One year later, we're still here. Thank you, Seattle, for your resilience and readership throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Contributions from our readers are a crucial lifeline for The Stranger as we write our new future. We're calling up legislators, breaking down what's going on at Seattle City Hall, and covering the region's enduring arts scenes thanks to assistance from readers like you. If The Stranger is an essential part of your life, please make a one-time or recurring contribution today to ensure we're here to serve you tomorrow.
We're so grateful for your support.
Comments are closed.
Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.
Sign up for the latest news and to win free tickets to events
Buy tickets to events around Seattle
Comprehensive calendar of Seattle events
The easiest way to find Seattle's best events
All contents © Index Newspapers LLC
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
Comments
Some even work from the cloud, and can be used from smartphones.
Can't Starbucks IS come up with something?
As far as covering for sick employees, why is that the employees responsibility? Back when I was a supervisor in hotels, it's was my job to find coverage for shifts, or do it myself - and I worked in Catering, where it wasn't unusual to add a few events at the last minute. I suppose the difference was that we paid a handsome wage ($20/hour plus built-in tip - and that was in the early 90's) but there were a lot of early morning calls where I had to scramble to find a relief person.
This isn't rocket science, it's sound business practice - but companies aren't interested in maintaining quality people or even running good businesses these days - and the employment pool is apparently content to let them be walked over.
Yo' Darrion: Ask yourself why you are a second generation fast-food worker.
Did you every think, Jeez, I better think about doing something else, that gives me stable hours and a long-term career? No? Becuz' 'cuz, if anything then Starbucks has probably saved your ass from starvation. They don't owe you anything other than on opportunity.
Don't like it? Improve yourself. Dare to make yourself so fucking irresistible to some other company that they can't HELP but to give your cash and hours.
Maybe your Garfield education didn't help you understand supply and demand, but bitching about the boss is a great way lower demand for your labor.
You don't think the next potential boss won't Google your name and pass you over as a malcontent? Not a smart career move kid.
Stop boo-hooing and get to work.
My managers have been terrified of being over in labor hours since the day I started, and god forbid you go in to overtime. Either a store is overstaffed and you're scrounging for hours to feed yourself and pay bills or you're so understaffed that if anyone is sick your day (probably days) is going to be hell.
I am actually in the lobby of my store now watching another barista doubled over in pain in the drive through window because he called seven other stores and there were no baristas available to take his shift. We are being given a skeleton crew that is already less than we need, and we are in an industry where we are exposed to hundreds of people a day -- of course we are going to get sick.
What Starbucks needs is a pool of on-call floating baristas and supervisors that are easily contacted when a store has a partner call in.
It probably didn't occur to you - despite your being 'educated' and all - that not all people have the opportunity to "better" themselves, no matter what plucky little shows you have been watiching. And that's a good thing for people like you, who have such a tenuous grasp on reality. If you had to compete with any more people than you undoubtedly do in whatever dreary little industry you toil in, it would probably drive you right over the edge, and then you'd be just another mouth to feed.
While it's true that a company doesn't "owe" the employee anything beyond a paycheck (nice cliche, by the way! I suppose the next thing you'll tell us is that freedom isn't free?), it behooves the quality company - fast food or otherwise - to cultivate quality employees who will stay with the company in the long term because it costs less to make a few accomodations than it does to constantly be training new people (unless the training department has hoodwinked people into believing otherwise, which is a thing - especially these days, when an MBA is basically a certification in credulousness)
But by all means if you want to be cast as the Grumpy Cat of Slog, keep being as wonderful as you are - and beware of you competition: There's quite a few cranks on Slog these days. You might have to step up your game.
Kudos to you for pointing fingers at me though! That's definitely going to solve the problem. Just so you know though, I would have covered his shift, but I'm already scheduled forty hours, six days straight, and went into OT last week covering a shift that was abandoned.
It's lovely that you used to be a barista. I would think then, that you would understand the hell we get put through and advocate for better treatment of thousands of people rather than nitpick over how closely one person's experience matches your own.
Everyone has the opportunity to improve themselves. The guy is 19 years old and his target is more hours at Starbucks. You're not doing him a favor by doing anything other than saying "Shift your target, bruh."
