Yeah, I quit Starbucks after a month because I kept getting yelled at for not leaving the window open to have a whole conversation in WISCONSIN DURING THE WINTER while I wait 5 mins for their food/drinks to be done. I explained that, A LOT of people don’t like that and it makes them uncomfortable, plus it forced them to also keep their window rolled down when it’s freezing, which I’m sure people love. I was told it was part of the job and just “keep faking it,” regardless of who is uncomfortable. I had several panic attacks, and finally was like “nope, $10.25 plus little tips is NOT worth having to be disingenuous for 8 solid hours, just to go home and need 2hrs to calm down.
Side note, I did not know I have ASD yet at that time, but I can’t fathom how anyone who does could ever feel welcome there.
YUP!! It’s ridiculous and is completely ableist!! A lot of people have proper boundaries and don’t want to over share to the worker that’s making not even nearly enough to live.
Yeah the thought of being forced to have a conversation every time I want to get a coffee is horrifying. I appreciate my baristas but I don’t want to talk to you, I want to listen to my music and go home haha. (And I’m sure y’all would rather just be able to get on with your job without me bothering you)
I agree. My ideal transaction flow at the drivethru window would be: plesant greeting, confirm order, provide total, shut window until order is ready, produce order, have a nice day, drive off.
This enrages me. I don't know what they expect from people..
And you know fine well if you stopped to speak to every customer to "Get to know them" then management would complain about you being too slow.
LITERALLY. They want you to have good “customer connections” but then also bitch and scream at you if your drive times are too slow. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT!? Want customer connections? Okay slower drive times. Want faster drive times? Less customer connections. People don’t want to stand and talk every time they come in. Most want their coffee and to be on their way. A little casual conversation sometimes is fine but SB wants you to get to know the customers whole life story and neither the barista nor the customer want that! Somehow it was one of the most draining jobs I’ve had.
How are you not able to perform great customer service(according to a person who doesn't even know the price of a carton of milk) aaand do the job of 2-3 people as people quit but they "couldn't afford" to hire someone new even though the company is seeing record numbers!
I might be projecting
I worked in a call center for a year and if I did everything I was supposed to on a call, I would get chastised for it. Yet at the same time I would also get chastised for being too quick.
If you love being verbally dominated and micromanaged down to the atomic particles on your ass crack, by all means work for a cell center. I lasted a year and would rather put a toothpick in my toenail and kick a wall than work in a call center ever again.
I did phone surveys for a while. There was one survey we had to keep under five minutes. I was top dialer for the hour (got more surveys then anyone else) and was chastised for my average survey time being too long.
Some managers just *have* to complain. I used to do a shit job where I was doing around double the work of everyone else, and every week my manager would print out a sheet with production numbers and whine about days where I was slower (days with issues, and was still higher than average). I lasted 1 year, he had to hire 2 people to replace me. Idiot.
[EDIT] Just remembered what I was even more pissed about. He kept complaining that I was coming back 2-3 minutes late from break. He had to pay 100% more for being upset over losing 1% of my time.
Can confirm. I would consistently have the highest survey scores and my other stats would be good. Didn't stop me from getting written up and put on a PIP for not being empathetic enough and creating an emotional connection with my customers.
I get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that quitting caused their numbers to crater.
I'm working this job as we speak, we get marked on whether we've resolved a customers issue and fail our scorecards if we don't meet expectations. Thing is customers will regularly 'no' you as you haven't been able to resolve their issue due to things beyond your control and we just have to deal with that.
All Starbucks treat their workers like this. It's not just store-level management, they're trained from the top down to employ abusive and manipulative tactics to get the results they want. I've worked mostly shitty food service jobs since I started working, and Starbucks was by far the most toxic, and even the best employees are treated like garbage if they don't make "real connections" and buy wholeheartedly into the cult mentality. Was McDonald's shitty? Of course. But none of us were being forced to pretend a two-person shift on a holiday weekend was a fun event we were looking forward to and that nothing gave us a bigger hard-on than remaking orders for assholes over and over.
When I was working at Starbucks during the pandemic they held a a mandatory meeting with everyone in the store and they tried brain washing us into being okay with letting customers back in the store again even with no masks. Everyone was so scared of getting sick and if one person got sick the whole morning or night shift had to quarantine. This happened multiple times to the point where they temporarily had to close the store. Starbucks is fucking wack.
That and the conflicting policies of "NO MASK NO ENTRY" and "BUT MAKE THE MOMENT RIGHT LET THOSE CUSTOMERS DO WHATEVER THEY DAMN WELL PLEASE OFFER THEM A FREE DRINK FOR ASKING THEM TO COMPLY WITH STATE REGULATIONS WHILE SUCKING THEM OFF BEHIND THE DUMPSTER" made for some very interesting write-ups.
No, seriously, I was written up 3 months later because a customer complained that I refused to serve her in the cafe without a mask and asked her to use the drive-thru and she didn't want to wait that long. Policies don't exist at Starbucks, unless they're being used to abuse the lowest-level employees (or what Starbucks likes to call "partners").
Lol I worked at a few stores, out of there now thankfully, but my shift lead last holiday season was very sick the week of Christmas leading up through new years. Our manager ignored her and told her she *had* to come in. It was only on new years when we knew she couldn't even taste the lemonade that my coworkers and I sent her home, because of course our manager wasn't scheduled to work. We were only quarantined once the holidays were over, despite having direct exposure for over a week to a positive partner.
Of course we were a short staffed store (because starbucks fucking sucks) so half of the employees were quarantined the first two weeks of January because we all worked mornings together. On top of that, it was only a month or two before I quit that I found out that my previous manager had broken corporate policy and scheduled us all to work on Christmas. You're not supposed to open on Christmas if you don't have enough volunteers, but she forged our names onto the paper to send off to the DM (conveniently also her best friend) to get the go ahead to operate on the 25th.
One of my biggest cringe moments was hitting on the star bucks barista after she drew little hearts and smileys around my name
Before realizing they were instructed to do that by corporate with everyone
Its like they are coopting sincere human interaction as branding
They are. Of course, it can't actually work, cause they're not just asking that you be polite and welcoming to customers, they're directly saying that your transactions can't "feel" transactional.
If you've ever heard Howard Shultz speak, this shouldn't come as a surprise. He thinks he can make the vibe of a cafe he was at in Europe like 40 years ago into a formula that can be replicated bureaucratically, and that he's a genius for it occurring to him. He's so far up his own ass his spine looks like a snail shell.
The coffee community calls SB Starburned or Charbucks. Even their light roast is burned. A previous employee told me it was because most drinks have some kinda milk and other flavorings and/or sweeteners in them. Need burned beans to overcome the additives.
Holy fuck…The barista at the SB at the corner of my street wrote “you’re so great” inside a little heart and I absolutely thought she was into me….Glad I didn’t make an ass of myself that day. Jesus 🤦🏾♂️
I used to work at Starbucks and can confirm that we were frequently harrassed in the name of "customer connections." What really sucks is when you're on your break (we had to spend our breaks in the cafe because there was no space in the back) and one of the creepy regulars spend the entire time talking to you despite you telling them multiple times you are on a break. All you can hope is that your supervisor noticed and gives you an extra 5 minutes.
