Starbucks – “Was a great place to work if you wanted to advance, now just good for a part-time job.”

Pros

Benefits are outstanding for a part-time job. If you like doing things for the community, this is a great job for that, their community service is outstanding. You'll love your regulars, and you can build a great little store family feel in the right place. Easy, although physically tiring, job at barista level.

Cons

Promotions are sometimes not worth it, if you can even get them. Going from Barista to Shift, you do all the same work plus get new responsibilities added on, and everything that happens on your shift is your fault. All for a dollar more an hour. I always told my baristas that they were to direct all complaints from management to me, because I knew that in the end everything was on me, and I was okay with that. The problem is that the work just piles on promotion after promotion. If you become an ASM, they you do the work of a Barista, a Shift, and an ASM. Same if you become a SM.

Promotions, at least in my area, have stalled. They'll tell you that of course you have an opportunity to grow, but in the same sentence they'll let you know they have demoted most of their ASMs back down to Shifts because they feel they made too many mistakes in promoting ASMs to SMs in the past (and I would say currently as well) and that they are currently hiring managers from outside the company. They want you to spend months with your manager, running around impressing them as much as possible with coffee sales and some such non-sense, and then if your manager leaves and you get a new one, guess what? You have to start all over with them! The promotions are basically all about kissing behinds and nothing about competency, which is why they end up with incompetent managers like the one my store got right before i left. I didn't want to see her destroy a store I loved, so I chose to leave instead.

LIke most places, it is a great company to work for but management will make or break if for you. And currently in the Miami area, management is not looking good. If you just want an easy part time job while in school or as a second job, then work here and stick to barista.

Advice to Senior Management

Change your promotion process after SS. ASM should be interviewed and promoted based on work history and experience, not on how much they can kiss up to the manager or how much they know and gush about coffee. SM need to listen to their SS. If you get a new store as a SM, don't walk in and ignore the SSs that have been there for years. We know our store. We get that you want to make it your own, but ignoring the SSs is a bad idea. No one knows the store or the partners better!