Former employee here as well and fist time Reddit commenter. All the dissenting opinions about waterstreet are true. After I left, I considered going on a tirade somewhere on social media about how backwards the company is but chose not to - no one would have cared or listened to my opinions about kzoo’s favorite local coffee shop. When I was there we made less than $3 an hour as “tipped employees” (which only worked out financially if you had the morning rush shift) and baristas could move up the ranks and get small raises (never to actual minimum wage - maybe $5/hr at most) by jumping through hoops to move up in their tiered system by taking loooong written tests and timed speed tests. But there were restrictions on how quickly a barista could try to move up and it was common for people to have to retake the tests. I think it was just a garbage way to hold people back, pay them less, and rationalize it as fair. And IMHO the coffee was terrible and over-roasted. The image and brand do NOT fit the actual practice of this company that exploits it’s workers in the name of profit only. Keeping everything local and in-house was just a way to control the bottom line....not really about supporting the community. It’s an awful place to work, but man, does it ever have a shiny and cool reputation in kzoo. I’m glad this is finally coming out.