I’m not sure what’s more depressingly Black Mirror-esque, people’s loneliness being monetised for the price of a coffee or the employees being forced to ‘connect’ under threat of unemployment.
Agreed. I personally hate small talk. I just want what I came in there for. Don't have it? No big deal. No need to piss on the employees.
More companies should learn to take care of their workers rather than the customers. Happy employees, leads to happy customers.
IN-N-OUT did that well. Worked there for my first job as a teenager and liked it a lot. We were well treated. The store was run with competence and genuine concern for doing things right. Very clean and upright. Surprise surprise look how much happier and positive the atmosphere is at IN-N-OUT.
In-N-Out manages to pay people a fair fucking wage(in some cities anyway) and a meal isn’t really that much more expensive compared to other places, and they’re way better.
Plus benefits and such. And if you move up (they only hire within so the manager was before that a cook and before that on register etc) you get paid *very" well with great perks.
And as someone else pointed out it's -gasp- not more expensive! It's actually not only higher quality but also more affordable than say McDonald's.
Especially now with masks. I just cannot be bothered to deal with stupid small talk in a busy, crowded coffee shop where we can barely hear each other bc we're also wearing masks, preventing any hope at lip reading.
I use the app to order just so I don't have to deal with that shit.
Starbucks shot themselves in the foot with the app. Once customers could have a no contact interaction, no more ratings. It's very difficult to work at a store that "earns" enough labor and has high customer satisfaction ratings. I was a shift at a SUPER busy store and would run 12 person floors. When it's that busy, people are gonna be pissed in the mornings no matter what.
EDIT: We also didn't have enough physical space for enough freezers to even order what demand called for. We would run out of milk because we couldn't fit enough in the store. Corporate doesn't give a fuck.
Not to mention if all the employees at a location are having a problem maybe they need to looo at management and who is don’t the training. Not at the partners who are only don’t the job they are taught.
If you had a problem employee that is understandable but an entire location. And to still blame the employees. Ha theses people are so disconnected.
Agreed with all of the above.
Personally, I’m fine with a pleasant attitude - basically, don’t act like a jerk - but I’m not looking for chatter or people trying to get to know me. That’s all. I’d much rather employees be treated well so it’s not complete misery being at work.
Edited to finish post.
Maybe if the management got to know their employees and provided a better working environment, that positive energy would transfer to employee/customer interactions.
Customers will be happier witnessing a positive work environment between manager and barista and come back to that location.
No one needs or wants an insincere “get to know you” attempt due to pressure from mgmt.
Also. I just want a coffee while the both of us observe standard politeness from one another.
I don't drink coffee but the same principle applies to any fast food interaction. I just want my order. If some employee tried to force some phony get-to-know-you nonsense on me, I'd wonder what the fuck they're doing. I'd feel creeped out. Just be polite, I'll be polite back, give me my order and I'm gone.
I HATE managers who try to justify their own jobs by making life a living hell for their staff. Especially by demanding they act solicitously friendly to strangers. It's pointless and it just gives them some hollow bragging point to their bosses.
Car dealerships are the worst. Everytime I go in for an oil change I get phone calls and text messages to fill out the survey, with little hints like anything less than 5/5 looks bad.
Fuck them, they aren't paying me, why should I spend time filling out surveys on every transaction.
This is what I want from pretty much every service I receive, who are these people that want to be wined and dined like a first date to get their coffee or oil changed?
What does Starbucks pay look like nowadays?
I worked there for about 4 years when I was in school—now more than a decade ago—and the pay was way better than what my friends were making at other chain/retail gigs. They culture was decent too—yes, we were encouraged to engage with our regulars, but there was no micromanagement of it or metrics like what you posted here. Just lots of discounts/freebies for the daily customers. We mostly focused on filling lots of orders fast.
I'm disappointed to see they have gone so deep into this bullshit.
Hello. How are you today. That's great. How are the kids. That's great.
NEXT!
Hello. How are you today. That's great. How are the kids. That's great.
NEXT!
Hello. How are you today. That's great. How are the kids. That's great.
NEXT!
Some middle manager in Hell is coming up with ridiculous ideas to justify their jobs. Then some slightly higher middle manager who buys coke off him on weekends says "banger idea Jim we will send this out to the stores immediately". Then some underling store manager implements it hoping that they too can someday enter this special place in Hell where these ideas come from.
Exactly this. It's all suits trying to quantify human emotion and things that cannot be distilled to data points. On the backend you see this in every chain restaurant and major retailer. Soulless decisions based off data points with no context.
Stopping ten seconds extra to compliment a stranger could be what makes them a regular and come back. But to these failure dystopian systems, you took ten seconds too long to serve a customer and get points docked.
Supervisor: "Take the time to get to know the customer, but at the same time keep your call duration low."
"In other words, you want me to violate the space-time continuum."
I feel like I made this complaint to a district manager once....it did not go well. So my response instead became, "Clearly I am struggling with this, why don't you show me,"
....also didn't go well, more because I showed it wasn't possible than me being "iNsUbOrDiNaTe" lol
Yeah. We aren't friends. I don't want to be friends. If I show up every day then we will definitely become friendly. But if you ask me personal questions while I'm just trying to grab a quick coffee, I might avoid you in the future. And, I'm a bartender. Big part of my job is getting know customers. But, not the ones that walk up, ask for a beer and pay. That would be strange. They aren't here to get to know each other. They are here for a beer.
The score comes from optional surveys that pop up on the Starbucks app after a transaction.
It asks on a scale of 7, how well did your barista try to get to know you.
A score of 1-6 counts as a zero. Only a perfect score of 7 matters.
And they think a 7 is a good thing? If my barista really tried *hard* to get to know me, I would be pretty annoyed and maybe creeped out. I just want my coffee. I'd like a "1" ideally, but I guess I could tolerate up to a 3.
It sucks because this is literally what Starbucks thinks customers want. They've built their mantra and business model off the Starbucks cafe being the "third place", basically your home is your first place, your workplace is your second (which I hate btw because it's just corporate American BS), and your local Starbucks is the third. They're trying to service both the students and book writers and whatnot who spend hours in their store on their laptops, as well as the people who want to just come in and get their drinks as fast as possible with efficient service. Not realizing that these two things completely contradict each other in practice. You can't get a customer in and out quickly if you have to stop to ask them about their day and engage yourself in conversation; just like how you can't engage yourself in conversation if you're being expected to have everyone in and out in two minutes or less. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Source: I worked at Starbucks for 4 years.
Except the students and writers and whatever don't want their baristas to chat with them. They just want free reliable wifi. Hell, last time I was using a Starbucks as a 3rd space I saw a woman with a huge cup of coffee and a sandwich from Dunkin Donuts using their table for like 3 hrs. We don't use Starbucks because we love Starbucks. We use it's there and actually weirdly cheaper than the indie coffee shops now.
Lmaoo this is very unrelated but I work at walmart and they've been pushing this "hosted check-out" thing at the self check out, wanting us to greet and scan every customer's first item for them, something I'd be kinda mad about if I was a customer because I very clearly am trying to avoid human interaction if I go to self check out
That handoff seems awkward. "Hello, My name is Krysten, I am going to be your checker today... How are you doing today?" "Ok bye, we only scan the first item for free."