Pay for value isn't a cliche. It's called economics.
The cliche is your own: That "it behooves the... company to cultivate quality employees who will stay with the company in the long term because it costs less to make a few accommodations than it does to constantly be training new people..." WRONG.
That mattered once upon a time with SKILLED labor. Young men and women who actually MADE high-value products with considerable skill. Something a little more rigorous and globally competitive than making sure you don't use the Venti ice scooper on a Grande iced. I'm not dismissing the people who have chosen to barista, in balance with the interests and the rewards. But its not a great secret that those economic rewards are few – because the market dictates that the value is low, and the providers fungible.
Starbucks went to automation when too much "trained' labor couldn't consistently make a cuppa'joe. Now (and increasingly) it's a push-button affair. (And with high mandatory minimum wages oncoming, soon every single reason to believe they'll go to full automation.) The exchange cost of training new workers is collapsing. (Training managers replaced by eLearning quizzes. Classes the company offered replaced by 3-4 videos to watch at home.)
What you see as gloomy negativism is just the practical reality of economics dismantling your silly, fact-free worldview.
The answer to the constant maligning of workers simply because they are paid and treated poorly is obvious. Raise their wages and treat them well. Duh! It has an added bonus of real "social justice" action vs. paying for ridiculous, contrived PR gimmick to raise SJ awareness among the paying customers. But paying and treating workers well will mean less green and perhaps a little more red in the short term. Long term, you get a stable, healthier, harder working staff and positive publicity (note -REI and its Friday off PR home run). As this is Starbucks, what workers and customers get is red cups instead.
Is the child-care credit a 'tax dodge'?
Moving expenses for a first job a "tax dodge"?
Student-loan interest paid by parents? A tax dodge?
Out-of-pocket charitable contributions? Dodging taxes?
Oh I see: When YOU use the facilities of the tax code, it's just you exercising your rights.
But when someone more successful than you exercises the tax code, it's a "tax dodge."
Nice.
You've had a Democratic President who has never addressed the tax code, exercising wide exec powers on all manner of things, for coming-up on a decade. He had BOTH houses of Congress locked-up with Dem votes for his first two years.
Hmmmmmm.... I wonder it the Dems aren't just feeding you a line of shit that even they don't believe. You muppets.
Yes, REI had "a PR home run." The question is whether it will be an economic home run. Because at the end of the day, less REI revenue has to equal something: higher prices, less working capital, fewer perks, or lower member dividends. And that's fine. But economic decisions have to express themselves somewhere. And it may result in an untold windfall of loyalty, advocacy and buy-in, spurring sale to even higher levels. Awesome. But, you see, the thing to remember is that REI's leader will be held accountable for the results of their choices and actions.
As will someone who thinks Starbucks owes them...
OTOH, one can argue against certain corporate subsidies and tax loopholes for certain industry (i.e. oil and gas) and corporations which don't give the public good ROI.
http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2…
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/08/13/20-big-pr…
This is really more of a practical issue as I see it. Even if you just want to define a company's success in only dollars term, it's still a net benefit not to abuse your employees so they are more productive or to have service staff work when they aren't sick WHILE serving food and drinks to customers (talk about hygiene and communicable diseases and the economic cost of that in illness and sick time/lost productivity/health care). Have friendly, knowledgable wait staff who will make you want to come back instead of exhausted, surly, or confused ones handing out bad experiences which make you run away to make negative Yelp reviews. This isn't a feel good business plan. Turnovers are expensive and so is training.
Sure one day, you may get your ultimate service bot who will make you the perfect coffee, fix your aches and pains, always listen in agreement, never offering a disagreement. Service delivered with perfect sterility. But until that nirvana arrives, we have the human factor. I like mine to be around people who do give a damn about one another. I enjoy listening to differing opinions, with all their dodginess and attitude.
Hopefully, makes me ever more artful with my own dodging.
Also, I was paid just fine for what I was doing and Seattle will soon enough be paying all employees $15/hr minimum. But even when I was there I started at more than minimum wage (not including tips) for a low-level job. And got health benefits while working part-time. And help with tuition while only working part-time.
This is really a store-specific thing. I saw nothing to imply that Starbucks, as a company, encouraged policies like the ones you are protesting in your article.