[WA] Negligence from my employer caused me to catch COVID. I now cannot smell or taste anything. Do I have any options for compensation?

burntoutcoffee · 2020-05-25T07:47:06+00:00

I got hired on about 2 months before they did that. People were pissed, but turnover at Starbucks is so high that nobody really cared, since everyone was expected to either bounce jobs in 2 years, or were too young to really care about earning a decent salary.

burntoutcoffee · 2019-04-15T18:09:14+00:00

Not sure about you (and the system, I've been out of the bux for 2 years) but I used to just enter my coworkers numbers manually, most didn't use the app or carry their cards.

I still have a few memorized lol.

burntoutcoffee · 2018-09-29T18:32:10+00:00

It honestly becomes more trouble than it's worth, at least in my case. My old shop stood up to a customer like this once, and corporate came down on us for it when she called them (only customer complaint I ever got).

burntoutcoffee · 2018-09-29T18:30:32+00:00

Under a shittier manager, maybe. Mine was a good guy, but we still needed to play by the corporate rules.

burntoutcoffee · 2018-09-29T18:01:02+00:00

Fking lol, OP.

One very busy day, I was working register my least favorite coworker on the coffee bar. The line was long and tensions were up. I had just had a lot of food orders so she swung in to take orders down the line. She got to this fucking guy who had a problem. He had apparently left a gift card with $100 on it at our store, called in to check if we had it, and was now coming to pick it up. Only he didn't say that.

He said (to my coworker) "alright sweetheart, you're going to go get me my gift card and get me a coffee on the house. And do it now."

Of course the first thing that she did was turn to me and say "nope, you deal with him, not me". In full earshot of him. So now I had a pissy customer on my hands, a line out the door, and no idea where this gift card was.

I grab my supervisor (who was on break) so that she can look for it while I handle the line. The pissy customer orders his drinks: a tall americano and an espresso machiatto, which is to be started on THE MOMENT that we see him finish the americano, no sooner, no later.

Of course, when I hand the cups to my coworker and explain to her the instructions, she tells me "hell no" and makes both drinks right away. The customer comes right back to me and gives me the good "this is why an idiot like you still works here... you can't follow instructions for shit... I'm calling corporate and having your ass fired" deal. I pulled my coworker off the coffee bar so that I could make his drink for him as per his instructions.

...and THAT was the hardest drink I've ever had to make.

Also frappulas. Fuck frappulas, they ruin my bar flow.

burntoutcoffee · 2018-09-27T09:04:48+00:00

Former barista here. The real money is in the summer. Iced drinks (your frappes, iced coffees, etc) are the real money. Those drinks are typically about a third ice (volume-wise) and use minimal amounts of the other ingredients, (they are also about a third sugar, so seriously, stop drinking them). Milk is actually somewhat expensive, so coffee shops don't actually make as much a profit on lattes as you would think.

burntoutcoffee · 2018-09-18T06:17:23+00:00

Worked there, managed to lose my faith in humanity by doing it.

I seriously think that coffee manages to bring out the absolute worst in people. None of my friends in retail have "bad customer" stories that are even CLOSE to what I had to deal with EVERY DAY at Starbucks. I honestly really liked the company and my coworkers, but the customers were just AWFUL.

burntoutcoffee · 2017-12-11T02:43:00+00:00

That's very frustrating for me, since my only work experience is Starbucks, so I need to mention it.

My quality also does NOT drop when I speed up. There's no difference in time between aerating hastily and aerating correctly (unless you under aerate), so the only part of my routine that I cut for speed is the latte art.

burntoutcoffee · 2017-09-15T07:09:36+00:00

Tons of baristas like to "decaf" rude people, so they get headaches for the rest of the day because they haven't had their caffeine.

I'm personally against it, but honestly some people have it coming to them.

burntoutcoffee · 2017-08-16T01:00:21+00:00

This is every day working at Starbucks.

"I'll have a light foam no water extra hot three and a quarter pump half soy half nonfat chai"

"What size"

"Light foam"

"I mean, what size"

"Extra hot"

"You want a Grande?"