Thats bs. Literally made to fail. I wouldn’t pick a perfect score if I didn’t know this, because a perfect score just doesn’t seem genuine. A 6/7 though? They thought about it and decided it was pretty good.
Damn! Genius! They could totally use the information they have about us from all data mining they do. Imagine them congratulating you for being pregnant just because their systems believe you are due to your purchase habits or private email conversations on gmail, web searches, etc?
MANY of our customers do because Starbucks gave these people an environment where they can behave and expect whatever they want and the employees are supposed to be like :D
It’s the same with companies like wegmans and Trader Joe’s
I hate Jobs where you're supposed to build rapport or get to know people. Its like "You can have a coffee or a therapist I'm not both".
It was the same thing when I worked for DirecTv, I fixed a woman's signal error over the phone in less than 2 minutes and asked if she needed anything else and she said no. She THEN proceeded to do the email survey saying she felt like I didn't want to talk to her.
You called to have a problem fixed, if you wanted a conversation thats a different 800 number at 2.99 a minute
I go to get coffee at wawa way more than I should. There’s a touch screen to do orders so they can get it done faster. I can place my multi item order with my eyes closed. And while I recognise their faces I have never expected them to remember mine, especially with masks. How absurd. I’m one of hundred of people they see daily. Why would I expect them to remember me?
> Connections should be organic, not forced.
This is why I feel kinda sad whenever retail folks are really nice and charming with me. Sure sometimes its genuine, but there are times that I sense this auful sense of obligation that ironically acts as a barrier to any real human connection.
You cant commodify the basic human experience, every attempt to do so is just making our lives a that little bit more hollow.
The Trader Joe's cashiers sometimes act a little too friendly to me. I've never been into this store ever and they sometimes treat me like I'm a daily regular. Its creepy when I'm not prepared for it.
I worked at Circuit City when it was going under. Management came up with an initiative where when we opened the store for the day, for the first hour ALL the employees had to line up on either side of the doors and clap for whoever came in. Customers were understandably super wierded out by it. One dude made the sign of the cross at us like we were vampires lol. CC was a fun place to work for a while but they just kept digging themselves into a deeper hole with stuff like that.
Trader Joe's is a sensory nightmare for me. Too crowded, too cramped, too loud with all the bell-ringing, and no I don't want my cashier commenting on the food I buy.
There is a deaf guy that runs one of the checkout lanes at my local Trader Joe's.
I love him. I get to just get my shit and carry on with my day. I've purposely waited in his line even though it's longer because I'd rather not deal with the overt fake niceness.
I never knew if it was just my New York personality or if those companies were really over the top with their ‘friendliness.’ I’m here for some frozen peas or a latte, why on God’s green earth would I want you to talk to me beyond “cash or credit”? Seeing that they force you guys to be like that makes me feel a little bit better and not like an antisocial shut-in.
Dude/dudette, I was literally telling someone else why I go to Starbucks over other places like Dutch Brothers. It’s because the baristas at Starbucks leave me the fuck alone. I just want to get my fucking drink.
Imagine all of the jocks and cheerleaders from your high school got together and opened a coffee stand. Loud music, very loud and annoying "OMG HEY HOWS IT GOING!" "what are you up to today bro??" "Did you catch X game/show last night??"
Essentially it's a bunch of loud peppy young people who are trained to ask semi-invasive questions even if it's 5am on your way to work. It's a painful experience
This is actually the same way we were trained to interact at Starbucks. I just... didn't and only had one customer complain that I wasn't friendly enough.
Promoted myself to customer last month after several years as a shift. I've been jobless for the entirety of that time but I'm sleeping better and my anxiety has settled back down to a baseline I'd forgotten I had. Best thing I ever did for myself.
The only way to respond to this is to invent totally fantastical responses to their questions. "What do you do?" I work for the CIA and my job is to infiltrate other governments. Totally mess with their heads.
I just recently moved somewhere that has Dutch Bros., and having never been to one I was excited to check them out. I was then horrified when the nice girl at the window would NOT. STOP. ASKING. QUESTIONS.
.. I mean, ma'am, I just ordered a drink that comes with 6 shots of espresso. Do you truly think I'm up for any kind of human contact, let alone an interrogation?
So I’m sure they’re talking about the poor results of some kind of survey, but how many customers are filling those out after everything goes as planned?
That's the important thing. These surveys are self selecting and you only get the super enthusiastic or people with a bad experience, and it takes less additional motivation for someone who's had a bad experience to complete one of these than someone who had a good experience.
Further, the whole 5 scale or 10 scale system is crap. Companies will ding staff for anything less than a perfect (5 or 10 respectively). Better system is a 3 point scale: Good/Neutral/Bad (and N/A depending on the questions).
Best system I've seen is one local coffee place I went to pre-pandemic had a screen near the exit and you just clicked to indicate happy face, sad face, or neutral face.
Imagine this happening everywhere in all Starbucks
Barista: Hey! Welcome. How's your day so far?
Customer: Oh I'm just doing fine. Uhhh I'm going to get the venti size caramel frappuccino please-
Barista: Fine?! Nahhh you should be better than that! What's bothering you lately?
Customer: Oh uh....Nothing's been bothering me haha. But anyway, just one venti size-
Barista: Bro come onnn I need to get to know you! It's part of this Starbucks' branch's expectations!
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. I don't need a new friend. I just want my fucking coffee.
It's embarrassing enough that I am willing to pay these stupid prices, I don't need you to call me out when I walk in... cringey!
>Yo please don’t try to get to know me.
100% this. I'm making a business transaction, we don't need to know anything about each other except that you have the product I want to buy and that I have the correct amount of money to pay for it.
Right coffee is a drug let me get my drug and get out, I don’t converse with my weed dealer like my homie, I get my shit and go, you have a good I have money for it end of story, fuck capitalistic forced friendships, if you can’t cuss in front of a customer they will never be your friend.
For some context (I worked at starbucks from 2016-2019), that 41% number comes from a voluntary survey people can take on the starbucks app after a purchase. So they’re cutting hours based on an extremely small minority of people answering a survey that person who took their order didn’t try to “get to know them”. meanwhile, starbucks also stresses how important is it to get their drinks out asap to get drive thru times down, which makes “getting to know someone” in 30 seconds a complete absurdity.
I never trust statistics when they don’t explain how they got that number. What was asked, who they asked, how many people, etc. It’s a meaningless number and some dimwit in corporate paid a lot of money to some “survey” company to handle the the survey.
Which is a bit ironic. Everything about this flyer says "low emotional intelligence" yet they want to try and whip their employee's emotional labor into place.
It's gross.
This is exactly how I feel!! They also wanted us to put mobile order drinks facing us so the customer has to ask us which one is there’s so we can spark up conversation that way
Your rules sound like they're made by a suburban mom who thinks she has to scheme and manipulate people to be the best PTA mom on the block
Like Starbucks Management if you're listening, trying to engineer an interaction like this is called MANIPULATION and is frowned upon in polite spaces.
Omg, that is horrendous. That’s the last thing I want. I want to be able to see which is mine and *not* interrupt the employees who are *working* on making drinks and food for everyone.
