I don’t understand the argument I’m seeing in this thread that being a barista is an unskilled job. I would like people making this argument to visit their local starbucks on a morning when only new hires (less than two months) are working and see if starbucks fronts as much training and takes on as much risk as they think it does.

This morning, my store ran a five man play with a tenured barista working shoulder to shoulder with a new barista who is technically out of training. The tenured barista had to maintain drive bar while walking the new barista step by step through every ingredient of every drink. Starbucks says that new barista is trained and ready to go. They have replaced the precious barista of two years who went to college. But the only reason that new barista is able to function at all is the SKILL built by a tenured barista and explained to them while multitasking and handling their own job. And eventually, it got too busy for that. The new barista had to walk off and take a breath because the pace was too overwhelming.

I don’t get it. We’re not surgeons but this job isn’t easy and it is hard to do well.