...what are the best shifts to work for tips? And how much can I expect in terms of per/hour measurement? I have read that it's generally tye closing shifts on Fridays and Saturdays. I live in a big college town so I'm curious how much of a difference that makes. Any info would be appreciated.
So hey, I've been a barista and occasionally a shift Supervisor since 2003 or rather I had been until I was rather coldly separated (their corporate speak) and I have a lot of things to get off my chest about my time with what used to be a coffee company that thrived on delivering top notch customer service. THAT is the company I was intrigued and excited to work for in 2003 so I think I will lind of start there and work my way to the current day disaster that this soulless company has become. And let me tell you, those Starbucks United folks are dead right about the issues with the company but our store was one of the few in the area who didn't organize. Big mistake as it turns out.
Anyhow, when I started at the company the most complicated beverage you could order was a Caramel Frappucino. Boy, those were the days! Maybe you'd occasionally do a shaken iced tea and you would have some pastries to warm up. And you flash forward to modern day and you got how many breakfast sandwiches/egg bites/wraps available? But I digress...back in those times you could really just concern yourself with connecting with the customers while also making what WERE high quality beverages. You still had plenty of ways you could modify drinks, but you didn't have stickers on cups that are 9 or 10 lines long.
So everything used to be so much more manageable and everybody was much happier working there. This also pre-dates the "EVERY STORE MUST HAVE A DRIVE THRU!!!!!!!!!!!" Era which I think really started off at least in the Bay Area of California around 2006 maybe? Starbucks used to have some really great, unique café stores that were great meeting places and just felt like a cozy home away from home...the Third Place! It was very real for a long time I feel like! And then they started shifting into the full Drive Thru/grow the business at any cost model that they have really only doubled down (if you can call it that) and started to not only keep building only new Drive Thru stores but closing down the unique, cozy stores. This would continue until they almost completely eradicated anything cozy about the company with the full embracing of mobile orders and later on deliveries. If you've worked with the company for even a short while you know that these are very extremely impersonal and strictly transactional. You really feel like you're on a non-stop conveyor belt just trying to do your best to keep up.
Well...Covid happened and mobile orders/deliveries were almost exclusively where all the orders were coming in. Obviously this made sense to pivot and give these options and promote them. But as soon as Covid was no longer an issue they also stopped caring about partner feedback and the partner experience. We had seen a lot of things like Sweet Receipts and Frappuccino Happy Hours that were nightmarish times to work. But at least for a small period of time they said...okay, we are going to really try and improve the partner experience. I remember we had a store meeting as well as personal one on one meetings with the DM about things we would love to see. It was exciting after all this time, like 18 years or so with the company for me at that point to hear that they were focused on actually making changes. I remember hearing flexible perks, ability to tip on credit/debit, and layered Fraps were things that a lot of partners brought up. Well, after Ribbon Crunch and Mocha Crumble they no longer had any new layered Fraps...until very recently with the return of S'mores and Orange Cream Fraps. So they eventually decided they'd break that promise and the only thing we got out of that renewed focus was credit/debit tipping...which of course they really only did because they knew EVERY partner wanted more money but Starbucks had long, long, long since gave up on the notion of competitive pay.
And all of this directly leads us to the Brian Niccol/Back To Starbucks Era. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 What a joke, huh? This really was the straw that broke the camel's back in my morale and I'm sure the majority of partners. It all sounded great on paper! Alright, let's turn things around by saying good things about how we would be returning to focusing on being the premier purveyors of coffee IN THE WORLD! And we would make sure to really put a great deal of focus on the in-store customer experience! Hah! How long did any single part of this last? Cool, we got a terrible looking pastry case that is very hard to navigate from a customer viewpoint, we got ugly serveware that only served to fully clutter our shrinking counter space and generated more work in the form of doing extra dishes now. Did we get any comfortable furniture? No! Not my store anyway, which is a high volume store that does the best DT times in the district.
Basically at the end of the day they gave up on everything they spent so much money and energy on launching. Turns out it didn't work because the customers knew they weren't fully committed. The Vertica brewers are great but were strangely prioritized over Mastrena III or Mastrena Pro? I think I might have read something about that mythical machine like 4 or 5 years ago...maybe? But yeah, I think it says a lot that in my time with the Siren I only saw one Espresso machine revision. Now, I'm not an Espresso machine scholar by any stretch of the imagination but how could there not be any upgrades or improvements in such a large period of time? Either they've just ignored advancements in Espresso technology or there hasn't been any? But yeah, Starbucks has proven especially this year that they do not gives two squirts (don't you hate it when customers say squirts in reference to pumps) of Brian Niccol's urine about the quality of the Espresso coming out them poor machines. I believe it's a widespread issue (our regular technician says as much) that these machines are absolutely terrible at pouring consistently quality shots of Blonde Espresso. Which of course is extremely popular due to them being in Shaken Espressos and every new latte. All the while, we've been told that the shots can sit there for longer than 10 seconds... that you can no longer wait until you get that little star on the screen before using them in a drink because it takes too long to wait for several bad shots to go through before the machine automatically "calibrates" and you can only come to the conclusion that they just do...not...care. How you gonna train me and coach me and tell me that Espresso shots die and become bitter and nasty for what? My first 20 years or so? And then just randomly decided that no, it's okay, they're actually perfectly fine!!! Trust us! 😜
In summary, for every one good thing they've done in my 23 years they have done at least-AT LEAST- 3 or 4 things to make the experience for every single person involved with the Starbucks Experience. I'm just going to rattle off some more issues I'd like to put out into the world just to alleviate so much of the frustrations I've dealt with for so very long!