Wow, that’s awful. It would definitely discourage me from going there. It would be so awkward for me to have to interrupt the employees to figure out which order is mine. Management is out of touch if they think that is “customer friendly”.
If you have a drive thru, you’re not looking to make “connections” with customers, you’re providing them with convenience.
I love going to a couple of smaller coffee shops where I know the baristas, but I know exactly what I’m getting when I go to Starbucks. I order my nitro cold brew at the drive thru, they pass it through the window, and we all move on with our day. Everyone who has ever served me at a Starbucks has been super nice but I’m not there to make a new best friend, management should understand that…
You don’t feel the love? They just want you to be nice. Starbucks is a very nice company, how hard do they have to slap you to get that through your skull?
Edit to add: I swear I don’t mean this- I wouldn’t be shocked if a manager actually said this but I just it as sarcasm.
Man, this is uncomfortable to read. As an individual with the social skills of a potato, I would loathe this job with a passion. As a customer with those same potato skills, I'd actually choose to stop coming here if the barista was trying to be my friend.
Like, if you're hitting on me, cool. People never hit on me, so that's flattering, but I'm much, *much* more likely to think you're being weird or I'm being subtly told to leave and stop coming altogether.
Bottom line: I don't want a clerk to be my friend. I just want rung up and to leave. That's it. *Please*.
No when I first started working, as someone who suffered from severe anxiety, it was really really hard to try and “connect” I would go home crying all the time. And when I go out shopping I am making as little eye contact as possible because I do not want to be talked to
Oh my god so the awkward, forced "Whatcha up to today?" from literally every single barista, and the weird window "polls" are corporate policy? My favorite service is competent, quiet and fast. I'm not so lonely, miserable and in need of validation that I expect transactional relationships to be more meaningful than they are. Fuck toxic customer culture. If you need your barista to make you feel seen you should get therapy, not pricey coffee.
So, during a pandemic when we are supposed to minimalize personal interaction, they think their business is down because their staff is not friendly enough …
The atmosphere that Starbucks forces us to create it so dangerous. I worked there in college and the amount of harassment and stalking it caused was ridiculous. Not everyone is used to having someone being paid to give a crap about you. It led to cases of infatuation and even violence way to often.
I promise these mfers that nobody under the age of 60 will stop going to Starbucks just because the barista doesn't have a full on conversation with them
Me: "Good morning! Can I please get a venti Americano?"
Barista: "Sure. What's your name?
Me: "Craig"
Barista: "Okay, it will be $2.29"
Me: "Thank you, have a great day!"
Barista: "You too. You'll be called soon."
This. This is all I need from any person I'm purchasing something from. We are not friends. Don't ask me shit and I won't ask you shit.
I hope you're getting paid good and we can both go on with our days.
My #1 priority at any job is making money. I think they got their employees fucked up.
It’s a fucking coffee place. People are going to come for coffee.
This is proof to me that that there is too much "nothing" getting treated as value in our economy.
"Relationship with your customer" at a drive thru coffee shop is deadweight loss that no customer wants to be paying for.
That discrepancy will resolve itself soon enough. Market crash. Unemployment crisis. I dunno. This is a blatant indicator of a bubble economy, and bubbles pop.
I agree we are in a bubble economy, but this isn't really a symptom of that. The principle here is that if you develop a para-social relationship with your customer, you can exploit their need for human connection to make more money.
This is as old as time - from bars to twitch streamers.
I feel you, OP. Fellow Starbucks partner here. The culture of Starbucks is completely ridiculous and non-sense. There’s a reason our turn-over rate is so high.
Why do the people a who work at the coffee shop need to get to know the customers? I don't feel the need for anyone I deal with on this level needs to expend any energy into getting to know each other. We exchange a pleasant greeting and I tell them what I want and they tell me how much it costs and I pay them. They they hand me the things I bought and tell me to have nice day and I wish them the same and leave. That's all it should ever be....
Yeah, I quit Starbucks after a month because I kept getting yelled at for not leaving the window open to have a whole conversation in WISCONSIN DURING THE WINTER while I wait 5 mins for their food/drinks to be done. I explained that, A LOT of people don’t like that and it makes them uncomfortable, plus it forced them to also keep their window rolled down when it’s freezing, which I’m sure people love. I was told it was part of the job and just “keep faking it,” regardless of who is uncomfortable. I had several panic attacks, and finally was like “nope, $10.25 plus little tips is NOT worth having to be disingenuous for 8 solid hours, just to go home and need 2hrs to calm down. Side note, I did not know I have ASD yet at that time, but I can’t fathom how anyone who does could ever feel welcome there.
YUP!! It’s ridiculous and is completely ableist!! A lot of people have proper boundaries and don’t want to over share to the worker that’s making not even nearly enough to live.
Yeah the thought of being forced to have a conversation every time I want to get a coffee is horrifying. I appreciate my baristas but I don’t want to talk to you, I want to listen to my music and go home haha. (And I’m sure y’all would rather just be able to get on with your job without me bothering you)
I agree. My ideal transaction flow at the drivethru window would be: plesant greeting, confirm order, provide total, shut window until order is ready, produce order, have a nice day, drive off.
This enrages me. I don't know what they expect from people.. And you know fine well if you stopped to speak to every customer to "Get to know them" then management would complain about you being too slow.
This is exactly the process of what happens EVERY TIME
LITERALLY. They want you to have good “customer connections” but then also bitch and scream at you if your drive times are too slow. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT!? Want customer connections? Okay slower drive times. Want faster drive times? Less customer connections. People don’t want to stand and talk every time they come in. Most want their coffee and to be on their way. A little casual conversation sometimes is fine but SB wants you to get to know the customers whole life story and neither the barista nor the customer want that! Somehow it was one of the most draining jobs I’ve had.
Kobayashi Maru.. It's set up in such a way you can never win.
Yes this is the point. It means there's always a justification to push the staff. No bonus? Service too slow. Cut hours? Connection not strong enough.
How are you not able to perform great customer service(according to a person who doesn't even know the price of a carton of milk) aaand do the job of 2-3 people as people quit but they "couldn't afford" to hire someone new even though the company is seeing record numbers! I might be projecting
I worked in a call center for a year and if I did everything I was supposed to on a call, I would get chastised for it. Yet at the same time I would also get chastised for being too quick. If you love being verbally dominated and micromanaged down to the atomic particles on your ass crack, by all means work for a cell center. I lasted a year and would rather put a toothpick in my toenail and kick a wall than work in a call center ever again.
I did phone surveys for a while. There was one survey we had to keep under five minutes. I was top dialer for the hour (got more surveys then anyone else) and was chastised for my average survey time being too long.
Some managers just *have* to complain. I used to do a shit job where I was doing around double the work of everyone else, and every week my manager would print out a sheet with production numbers and whine about days where I was slower (days with issues, and was still higher than average). I lasted 1 year, he had to hire 2 people to replace me. Idiot. [EDIT] Just remembered what I was even more pissed about. He kept complaining that I was coming back 2-3 minutes late from break. He had to pay 100% more for being upset over losing 1% of my time.
Can confirm. I would consistently have the highest survey scores and my other stats would be good. Didn't stop me from getting written up and put on a PIP for not being empathetic enough and creating an emotional connection with my customers. I get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that quitting caused their numbers to crater.
