I’ve been working at my store for 10 months now. I like working at Starbucks and I like my store, for the most part. My coworkers are wonderful and I get along with majority of them. However, lately, management has been very poor. The current manager at my store has been here for a bit over a year now. I’m just going to give a bit of back story about her since this rant circles around her.
Right off the bat, I’m just going to get it out there. She is SO BAD! She is an absolutely terrible manager. I could go on and on about it, but I won’t otherwise this would get wayyy too long. Anyways, she has quite a bad reputation in my city’s Starbucks community. She does not get along with a lot of people. Additionally, she has managed 5 different stores in the past 2 years. How is that even possible?! Just the fact that she hops around stores is already a major red flag. She is also hitting her 1 year of working at Starbucks this year, meaning she is able to go on a 1 year coffee break. However, if she decides to go on it, it means she will not come back to this store, or even get hired by Starbucks again. Ok next, I will talk about my store’s situation.
First off, there’s literally a fruit fly infestation at my store. It’s absolutely disgusting and has been going on for a month too long. Us partners constantly bring this sever issue up to her, but she straight up does not give a shit. How is this even legal??? We shouldn’t be working in this dirty environment, especially for a multimillion food chain company! EVERYTHING gets contaminated— it’s nasty as hell. This then leads to a lot of waste because we obviously have to throw out contaminated items. But no, it gets worse! When we make drinks or heat up food, the fruit flies swarm around them and sometimes even GET INSIDE the drink and sandwich/pastry bags. It’s so horrible and overall disgusting. I feel so dirty whenever I’m working there and I’m angry and frustrated whenever I’m on the floor. All of us are. Yet, the manager is not doing anything at all.
Secondly, we are always short staffed. I’m so tired of doing 3 and 4 plays on the weekend. I’m a student so I mainly work weekends, and literally every weekend we have at least one call out. I don’t think I’ve ever worked a weekend where we had enough people on the floor. Nothing is ever stocked or replenished, everyone’s performance is unpolished due to frustration. I find it absolutely unfair that I get paid the same as everyone else when I am working triple the amount of work I should be. I understand our pay doesn’t work like that, but you know what I mean. The fruit flies also don’t help at all and it greatly affects our quality of our drinks and food for obvious reasons. Again, we brought up the issue with scheduling to our manager and guess what she said? She said, word for word, “it is what it is.” This cannot be okay.
Thirdly, not really a complaint, but I am highly considering switching to another store. The store I’m at right now is about a 13 minute drive away, but there’s another store closer to be which is like a 4-5 minute drive. I think I want to transfer to that store, but I’m afraid that the same cycle will repeat. I haven’t picked up shifts at that store before, because I never see any shifts offered there, but I’m planning to visit them to see if there is any availability there. However, like I said before, my SM will maybe go on a coffee break. I know this is a choice I should ultimately make on my own, but should I wait it out? I like my coworkers, but I gotta put me first. Every partner at my store is fed up with this. So many of us want to quit. During the time she has been manager my store, countless of good and old partners have left— either quit or transferred stores.
The silver lining of my manager not caring is that she does not care about your availability or time off requests. She will always accept them regardless of what they are. That part I like. Since I am a student, I can have a couple of days available or time off whenever I need to for extra studying time. I’m not sure if any other manager is as “chill” as that. She also does not care about call-outs, which is why she has not done anything about the short staffing. But that part doesn’t affect me that much as I don’t ever call out. My manager also does not work weekends, which technically is not allowed. I believe store managers have to work at least one weekend, right? Anyways, yesterday, my coworker snapped and sent a LONG paragraph expressing her concerns with the store and guess what she said?! “Please call me on Monday instead.” This basically implies that if she’s not on the schedule, she will not pretend to care about us or the store. That’s why she said “call me on Monday” because she will be supposedly working. This is unacceptable. Absolutely absurd.
Yes, we have reached out to our district manager and I believe he will take some action. However, he is a busy man as he has a lots of other responsibilities and stores to manage, so immediate action is not possible. I’m just so frustrating. Sorry, this was long, but if you made it this far, thanks so much for reading! If you get this far, I need some advice about transferring and what the process is like. Thanks again for reading!! I hope your store is better than mine.
TLDR: I’m hoping to transfer stores as my store is honestly a shit show. My current manager is not taking action at all and is overall unsupportive. There is a literal fruit fly infestation and I feel dirty working. It shouldn’t be legal to work with pests swarming around you while you’re dealing with food.