Starbucks – “It all depends on your upper management and how you make it out to be!”

Pros

flexible hours, great benefits- health, dental, 401K, stock, & considerably easy job (all you have to do is make coffee!)

As i said in the headline, it really depends on the competence of your management. If they know the ins and outs of the daily inventory, types of customers, how to schedule and deploy baristas/shift supervisors (Some people are meant to work in the morning and some at night). I find that their attitude trickles on down to the rest of the workers. I had a great manager who was dedicated to his job and always tried to do what's fair. I was one of his closest friends but he never showed favoritism and always called me out on things that I did wrong or could have done better. Of course, he did love me because I had a great work ethic.

My manager gave me constructive criticism on a daily basis so it was easy to grow and learn. There is a method to it all. You have to have the proper deployment, have people assigned to tills according to their hours and capabilities. Once, I had one of my baristas assign a till on the wrong side and it ended up being a nightmare with giving out breaks and lunches.

The stock is the best part of this job- Starbucks is a company where they lost a ton of their revenue but still made a profit. That just shows how smart and business savvy this company is.

Cons

You have to deal with customers who understand that Starbucks has a "Just Say Yes" policy and will abuse it to no end. I once had a customer who tried to return an OPENED cd and threw the line, "Well, my friend works for Starbucks and you have to say yes." My asst. manager ended up giving her the refund but threw away the cd in front of her.

One of the worst things is if you have incompetent or apathetic co-workers (Called partners in the company). I knew a lot of partners who decided that working at Starbucks was another way to indulge in laziness. This results in "bottleneck" lines and unhappy customers. Yes, working at Starbucks is not all that luxurious but I still took pride in my job and worked hard.

Another con is when you work 35-40 hours a week and have sensitive skin, all that steam will make you sweat and dry out your skin. My fingers were so dry by the end of my 4 years working there, that they started to crack and bleed while working. I wore gloves but I found they were streaked with blood by the end of my shift. If I took a couple of days off, my fingers would heal completely but as soon as my shift started, they were cracked. Of course, this is a rare case but still a fair warning.

Tips are not that great. You work 35-40 hours and you still make about 90 bucks for a week's worth. I worked in a high volume store but because of the recession, people are less willing to give tips.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn how to do your job. Make sure you understand daily inventory because when we run out of something as important as cups or syrup, customers will definitely b*tch and moan about it. It then turns into the baristas'/supervisors' fault. What we did was when this happened, we upgraded their drinks to the next size.

Learn to communicate with your shift supervisors. Definitely don't nitpick at flaws- we work hard at maintaining the store.

Don't play favoritism amongst the partners. It's a small group and people can smell it a mile away.