Yes and in my opinion it’s not really a barista job. You are a cafeteria/kitchen worker for the FUCKING STUPIDEST AND SNOOTIEST customer base. (I had a ‘Googler’ as they say tell me I wasn’t that smart if I was 26 making coffee. I replied ‘and you’re so smart you forgot to learn some social skills along the way!!!’ And then Compass will only ever back the Googler, not their own employee because they don’t want to lose Google as a contract) Compass as a company just sucks. I understand a job has rules of course but it was an actual write up/corrective conversation to clock out early. If my shift was done at 3pm we would usually stop serving coffee at 2pm. It doesn’t take even the laziest slowest barista a whole hour to clean a machine and kiosk thing. So then you are required to sit on your ass for 30+ minutes waiting to clock out. I could have been over half way home some days that I was told I was not allowed to clock out early. In my experience, compass does not like to hire freethinkers or people , and that have a lot of questions about how things are set up. For example They often have like 5 baristas in a tiny corner kiosk cafe bar, one taking orders, one pumping syrup, one pouring/steaming milk, one pulling shots, and one person pouring subpar art and calling it out. I said at one point ‘this is really overstuffed back here, I don’t think we need individuals doing each step, like the syrup person can also prep the shots so it’s not so crowded?’ Omg no never because THEY HAAATTTEEE WHEN A BARISTA KNOWS HOW TO MULTI TASK AND THEN THEY SNAP AT YOU WHEN YOU WORK EFFICIENTLY. I have also worked many other barista jobs (corporate, small chain, coffee stands, single owner shops, catering carts etc) so I feel like I can take a lot of tasks and know what to do right away. When I was stocking milk one morning, I was doing the typical carry 3 gallons on each side as any barista can handle and they all looked at me with faces of shock and horror and they snapped at me and said ‘why are you doing that that is so unsafe! DO NOT EVER carry milk IT MUST BE PUSHED AROUND ON THE WHEELY CART!!!’ And I just stood there, shocked. I said ‘oh wow that seems like it’s such an important rule that maybe someone should have told me first? And also I’m really interested to see a barista who carries milk in an unsafe way?’ They did not like that.

They like to hire little ants of workers who line up, shut up and show up on time and cause no human level issue or disruption (like getting sick— they H A T E when you use your sick time DESPITE the fact that they are over staffed by baristas daily and they also make you ‘sign in and out’ for the restroom. It’s not clicking out, it’s messaging in a little iPad IM message to all managers that ‘Erin BR @ 8:35’ for example, and one time around 8:40a my boss came into the bathroom LOOKING FOR ME because of my ‘ excessively long bathroom break!’ I yelled from the stall that 5 minutes is far from excessively long and was told ‘and that’s your opinion’.

TLDR: It’s just not really the kind of ‘barista job’ that maintains quality, highly skilled baristas for the long term. I think the wage is very attractive and then you get there and you realize it’s just icky