*um, what the fuck is up with deliveries? Like, seriously? How people gonna complain about how expensive Starbucks is and then spend I don't know, 50 percent more for it when you include the upcharge and fees, to get it delivered? The company has at least de-prioritized those stickers in the DPM so those poor delivery drivers (I've done over a 100 Door Dash deliveries) have to sit there for a long time because Starbucks also doesn't really give a fuck about delivery orders. The company does THE bare minimum to get those deliveries out the door. Think about it. There have been ZERO improvements in any of the supposed delivery station. Same small shopper bags that aren't tall enough to seal the bag up if they have Trentas or Venti drinks with whip cream on them. You can't comfortably put any food items in a small shopper bag with two drinks in it so often times you can squeeze them in because the alternative is a GIANT FUCKING BAG that is big enough for four drinks and some food. But then if you have only the three or four drinks you have to either use another small shopper and make sure it gets attached to the other bag or you out them all in that larger bag...but then there's that gap where you can sort of wedge a two drink carrier in there vertically to hopefully prevent the drinks from sliding around in that gap in the bag. There have never been any delivery specific bags, right? Simply giving stores some bags that an inch or two taller, that have a self adhesive strip on it, and a receipt to put on the bag...would be greatly helpful. But again, they do not care. How is McDonald's of all places, sooooo much better at deliveries? Also, deliveries really only end up hurting the experience for café guests and mobile orders
*next up, mother fucking mobile orders! For the love of God, if you are a customer, please, please, please stop ordering complex orders full of often times three or four "fancy" matchas 😡😡😡🤡🤡🤡 and a bunch of food items and then pulling up one or two minutes later to pick up your order. You know damn well that app told it would be ready in 10-14 minutes. This is mainly just an issue with the customers and not necessarily the company's fault. Or is it? There is literally nothing partners can do to convince/persuade/punish customers for doing this. You can say only, "Oh, we got that order a minute ago but we will do our best to get that ready for you by the time you get to the window" and sometimes there is only one or two cars in line so yeah. And the scheduled orders have been worthless. It's too complicated for some folks to understand that when you schedule an order to pick up an order at say 10:30 am and you're at the store at 10:20 isn't ready? Ya done messed up something very simple. Again, nothing you can say about it.
*what is up with new beverages every two weeks? I might be mistaken but hasn't there been something "new and exciting" every two weeks or at least once a month for this entire calendar year? Chasing trends, constantly in the social media news cycle, all that shit. I guess it worked because the company had a good fiscal quarter or something? Yeah, you got everybody constantly trying to remember what the recipe is for a line of new drinks and you maybe have it figured out a little bit due to repetition only to have to learn another bunch immediately afterwards or rather you're doing the training for the new new line of drinks coming next week! Oh, and Erica I think her name is on the training modules is just so excited to share them with you! Going back to the previous points, what does an Island Colada Blended Energy Starbucks Refresher or an Iced Double Berry Protein Matcha have to do with being the premier purveyors of coffee?
*THE MENU! It's constantly growing and spreading like a fucking virus and thanks to good sales in the last fiscal quarter, the virus will continue to spread and become absolutely out of control! Look out, it's behind you! Lol Except it's actually not because that big beautiful digital menu board they got up there behind you only got maybe 10 percent of the menu on it? Got real big beautiful pictures of coffee, though, right? Nahhhhhh, check out that colorful layer Island Colada Refresher and gorgeous Iced Double Berry Matcha! So sexy, yes? "Um, do you guys have Java Chip Frappuccino?" "Well, let me tell you something...we don't have that by name anymore because we simplified our menu. But if you want I can charge you extra and press a few extra buttons to ring that in for you." Obviously this isn't exclusive to drinks as food menus are particularly sparse in drive thru. Like, I thought maybe the purpose of the digital menu boards was to maybe have it cycle through all of the different drinks/food items we have. Nope. That apparently makes no sense. Also, don't put one of those boards in the drive thru. Make it as hard as possible for everybody involved to order in store and drive thru. I assume it's because they actively hate anybody who wants to order in café or in the drive thru. Like, the company is saying...are you fucking stupid? We clearly want you to only use the app.
*Rewards program bullshit! Yeah, I got shit to say about that as well! Why, why, why, why doesn't the company make it more worthwhile to Rewards members to use a linked credit/debit card on their app? They must not know or care that a ridiculous amount of time and effort is wasted by customers and partners alike when someone is using their app only to scan and then using another form of payment because there's literally no benefit of them to attach a card to their rewards app. I used to get frustrated with customers that did this but understand that the company doesn't reward them for time saving improvements. Again I guess it's because they want only mobile orders.
I've gone on for a long long time now so I will wrap it up by saying that the only thing I will miss about working for Starbucks is the relationships I built up with so many people over the 11 years I've been at that same location. Unless I just go sit in the lobby (lol) I don't think I will ever get to say goodbye to any of them. And if you're wondering why it was that I was fired, it's because I supposedly said some offensive things/jokes/innuendo that offended at least one partner in the store today to the point where Ethics and Compliance investigated me and found I was guilty of harassment. The DM talked to me a couple weeks about it and I denied ever saying any of those things (I really can't remember saying any of them as they were unfamiliar) but it didn't matter. No chance to transfer to another store to get some distance between me and the anonymous accusers or a verbal warning or a corrective action. Just leave immediately. After 23 years of a flawless record in regards to that sort of thing? And this is the gratitude I get. The company has completely and absolutely lost it's soul. And while I'm stressed out about not having a job, I'm thrilled with the notion of never working there again!
PS. Just change the fucking drink size names already, yet? Just switch to small, medium, large, and extra large like everybody fucking else! You're not special like that!