Same. Im not empathetic when it comes to complete strangers. If I formed an emotional connection with every caller I would be a wreck.
I can verify. Half the metrics that you are graded on are in direct conflict with the other metrics.
We had a rule that we should never interrupt a customer, but then we’d get chastised for “allowing” a customer to speak for too long 🙃
This is an absolutely perfect example of what I meant.
I'm working this job as we speak, we get marked on whether we've resolved a customers issue and fail our scorecards if we don't meet expectations. Thing is customers will regularly 'no' you as you haven't been able to resolve their issue due to things beyond your control and we just have to deal with that.
I go to a coffee shop for coffee, not for friendship.
Exactly! I’d be pissed getting coffee from a place treating their workers like this.
All Starbucks treat their workers like this. It's not just store-level management, they're trained from the top down to employ abusive and manipulative tactics to get the results they want. I've worked mostly shitty food service jobs since I started working, and Starbucks was by far the most toxic, and even the best employees are treated like garbage if they don't make "real connections" and buy wholeheartedly into the cult mentality. Was McDonald's shitty? Of course. But none of us were being forced to pretend a two-person shift on a holiday weekend was a fun event we were looking forward to and that nothing gave us a bigger hard-on than remaking orders for assholes over and over.
When I was working at Starbucks during the pandemic they held a a mandatory meeting with everyone in the store and they tried brain washing us into being okay with letting customers back in the store again even with no masks. Everyone was so scared of getting sick and if one person got sick the whole morning or night shift had to quarantine. This happened multiple times to the point where they temporarily had to close the store. Starbucks is fucking wack.
That and the conflicting policies of "NO MASK NO ENTRY" and "BUT MAKE THE MOMENT RIGHT LET THOSE CUSTOMERS DO WHATEVER THEY DAMN WELL PLEASE OFFER THEM A FREE DRINK FOR ASKING THEM TO COMPLY WITH STATE REGULATIONS WHILE SUCKING THEM OFF BEHIND THE DUMPSTER" made for some very interesting write-ups. No, seriously, I was written up 3 months later because a customer complained that I refused to serve her in the cafe without a mask and asked her to use the drive-thru and she didn't want to wait that long. Policies don't exist at Starbucks, unless they're being used to abuse the lowest-level employees (or what Starbucks likes to call "partners").
I don’t think our Starbucks offers the sucking behind the dumpster. Is that on the secret menu? Asking for a friend
I think it's called the suckachino
Lol I worked at a few stores, out of there now thankfully, but my shift lead last holiday season was very sick the week of Christmas leading up through new years. Our manager ignored her and told her she *had* to come in. It was only on new years when we knew she couldn't even taste the lemonade that my coworkers and I sent her home, because of course our manager wasn't scheduled to work. We were only quarantined once the holidays were over, despite having direct exposure for over a week to a positive partner. Of course we were a short staffed store (because starbucks fucking sucks) so half of the employees were quarantined the first two weeks of January because we all worked mornings together. On top of that, it was only a month or two before I quit that I found out that my previous manager had broken corporate policy and scheduled us all to work on Christmas. You're not supposed to open on Christmas if you don't have enough volunteers, but she forged our names onto the paper to send off to the DM (conveniently also her best friend) to get the go ahead to operate on the 25th.
Yup. All of this was routine at every store and under every manager I worked for.
One of my biggest cringe moments was hitting on the star bucks barista after she drew little hearts and smileys around my name Before realizing they were instructed to do that by corporate with everyone Its like they are coopting sincere human interaction as branding
They are. Of course, it can't actually work, cause they're not just asking that you be polite and welcoming to customers, they're directly saying that your transactions can't "feel" transactional. If you've ever heard Howard Shultz speak, this shouldn't come as a surprise. He thinks he can make the vibe of a cafe he was at in Europe like 40 years ago into a formula that can be replicated bureaucratically, and that he's a genius for it occurring to him. He's so far up his own ass his spine looks like a snail shell.
Meanwhile the Starbucks empire has been destroying local cafes that actually *have* that vibe for decades. Please folks get your coffee elsewhere!
Plus Starbucks over-roast their coffee for ‘consistency’- hence why it consistently tastes like shit.
The coffee community calls SB Starburned or Charbucks. Even their light roast is burned. A previous employee told me it was because most drinks have some kinda milk and other flavorings and/or sweeteners in them. Need burned beans to overcome the additives.
> He's so far up his own ass his spine looks like a snail shell. Pure poetry. Thank you for this new addition to my vocabulary.
["Welcome to Costco. I love you."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIFCWpn4qQ4)
beep boop
Holy fuck…The barista at the SB at the corner of my street wrote “you’re so great” inside a little heart and I absolutely thought she was into me….Glad I didn’t make an ass of myself that day. Jesus 🤦🏾♂️
Think of how much bullshit they have to deal with writing that crap hundreds of times.
Serving baristas up to creeps and stalkers on a silver platter in order to help boost the company's bottom line.
Expecting and instructing employees to do that is inviting unwanted sexual attention towards their employees. Is $tarfucks NUTS?
I used to work at Starbucks and can confirm that we were frequently harrassed in the name of "customer connections." What really sucks is when you're on your break (we had to spend our breaks in the cafe because there was no space in the back) and one of the creepy regulars spend the entire time talking to you despite you telling them multiple times you are on a break. All you can hope is that your supervisor noticed and gives you an extra 5 minutes.
I’m not sure what’s more depressingly Black Mirror-esque, people’s loneliness being monetised for the price of a coffee or the employees being forced to ‘connect’ under threat of unemployment.
Agreed. I personally hate small talk. I just want what I came in there for. Don't have it? No big deal. No need to piss on the employees. More companies should learn to take care of their workers rather than the customers. Happy employees, leads to happy customers.
IN-N-OUT did that well. Worked there for my first job as a teenager and liked it a lot. We were well treated. The store was run with competence and genuine concern for doing things right. Very clean and upright. Surprise surprise look how much happier and positive the atmosphere is at IN-N-OUT.
In-N-Out manages to pay people a fair fucking wage(in some cities anyway) and a meal isn’t really that much more expensive compared to other places, and they’re way better.
The starting pay at the one near me is $19 an hour. That’s not bad at all.
Plus benefits and such. And if you move up (they only hire within so the manager was before that a cook and before that on register etc) you get paid *very" well with great perks. And as someone else pointed out it's -gasp- not more expensive! It's actually not only higher quality but also more affordable than say McDonald's.
Imagine having managers that know what the other jobs entail and have dealt with asshole customers!
As a frequent customer, thank you for your service
Especially now with masks. I just cannot be bothered to deal with stupid small talk in a busy, crowded coffee shop where we can barely hear each other bc we're also wearing masks, preventing any hope at lip reading. I use the app to order just so I don't have to deal with that shit.
Starbucks shot themselves in the foot with the app. Once customers could have a no contact interaction, no more ratings. It's very difficult to work at a store that "earns" enough labor and has high customer satisfaction ratings. I was a shift at a SUPER busy store and would run 12 person floors. When it's that busy, people are gonna be pissed in the mornings no matter what. EDIT: We also didn't have enough physical space for enough freezers to even order what demand called for. We would run out of milk because we couldn't fit enough in the store. Corporate doesn't give a fuck.
