Pros
*Amazing Benefits! Free bags of coffee each week and complimentary food and beverages every day you work. Free premium Spotify account, headspace, and 20 free Lyra healthcare visits. Medical/Dental/Vision is available to all employees. Their continued education program offers a free bachelor's degree from Arizona State University.
* Extensive Training for all roles
* Sense of community with regular customers and peers
Cons
* Excessive turnover—can not hire staff fast enough. The hiring process for an entry-level barista role takes an average of eight weeks. Stores already understaffed can only afford to train one or two new employees at a time. In Portland, the area hr recruiter was laid off, removing that additional support to help screen applicants. The recruiters would support entire districts in screening candidates, scheduling interviews, and organizing job fairs.
* Lack of Accountability—As a manager who has taken over multiple locations with Starbucks, I can attest to their lack of accountability. District Managers are not holding store managers accountable for upholding company policy, and store managers are not following company policies either. It makes it very challenging to take over a new location without it, resulting in turning over most of the staff. I think most managers realize how hard it is to get a store fully staffed, and they make concessions to policy/procedure and allow for conduct that violates Starbucks policies.
* Company Culture—Starbucks is a very Cult-Like culture creator. You need to be obsessed with Starbucks, or you won't fit in. It would be best if you volunteered your free time, attended all team-building activities, befriended all of your peers, and spent your free time with Starbucks employees. It is a company that sucks you in and makes you feel like you are a part of something, but if you fall out of their graces, they will turn on you and ice you out quickly.
* Poor Quality of Life—If you work in a store with staffing challenges and culture problems, you will be managing through many callouts. As the store manager, if your team cannot fill shifts, you are responsible for coming in and covering them. I worked many open-close shifts and have had to cover barista shifts because coverage could not be found. A peer of mine worked 21 days in a row due to keyholders being ill in her store. Shortly after, she worked another 20 days in a row. She shared that her District Manager told her she needed to figure it out. No support was offered to provide her with a day off each week.
* Incidents—Depending on the location you are assigned to, you may have to manage escalations and incidents. I requested to work in low-incident locations and was placed in multiple high-incident stores. I took de-escalation training to build my capabilities when engaging with a patron violating our policies. Ive had to ask people to stop doing drugs on my patio, restrict people from assaulting customers in my lobby and my parking lot, call the police when someone refuses to vacate your restroom and engage someone with a weapon in the lobby to ask them to leave. The role of a Store Manager is treated more like the role of a social worker. I spent many days protecting my team from having to engage with a mentally unstable houseless patrons. Our job is to serve coffee within our community and not run a houseless shelter and police every person inside. This component of my role made me not want to come to work most days. You never knew what kind of problem you would have to deal with.
During my tenure with Starbucks, I took over four different locations throughout the Portland market. Each area had all of these problems, which are systemic and not specific to one location.
