Imagine if Franz Kafka wrote also H.P. Lovecraft fanfics, then add fruit flies and the Peter Principle. - Barista, Shift Supervisor Starbucks Employee Review

-Management from top to bottom- your average store manager is nothing short of a garbage fire, rife with corruption, underhanded and unethical practices and a complete disregard for all partners lower in the hierarchy. District managers are no better if not worse, encouraging this type of behavior and reinforcing it at every turn. - In regards to the above, Partner Resources/Business Ethics and Compliance are absolutely powerless to intervene in anything that is not appropriate for legal arbitration. Even then, a system is in place within the management cabal to ensure that partners with real concerns about real issues are first silenced and then either outright separated for contrived slights (ensuring no Wrongful Termination suits) or face constructive dismissal (including schedule punishments, a paper trail of arbitrary correctives in order to disallow lateral transfers, denied merit increases through skewed and unfair reviews that cannot be feasibly challenged, harassment, sabotage, etc). Constructive Dismissal is a difficult thing to prove, and such is why management is encouraged to first create and then maintain a paper trail so that should authorities such as the EEOC, OSHA, NLRB, etc be contacted, said partner can simply be written off as a "performance issue, problem partner." -Day off requests are rarely if ever taken seriously if they are even allowed in your store; your Partner Availability Agreement is only considered a suggestion and, depending on how invested your SM is in their store, you will be scheduled far out of bounds during times you are unavailable (school, other job, family requirements, etc). -Unsafe working conditions including a total lack of ergonomic safety equipment and training, coupled with an unsafe work speed demanded of partners; such creates a high risk environment for injuries large and small, and your average barista is quite lucky to walk away with only lifelong carpal tunnel syndrome. This is made only worse by the lack of chemical safety training and routine encounters, sans proper training or equipment, with bodily fluids (urine, excrement, blood, even ...others..), generating a high risk of exposure to bloodborne pathogens and disease. -As the company has expanded exponentially since its near implosion between 2006-2008, it has abandoned its core values and its own Mission Statement. To recover, and recover Starbucks did, the company has consistently created shaky excuses to raise prices, cut labor across the board and understaff its stores (especially during the holidays), and increase employee turnover in order to remove partners making more than 25¢ above that state's minimum wage and have been with the company longer than one year. Put in perspective, 100% turnover is considered both acceptable and ideal in one fiscal year. -Little to no opportunity for growth or advancement; it is an unwritten requirement that you have what Starbucks is looking for in regards to unspoken quotas and media-friendly statistics- without those conditions, work ethic and top-quality performance do not matter. The personal nature of promotion goes one step further in that, regardless, it all depends on whether or not you are simply liked by management. -The temptation of promotion itself is used as a tool by management to exploit their workforce, speaking honeyed words of growth and advancement while they themselves reap the financial benefits of the frontline partners' work, and yet have no intention of ever assessing those willing partners. -Proper training is difficult to come by without veteran or caring partners in the store willing to train newhires,- with such high turnover rates and so little employee retention, quality of employee is thrown to the wayside in favor of unskilled, replaceable workers earning minimum wage. It is not uncommon for newhires to be put on the salesfloor and expected to function on their first shift with minimal exposure (a handful of videos and perhaps short walkthroughs of the bare basics if one is lucky). Some customers will pick up on this and intentionally, should they see a new face, make it their mission to harangue, hassle, swindle or embarrass that new partner. Even after twelve years, if you work a shift at a different store for a day, such a situation can be quite literally expected to happen. -On the topic of customers, most are actually alright. Some are absolutely amazing. Just as well, some are not, but that's just how foodservice and retail work. The true con (pun intended) is how partners are expected to treat them- despite the company mantra of Anticipate, Connect, Personalize and Own, you are somehow expected to "establish a personal, genuine connection" with each and every customer in under ten seconds (in order to keep transactions per half hour/cars per half high), yet also expected to aggressively upsell without exception. In short, a transaction, not a person- and a waste of time if they will not always spend increasingly more and more money. -In regards to what is to be upsold, many of the new initiatives (Evolution Fresh, Starbucks packaged lunches, especially La Boulange and Starbucks Via, etc) are lackluster at best, and universally despised and reviled by customers at worst. Stores however face repercussions for not meeting unrealistic sales goals. Many of those launches, La Boulange in particular, were pushed ahead with no regard for target markets and demographics but also cost and waste management, coupled with more unrealistic sales goals. -Again, unrealistic sales goals paired with a lack of labor support. Two to three baristas (the literal grand total punched in and working at the time) will be expected to generate numbers to the tune of 40+ transactions per half hour with average tickets above $7.50. With only one barista making beverages and one on both register and warming station, and with the new Playbook deployment system a third partner disallowed from assisting customers in favor of minor menial tasking (or not even a third at all), these numbers cannot be met when one factors in not only the variable speeds of baristas, hangups and bottlenecks at both the register and the handoff plane, but the simple fact that warming items have a cook time on average of a minute and ten seconds and, properly calibrated, the standard Mastrena Automatic Espresso Machine has a hard timeframe of ~27 seconds per drink (if one completely disregards the human element of speed, training, health, store setup, etc). -There is no work/life balance. If it is your day off, as a supervisor you can expect to be called in, especially if your store manager doesn't feel it necessary to show up to work despite scheduling themselves. Conversely, you can expect your hours to be cut significantly regardless of the printed schedule- store managers may schedule you for 38 hours, but will attempt to send you home early for 10+ of them that week and fight you every step of the way, making it next to impossible to plan a budget or even afford basic necessities. An unethical trick of store management is to not make a notation of the hours change on the posted schedule so that potentially, at a later date, documentation can be construed as the partner voluntarily acquiescing those hours as opposed to being sent early to "cut labor." The words "going to school" or "taking classes this semester" are ultimate taboos, which is ironic considering Starbucks' very minor tuition reimbursement program and new discounts through Arizona State University's online curriculum. -Regardless of make or quality, you will probably have to replace your shoes every six months, as the sheer stress and overall use quite literally will rip them in half, wear them soleless, melt to your socks, tear at the seams, fill with mocha or otherwise destroy them. -Finally, your car, should you be able to afford one (including gas, maintenance and insurance) will forever stink like a charnel house of stale coffee and rotten frappuccino splash damage.