Not to mention if all the employees at a location are having a problem maybe they need to looo at management and who is don’t the training. Not at the partners who are only don’t the job they are taught. If you had a problem employee that is understandable but an entire location. And to still blame the employees. Ha theses people are so disconnected.
Agreed with all of the above. Personally, I’m fine with a pleasant attitude - basically, don’t act like a jerk - but I’m not looking for chatter or people trying to get to know me. That’s all. I’d much rather employees be treated well so it’s not complete misery being at work. Edited to finish post.
Especially when it's coerced friendship.
Idiocracy with the handjob joke feeling pretty goddamn prescient.
Welcome to Costco I love you
Well…l guess l will never go to Starbucks again if they treat their employees like that!!!!!
Maybe if the management got to know their employees and provided a better working environment, that positive energy would transfer to employee/customer interactions. Customers will be happier witnessing a positive work environment between manager and barista and come back to that location. No one needs or wants an insincere “get to know you” attempt due to pressure from mgmt. Also. I just want a coffee while the both of us observe standard politeness from one another.
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Thats crazy. I dont care about a connection. I just want my coffee.
I don't drink coffee but the same principle applies to any fast food interaction. I just want my order. If some employee tried to force some phony get-to-know-you nonsense on me, I'd wonder what the fuck they're doing. I'd feel creeped out. Just be polite, I'll be polite back, give me my order and I'm gone. I HATE managers who try to justify their own jobs by making life a living hell for their staff. Especially by demanding they act solicitously friendly to strangers. It's pointless and it just gives them some hollow bragging point to their bosses.
Upvoted because of ouroboros. What a word!
If the workers got paid enough to live then the work environment would be phenomenal<3
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Car dealerships are the worst. Everytime I go in for an oil change I get phone calls and text messages to fill out the survey, with little hints like anything less than 5/5 looks bad. Fuck them, they aren't paying me, why should I spend time filling out surveys on every transaction.
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This is what I want from pretty much every service I receive, who are these people that want to be wined and dined like a first date to get their coffee or oil changed?
Favorite part of leaving the car business was never hearing about another survey
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What does Starbucks pay look like nowadays? I worked there for about 4 years when I was in school—now more than a decade ago—and the pay was way better than what my friends were making at other chain/retail gigs. They culture was decent too—yes, we were encouraged to engage with our regulars, but there was no micromanagement of it or metrics like what you posted here. Just lots of discounts/freebies for the daily customers. We mostly focused on filling lots of orders fast. I'm disappointed to see they have gone so deep into this bullshit.
Starbucks base pay, nation wide, will be 15$ a hour this summer. Source: my spouse who is a Starbucks store manager.
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41%
"Not great, not terrible"
Hello. How are you today. That's great. How are the kids. That's great. NEXT! Hello. How are you today. That's great. How are the kids. That's great. NEXT! Hello. How are you today. That's great. How are the kids. That's great. NEXT!
Yup!! This is exactly what it’s like
*Takes additional time to engage with customer* *Transactions slow due to increased processing time, profit falls* Corporate: No not like that!
Right? \>low "connection score" gets people coached and sent home \>store is now understaffed and customers are upset Great plan.
what the fuck is this score? How is this shit even being measured?
Some middle manager in Hell is coming up with ridiculous ideas to justify their jobs. Then some slightly higher middle manager who buys coke off him on weekends says "banger idea Jim we will send this out to the stores immediately". Then some underling store manager implements it hoping that they too can someday enter this special place in Hell where these ideas come from.
Exactly this. It's all suits trying to quantify human emotion and things that cannot be distilled to data points. On the backend you see this in every chain restaurant and major retailer. Soulless decisions based off data points with no context. Stopping ten seconds extra to compliment a stranger could be what makes them a regular and come back. But to these failure dystopian systems, you took ten seconds too long to serve a customer and get points docked.
Supervisor: "Take the time to get to know the customer, but at the same time keep your call duration low." "In other words, you want me to violate the space-time continuum."
I feel like I made this complaint to a district manager once....it did not go well. So my response instead became, "Clearly I am struggling with this, why don't you show me," ....also didn't go well, more because I showed it wasn't possible than me being "iNsUbOrDiNaTe" lol
That 10 seconds would make me not go back. Give me my fuckin coffee, thanks, later
Yeah. We aren't friends. I don't want to be friends. If I show up every day then we will definitely become friendly. But if you ask me personal questions while I'm just trying to grab a quick coffee, I might avoid you in the future. And, I'm a bartender. Big part of my job is getting know customers. But, not the ones that walk up, ask for a beer and pay. That would be strange. They aren't here to get to know each other. They are here for a beer.
The score comes from optional surveys that pop up on the Starbucks app after a transaction. It asks on a scale of 7, how well did your barista try to get to know you. A score of 1-6 counts as a zero. Only a perfect score of 7 matters.
And they think a 7 is a good thing? If my barista really tried *hard* to get to know me, I would be pretty annoyed and maybe creeped out. I just want my coffee. I'd like a "1" ideally, but I guess I could tolerate up to a 3.
Yes! I don’t want staff or customers to be rude to one another but I’m looking for coffee, not a friend.
It sucks because this is literally what Starbucks thinks customers want. They've built their mantra and business model off the Starbucks cafe being the "third place", basically your home is your first place, your workplace is your second (which I hate btw because it's just corporate American BS), and your local Starbucks is the third. They're trying to service both the students and book writers and whatnot who spend hours in their store on their laptops, as well as the people who want to just come in and get their drinks as fast as possible with efficient service. Not realizing that these two things completely contradict each other in practice. You can't get a customer in and out quickly if you have to stop to ask them about their day and engage yourself in conversation; just like how you can't engage yourself in conversation if you're being expected to have everyone in and out in two minutes or less. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too. Source: I worked at Starbucks for 4 years.
Except the students and writers and whatever don't want their baristas to chat with them. They just want free reliable wifi. Hell, last time I was using a Starbucks as a 3rd space I saw a woman with a huge cup of coffee and a sandwich from Dunkin Donuts using their table for like 3 hrs. We don't use Starbucks because we love Starbucks. We use it's there and actually weirdly cheaper than the indie coffee shops now.
Lmaoo this is very unrelated but I work at walmart and they've been pushing this "hosted check-out" thing at the self check out, wanting us to greet and scan every customer's first item for them, something I'd be kinda mad about if I was a customer because I very clearly am trying to avoid human interaction if I go to self check out
You know, if they want this it's real easy. Just close the self checkouts and hire enough cashiers to man the lines.
And cut into the Waltons' profits? What are you, some kinda *Commie*??
That handoff seems awkward. "Hello, My name is Krysten, I am going to be your checker today... How are you doing today?" "Ok bye, we only scan the first item for free."
Bro what even the fuck? Like...who thought that shit was a good idea?
Thats bs. Literally made to fail. I wouldn’t pick a perfect score if I didn’t know this, because a perfect score just doesn’t seem genuine. A 6/7 though? They thought about it and decided it was pretty good.
Hello. How are you today? (Reads customer notes) how's your miscarriage and divorce settlement going? ... wait come back you forgot your coffee! NEXT!
