So I am a barista at one of those Starbucks inside a grocery store. I work there part-time as I have another job as well. Described below is an incident I had with a manager at the store that I simply had to share.
For the sake of anonymity, I'm going to call this manager “Tiffany.”
I want to preface this by saying this was the first time I had ever spoken to Tiffany. I think she's a front-end manager of the store so there's not a lot of crossover between her department and mine.
So Tiffany came over and told me and my coworker that one of us had to push carts. Without waiting for any response from either of us, she walked away. Please note that it was not only raining at the time, but I had seen lightning about ten minutes ago. Because of this, I turned to my coworker to express concern about going outside during a storm. Tiffany, who was several feet away at that point, turned around and started saying “It is your job” as she stormed back over. (Neither of us said anything about it not being our job)
It was at this point that I addressed Tiffany and told her that I didn't think it was safe for us to go outside when I had just seen lightning a little bit ago. Tiffany said that it had to be done “so that customers can have carts” and that I was being disrespectful. I told Tiffany that I wasn't trying to be disrespectful and I was just concerned about the safety of the situation. It was at this point that I was starting to choke up a bit because I regrettably have the tendency to cry when I get frustrated. Her response to this was to mockingly ask “what, are you going to cry?” (I don't think I even processed this comment fully until after the interaction because who tf says that to an employee??) She also told me that I needed “to grow up.” I'm pretty sure she assumed I was a teenager because a lot of the staff is made of teenagers and I do look relatively young. When I informed her that I was in fact over 20 years old and told her not to talk down to me, she said “I can talk to you like this.”
Tiffany also threatened me multiple times. She told me once “you can probably just go home,” as though she was firing me (which I don't actually think she has the authority to do). She also said “just wait until July 1st,” presumably to mean that once Starbucks closes for a remodel I would be under her management and she would be able to have me do whatever she wanted.
Mind you, this was also occurring right by the entrance to the store where multiple customers were able to see.
Tiffany ended up just walking away when it became clear I wasn't going to give in to her demands, so my coworker and I just went back to work. I went to the back to pull supplies and when I came back, my coworker told me Tiffany had come back and said “I hope you don't share the same sentiments as your friend.”
I've had plenty of shitty managers before, but I have never had one talk to me like this before, let alone during our first ever interaction!
I already sent an email to HR and the manager that actually handles my department, but I learned not to trust managers period a long time ago so my hopes aren't that high.