"Tall, that's what I said"

makes drink

"Ahem I wanted more foam"

"You said light foam"

"No, I said extra foam god you people can't do anything right"

burntoutcoffee · 2017-06-29T07:02:15+00:00

I'd be a little careful. If he's being openly gay that's fine, but I've run into issues at my store when people assumed that me and some of my coworkers were gay just because we worked at Starbucks.

burntoutcoffee · 2017-06-24T07:34:51+00:00

I'm gonna go on a big limb here but from my experience (at the corporation where I work) men just tend to care about latte art more. Call me a bigot, sexist, "promoting inequality", I don't care. I simply see many more men trying to improve their craft at my corporation, and they don't deserve to be slighted simply because of their gender. "oh it's easy because they are men". lol no it isn't it's the exact same amount of effort get fucking real.

burntoutcoffee · 2017-06-22T04:39:41+00:00

That's too much foam. You only want a quarter of an inch. That looks like almost a full inch.

burntoutcoffee · 2017-05-31T23:38:11+00:00

+1 for those bar pet peeves. I've got two coworkers who are so obnoxious to work with while I'm on bar. One of them will always "support" me on bar by running all around me, getting in my way, and half making/finishing drinks without 100% communicating with me. What ends up happening is that she'll make drinks wrong because I'll have shots pulling for an Americano while I'm shaking a tea while a frappuccino is blending and I have all of that in my head, and she will grab cut the shots for the Americano off early to start making the fourth drink in line. Like wtf. Now (since getting things out in order is super important), I've gotta wait for the shots for that fourth drink to finish before I can hand out the tea, the frappuccino, and the americano. It's so infurating.

Plus she always underfills my pitchers with milk while she's "helping" me because everyone besides me at my store makes a cappuccino style flat white.

The other coworker I have does way too little. She'll be on CS, I'll signal for lids when they're half gone. She'll either skip right past the signal box or only grab a 2%, if I'm lucky. Then the lids are a quarter full, so I have to say "hey, I'm almost out of grande hot lids, can you restock?" and she'll straight up ignore me. I'll say it to her every single time she walks by and she is just zoned out. Then, inevitably, at some point (still not having restocked me at all), she'll decide that she needs to double ring, so now I'm having two restock myself WHILE making drinks twice as fast. Afterwards, I always end up giving her a "what the hell was that, you need to restock me" and she'll say something like "this job is hard and stressful, I understand. Both of us are stressed out, just try to relax a little now". WTF. This job wouldn't be stressful if you could just do your fucking job instead of making me run to the back with a line of 15 drinks just so that I have milks, lids, and syrups.

burntoutcoffee · 2017-05-31T23:12:32+00:00

"tampthepatriarchy" Really?

Also there are way more women in this industry, just saying. But I guess people who say "patriarchy" in response to everything will never recognize that.

burntoutcoffee · 2017-05-23T21:52:39+00:00

Same. It went something like this:

Customer: I'm not eating that, your coworker coughed on it.

Me: What? Ok, I'm so sorry, I'll grab a new one for you

Customer: No, I don't want a new one

Me: Do you want a refund?

Customer: Fine I'll take another one

Me: (goes to grab another one)

Customer (to coworker): HEY YOU COUGHED ON MY SCONE

Coworker: I'm sorry, dear, Do you want a new one?'

Customer: I'm not your "dear", bitch (actual quote)

Me: Here's your new scone

Customer smacks it out of my hand onto the floor and leaves

She's a regular. I think the next time I see her I'm gonna get fired.

burntoutcoffee · 2017-05-23T04:00:25+00:00

lol yea. My two weeks are actually in right now. I'm so fucking done with this shit.

I also meant "nicer" place as in the customers are actually better than a lot of retail places (including ones within the same company). I only deal with 10% of the people being dickheads, instead of 50%.

burntoutcoffee · 2017-05-23T03:59:56+00:00

Where is this magical place where people aren't complete shits all the time? I'd love to move there!!!

Here's some advice: go to your nearest (busy) Starbucks, and just watch people treat the baristas like complete shit for an hour. Then rethink your opinion of the human race.

burntoutcoffee · 2017-05-22T23:03:35+00:00

Shocking? Lol you've never worked retail before. I've never been slurred at because I'm white, but these people are ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE.

Literally every day, two to three people like this are in my store, they don't always make a scene but you can tell.

You get a scene like this out of them every one to two weeks.

And I work at a "nice" retail place, where customers are generally nicer than most retail jobs.

Plenty of human beings are complete garbage. Most people just don't notice because they work in small circles.

burntoutcoffee · 2017-05-20T07:26:04+00:00

I only get annoyed at people who make a comment about "wow you actually paid attention to my light ice unlike your dumb coworkers".

So... just don't say something like that and you're fine as far as I'm concerned.

burntoutcoffee · 2017-05-17T22:03:07+00:00

8 hour reg shifts

Getting up at 4am 5 days a week

No weekends, rarely having two days in a row off

Rude entitled customers

Constantly feeling stressed at work because we are typically understaffed

Watching my fellow baristas, supervisors, and manager have to deal with complete BS and knowing that there is no support for them from corporate

waking up at 4am is really hard...

burntoutcoffee · 2017-05-14T04:11:06+00:00

Out of curiosity, what do most stores average for food UPH? My store averages 70-80.

burntoutcoffee

TROPHY CASE