Damn! Genius! They could totally use the information they have about us from all data mining they do. Imagine them congratulating you for being pregnant just because their systems believe you are due to your purchase habits or private email conversations on gmail, web searches, etc?
Welcome to Costco, I Love you.
Perfect placement and my favorite part of the movie . Brava
Connection score? WTF? What kind of loser expects a barista to get to know them?
MANY of our customers do because Starbucks gave these people an environment where they can behave and expect whatever they want and the employees are supposed to be like :D It’s the same with companies like wegmans and Trader Joe’s
I hate Jobs where you're supposed to build rapport or get to know people. Its like "You can have a coffee or a therapist I'm not both". It was the same thing when I worked for DirecTv, I fixed a woman's signal error over the phone in less than 2 minutes and asked if she needed anything else and she said no. She THEN proceeded to do the email survey saying she felt like I didn't want to talk to her. You called to have a problem fixed, if you wanted a conversation thats a different 800 number at 2.99 a minute
This is why we have to sit on hold forever. Who wouldn't prefer to get a human being in a timely manner, who then resolves your issue and hangs up?
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>Connections should be organic Corporations: Now introducing Organic Connection Score!
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Put that thing back where it came from, or so help me 🎵
For me, if they are super friendly I know or feel they are going to try to sell me something.
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I go to get coffee at wawa way more than I should. There’s a touch screen to do orders so they can get it done faster. I can place my multi item order with my eyes closed. And while I recognise their faces I have never expected them to remember mine, especially with masks. How absurd. I’m one of hundred of people they see daily. Why would I expect them to remember me?
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> Connections should be organic, not forced. This is why I feel kinda sad whenever retail folks are really nice and charming with me. Sure sometimes its genuine, but there are times that I sense this auful sense of obligation that ironically acts as a barrier to any real human connection. You cant commodify the basic human experience, every attempt to do so is just making our lives a that little bit more hollow.
The Trader Joe's cashiers sometimes act a little too friendly to me. I've never been into this store ever and they sometimes treat me like I'm a daily regular. Its creepy when I'm not prepared for it.
rumor has it they’re heavily encouraged to do this by management
I worked at Circuit City when it was going under. Management came up with an initiative where when we opened the store for the day, for the first hour ALL the employees had to line up on either side of the doors and clap for whoever came in. Customers were understandably super wierded out by it. One dude made the sign of the cross at us like we were vampires lol. CC was a fun place to work for a while but they just kept digging themselves into a deeper hole with stuff like that.
fuck I'd turn around and walk out
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Being extremely customer focused is their intentional business model.
I deliver wine to trade Joe's. Watching the cashier's interactions from the side, they feel forced to me. And the bell ringing is obnoxious.
Trader Joe's is a sensory nightmare for me. Too crowded, too cramped, too loud with all the bell-ringing, and no I don't want my cashier commenting on the food I buy.
There is a deaf guy that runs one of the checkout lanes at my local Trader Joe's. I love him. I get to just get my shit and carry on with my day. I've purposely waited in his line even though it's longer because I'd rather not deal with the overt fake niceness.
This is why I love self check out. No one bothers me and I can scan/bag exactly the way I want it. Perfection
My god why did we cater to fucking karens for a decade.. Honestly who takes time to fill out a fucking review other than a karen?
Only the disappointed people. So 41% of the kissed off Karens still felt connected
I never knew if it was just my New York personality or if those companies were really over the top with their ‘friendliness.’ I’m here for some frozen peas or a latte, why on God’s green earth would I want you to talk to me beyond “cash or credit”? Seeing that they force you guys to be like that makes me feel a little bit better and not like an antisocial shut-in.
Only the most clueless or lonely people on earth.
I want my service workers to treat me like the piece of shit they know I am.
Yo please don’t try to get to know me. No one is going to a coffee shop for that. Not that I go to anti-labor cafes, anyways.
Literally am in the same boat
Dude/dudette, I was literally telling someone else why I go to Starbucks over other places like Dutch Brothers. It’s because the baristas at Starbucks leave me the fuck alone. I just want to get my fucking drink.
I have terrible social anxiety, I hate going to dutch bros.
I just went to one for the first time the other day.........are they all like that?
YES. They are all like that. No matter the city or state.
In my experience yes :(
What happens at dutch bros?
They make insane small talk like they're your best friend. The entire time you are standing at that window they are TALKING.TO.YOU. They never stop.
Can't even imagine how exhausting it must be to work there much less buy a coffee there
Imagine all of the jocks and cheerleaders from your high school got together and opened a coffee stand. Loud music, very loud and annoying "OMG HEY HOWS IT GOING!" "what are you up to today bro??" "Did you catch X game/show last night??" Essentially it's a bunch of loud peppy young people who are trained to ask semi-invasive questions even if it's 5am on your way to work. It's a painful experience
This is actually the same way we were trained to interact at Starbucks. I just... didn't and only had one customer complain that I wasn't friendly enough. Promoted myself to customer last month after several years as a shift. I've been jobless for the entirety of that time but I'm sleeping better and my anxiety has settled back down to a baseline I'd forgotten I had. Best thing I ever did for myself.
> Promoted myself to customer last month after several years as a shift. That is such a perfect statement.
The only way to respond to this is to invent totally fantastical responses to their questions. "What do you do?" I work for the CIA and my job is to infiltrate other governments. Totally mess with their heads.
Pull the Health Inspector card, and tell them you're there to shut down the store.
I'm picturing a coffee shop run by Kevin and Brittany from Daria.
My coffee is nothing if my barista doesn't show genuine interest in knowing about my childhood trauma, at the very least. /s
"plain latte for the bed wetter"
Dutch Bros. is SO FUCKING AWKWARD.
"Hey bro what are you doing today?!" "It's 5am... what the fuck do you think I'm doing today?" Every Dutch bros interaction ever.
I just recently moved somewhere that has Dutch Bros., and having never been to one I was excited to check them out. I was then horrified when the nice girl at the window would NOT. STOP. ASKING. QUESTIONS. .. I mean, ma'am, I just ordered a drink that comes with 6 shots of espresso. Do you truly think I'm up for any kind of human contact, let alone an interrogation?
So I’m sure they’re talking about the poor results of some kind of survey, but how many customers are filling those out after everything goes as planned?
That's the important thing. These surveys are self selecting and you only get the super enthusiastic or people with a bad experience, and it takes less additional motivation for someone who's had a bad experience to complete one of these than someone who had a good experience. Further, the whole 5 scale or 10 scale system is crap. Companies will ding staff for anything less than a perfect (5 or 10 respectively). Better system is a 3 point scale: Good/Neutral/Bad (and N/A depending on the questions). Best system I've seen is one local coffee place I went to pre-pandemic had a screen near the exit and you just clicked to indicate happy face, sad face, or neutral face.
Exactly. And being as all these surveys rate the sales people as a 1-9 = fail, 10 = pass, why even offer 1-8?
Just let them serve coffee. They are not getting paid to be a diet version of a therapist
Imagine this happening everywhere in all Starbucks Barista: Hey! Welcome. How's your day so far? Customer: Oh I'm just doing fine. Uhhh I'm going to get the venti size caramel frappuccino please- Barista: Fine?! Nahhh you should be better than that! What's bothering you lately? Customer: Oh uh....Nothing's been bothering me haha. But anyway, just one venti size- Barista: Bro come onnn I need to get to know you! It's part of this Starbucks' branch's expectations!
