Starbucks has treated its employees terribly within the last year, and genuinely it should stop seeing its workers as machines and start treating them like people.
I’ve been a barista for almost two years now and I sympathize with all the other Starbucks workers who have had their unions silenced all over the country.
In Ithaca, New York, Starbucks is closing down a store because of its “militant organizing activity,” according to a June 6, 2022 Vice article.
Starbucks Workers United is the union that Starbucks employees formed to advocate for their labor rights, non-discrimination policies, promise of mandated hours, health and safety regulations to protect Starbucks workers and more.
However, Starbucks’ corporation believes these unions don’t reflect the experience of all Starbucks employees across the nation, according to the same Vice article. The company wrote a letter to the White House about how Starbucks Workers United isn’t representative of the reality the workers go through.
So allow me to offer insight as a Starbucks partner from a messed up Starbucks store.
First off, the next time you go into a cafe, please just offer the barista a bit of kindness. We’d love a tip, but if you can’t, at least ask them how their day is. It can make a difference.
Because, honestly, my baristas and I are tired of being disrespected on a daily basis with constant ridicule.
I love suggesting new drinks to people and seeing smiles on their faces. I love making latte art, even if it is a shitty feather made from foam. I love tying on that apron. But the second I get yelled at for not getting drinks out quickly enough, I wanna quit.
Listen, baristas have to handle a lot on a daily basis and they aren’t nearly paid enough.
There’s a reason why Starbucks employees are currently unionizing all over the nation in order to assert their labor rights.
In December 2022, Starbucks implemented a policy where its workers are mandated to work a minimum of 12 hours a week, according to the Starbucks Partner Policy. Store managers are required to schedule each Starbucks worker at least 12 hours a week “based on the needs of the business.”
Basically, partners (which is how Starbucks refers to its employees) are required to work at least 12 hours per week, but “based on the needs of the business” managers aren’t enforced to schedule part-time workers 12 hours a week.
So far, I haven’t seen any backlash from the company if a partner doesn’t meet the minimum. However, it’s ultimately left to the barista to find these hours if they’re not scheduled to work the required amount.
Starbucks allows its employees to cover shifts at other stores since the standards of the company are the same at every store and the skills should be easily transferable, but that demands more from the workers to adapt and adjust to a different store’s needs.
An example of this would be working at a regular Starbucks cafe store but being scheduled to cover a shift at a drive-thru Starbucks, a partner would have to learn drive-thru training on the go and adapt that same day.
This happened to me. I was already working under 12 hours a week for the past month because the store I was working at was being overstaffed. Because of the transfer process with Starbucks, I was allowed to transfer to another city when I went home for winter break, and when I came back to San Jose most of my hours were taken by baristas who had been hired when I was gone.
One could argue that’s the nature of the business, companies hire more people during winter break and the people that come back after will only have the scraps to choose from.
However, I was promised at least the minimum amount of hours to work.
I had to constantly scramble and adjust working at two different stores during this time, trying to meet my hourly requirement with a severe lack of communication as to why I kept losing hours and needed to go to other stores to find work.
Not only that, baristas in general are overworked.
Starbucks doesn’t put a limit to how many mobile and delivery orders are put in at a store at a time, and when it comes to peak hours, I would have to stop my breaks to keep the store flowing smoothly.
The store that I worked at didn’t prioritize cleaning either, only keeping the doors open.
We legitimately had cockroaches in our cafe and were expected to stay open instead of closing down the store to get an exterminator.
And yes, I did watch that bug crawl into the espresso machine.
Especially working in Downtown San Jose, baristas have to be therapists, teachers and, sometimes, security.
In our training modules, we have to learn how to handle an active shooter in our stores and how to calm down a person who is disrupting the environment.
There have been too many times when I had to clean up someone’s pee or feces on the floor, feared hot coffee being thrown in my face and de-escalate situations I’ve never been prepared to handle.
Now this is definitely not all the corporation's fault, there have been many unhoused individuals who come to Starbucks needing a cup of coffee to keep warm especially in cold weather.
Because of the housing crisis and the lack of mental health resources in San Jose, places like your local Starbucks end up being their safe space.
I do empathize with these people because their respective circumstances are out of their control, but my store had to literally close off all indoor seating because of so many incidents which result from a city that isn’t cared for.
I watched as a shift supervisor had their hair pulled over the counter, having to defend themselves against an individual because the situation escalated.
Our shift supervisor had to protect us, and I scrambled at the register to find the security guard’s phone number.
I don’t feel safe as a barista. Not emotionally and not physically.
I’m here to make your damn coffee, I’m not paid enough nor do I have the expertise to handle the mental health crises of San Jose.
That’s the city’s problem, with Starbucks also to blame.
These last two weeks have been the hardest for me, I opened my schedule and found no available hours for the next week.
I had to figure out what I was going to do for food, applying to CalFresh online and utilizing campus resources to the best of my ability.
In the Starbucks Workers United webpage, the National Bargaining Committee has published proposals with feedback from over 6,500 Starbucks partners.
The proposals stem from the several issues of Starbucks’ treatment of its workers from partner safety and the ability to defend themselves against customer aggression to guaranteed schedules for both full time and part time workers.
I sent emails, I called, texted my supervisors, but inevitably had to go to the cafe to ask my manager why I wasn’t being scheduled at the store I’ve been working hard at for the last two years.
She just said she’s looking elsewhere for me to work and they couldn’t accommodate me.
I had no transparency, a significant lack of communication and blatant disrespect of my time and autonomy.
It is unfair that I, along with so many other Starbucks workers, have to go through this with no unions to support us.
Trust me when I say we do love making your drinks. We may not like making 15 frappuccinos all at once or an entire soccer team putting their drinks all on one tab, but we go through it because we actually enjoy being baristas.
I like being a part of the community and helping make that one good moment in someone’s day where they choose to get a pick-me-up at a coffee shop.
So, please treat your Starbucks workers kindly, unfortunately we’re not getting it from anywhere else.
