger to help me stock or make a drink.

That’s when I realized he was just as negligent and incompetent as the shifts under him and the manager above him. During my interview to become a shift he was telling me how he felt the current shifts have a lot to work on in terms of taking accountability and keeping an eye on the whole floor all at once. But it was all bullshit because he was just like those shifts who he blamed for all the store’s problems.

The second that person got back from their ten (which mysteriously took over 20 mins) I said I was done. The shift said I okay just take your half and relax. And that’s when pulled the asm to the side to say I was leaving because of the same old bullshit that happens everyday. He claimed he didn’t hear me when I asked him and the shift for help, so I guess he was just snickering and making faces at my shift for no reason then. He told me to at least talk to everyone. The barista whom I took over for also claimed they didn’t hear me, which they definitely did because they told me there was nothing she needed to stock for me. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and just said I shouldn’t even have to ask for her to prep her station before takeover it’s something that we all agreed we would do when the store opened, especially when I was doing bar for the whole store. The shifts excuse was more believable than the others, she was trying to figure out who was going to come in because there was a call out by one of the closers. Which was fine but didn’t change the fact I was still screwed over by everyone else on the floor.

I told the shift I was going home for my mental health and they understood. So I left. When I got home I called my manager to let her know what happened. I elaborated everything in this post to her and gave her my notice effective immediately.