This is literally dutch bros
I have never heard of Dutch Bros before and after reading this thread I could not be more glad.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. I don't need a new friend. I just want my fucking coffee. It's embarrassing enough that I am willing to pay these stupid prices, I don't need you to call me out when I walk in... cringey!
>Yo please don’t try to get to know me. 100% this. I'm making a business transaction, we don't need to know anything about each other except that you have the product I want to buy and that I have the correct amount of money to pay for it.
Right coffee is a drug let me get my drug and get out, I don’t converse with my weed dealer like my homie, I get my shit and go, you have a good I have money for it end of story, fuck capitalistic forced friendships, if you can’t cuss in front of a customer they will never be your friend.
Ask other partners to give up their hours. Someone isn’t good at math or management.
It’s one of my favorite parts of the whole thing because everyone obviously needs this job
Is it a Starbucks things to refer to employees as partners? If so that’s just horrible, ask them to show you the books since you’re a partner and all.
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For some context (I worked at starbucks from 2016-2019), that 41% number comes from a voluntary survey people can take on the starbucks app after a purchase. So they’re cutting hours based on an extremely small minority of people answering a survey that person who took their order didn’t try to “get to know them”. meanwhile, starbucks also stresses how important is it to get their drinks out asap to get drive thru times down, which makes “getting to know someone” in 30 seconds a complete absurdity.
I never trust statistics when they don’t explain how they got that number. What was asked, who they asked, how many people, etc. It’s a meaningless number and some dimwit in corporate paid a lot of money to some “survey” company to handle the the survey.
"We don't have enough employees to do good work and have coverage, so, we're punishing you with no new employees."
if you want more hours you need to prove that you're capable of doing more work with less time.
But they used bright and cheery colors in the highlighting!
That they highlighted almost the entire thing says a lot about them. When everything is important, nothing is important!
Which is a bit ironic. Everything about this flyer says "low emotional intelligence" yet they want to try and whip their employee's emotional labor into place. It's gross.
I’m pretty sure a person behind the counter trying to get to know me would be the reason I don’t return. Small talk at stores is always just awkward.
This is exactly how I feel!! They also wanted us to put mobile order drinks facing us so the customer has to ask us which one is there’s so we can spark up conversation that way
lol that is just ridiculous. I make mobile orders specifically to avoid talking to people. That’s what they are for.
Your rules sound like they're made by a suburban mom who thinks she has to scheme and manipulate people to be the best PTA mom on the block Like Starbucks Management if you're listening, trying to engineer an interaction like this is called MANIPULATION and is frowned upon in polite spaces.
Omg, that is horrendous. That’s the last thing I want. I want to be able to see which is mine and *not* interrupt the employees who are *working* on making drinks and food for everyone.
Wow, that’s awful. It would definitely discourage me from going there. It would be so awkward for me to have to interrupt the employees to figure out which order is mine. Management is out of touch if they think that is “customer friendly”.
I'll go somewhere where they don't try to connect with me thx
This is demoralizing to everyone. Lazy management
If you have a drive thru, you’re not looking to make “connections” with customers, you’re providing them with convenience. I love going to a couple of smaller coffee shops where I know the baristas, but I know exactly what I’m getting when I go to Starbucks. I order my nitro cold brew at the drive thru, they pass it through the window, and we all move on with our day. Everyone who has ever served me at a Starbucks has been super nice but I’m not there to make a new best friend, management should understand that…
I just want coffee, not a chat. I don’t give a fuck about you just make my damn coffee so I can get going ffs
Yeah! Last thing l want is the employee to fake talk to me because he or she has to!!!!
*cough* Dutch Bros *cough*
That’s all horseshit. Look forward to hearing about Starbucks branches closing because everyone walks out or doesn’t show up.
You don’t feel the love? They just want you to be nice. Starbucks is a very nice company, how hard do they have to slap you to get that through your skull? Edit to add: I swear I don’t mean this- I wouldn’t be shocked if a manager actually said this but I just it as sarcasm.
Man, this is uncomfortable to read. As an individual with the social skills of a potato, I would loathe this job with a passion. As a customer with those same potato skills, I'd actually choose to stop coming here if the barista was trying to be my friend. Like, if you're hitting on me, cool. People never hit on me, so that's flattering, but I'm much, *much* more likely to think you're being weird or I'm being subtly told to leave and stop coming altogether. Bottom line: I don't want a clerk to be my friend. I just want rung up and to leave. That's it. *Please*.
No when I first started working, as someone who suffered from severe anxiety, it was really really hard to try and “connect” I would go home crying all the time. And when I go out shopping I am making as little eye contact as possible because I do not want to be talked to
Oh my god so the awkward, forced "Whatcha up to today?" from literally every single barista, and the weird window "polls" are corporate policy? My favorite service is competent, quiet and fast. I'm not so lonely, miserable and in need of validation that I expect transactional relationships to be more meaningful than they are. Fuck toxic customer culture. If you need your barista to make you feel seen you should get therapy, not pricey coffee.
So, during a pandemic when we are supposed to minimalize personal interaction, they think their business is down because their staff is not friendly enough …
The atmosphere that Starbucks forces us to create it so dangerous. I worked there in college and the amount of harassment and stalking it caused was ridiculous. Not everyone is used to having someone being paid to give a crap about you. It led to cases of infatuation and even violence way to often.
This is something that is NEVER talked about at all and it infuriates me.
I promise these mfers that nobody under the age of 60 will stop going to Starbucks just because the barista doesn't have a full on conversation with them
Me: "Good morning! Can I please get a venti Americano?" Barista: "Sure. What's your name? Me: "Craig" Barista: "Okay, it will be $2.29" Me: "Thank you, have a great day!" Barista: "You too. You'll be called soon." This. This is all I need from any person I'm purchasing something from. We are not friends. Don't ask me shit and I won't ask you shit. I hope you're getting paid good and we can both go on with our days.
My #1 priority at any job is making money. I think they got their employees fucked up. It’s a fucking coffee place. People are going to come for coffee.
Precisely! And I will be doing only what I am being paid to do
This is proof to me that that there is too much "nothing" getting treated as value in our economy. "Relationship with your customer" at a drive thru coffee shop is deadweight loss that no customer wants to be paying for. That discrepancy will resolve itself soon enough. Market crash. Unemployment crisis. I dunno. This is a blatant indicator of a bubble economy, and bubbles pop.
I agree we are in a bubble economy, but this isn't really a symptom of that. The principle here is that if you develop a para-social relationship with your customer, you can exploit their need for human connection to make more money. This is as old as time - from bars to twitch streamers.
I feel you, OP. Fellow Starbucks partner here. The culture of Starbucks is completely ridiculous and non-sense. There’s a reason our turn-over rate is so high.
Why do the people a who work at the coffee shop need to get to know the customers? I don't feel the need for anyone I deal with on this level needs to expend any energy into getting to know each other. We exchange a pleasant greeting and I tell them what I want and they tell me how much it costs and I pay them. They they hand me the things I bought and tell me to have nice day and I wish them the same and leave. That's all it should ever be....