OPEN THREAD conversation-starter: Starbucks settles with teen barista over sex demands at work

This case was reported back in January -- and there were many comments about it then -- but now it's been settled out of court. Discuss this or anything else Starbucks-related in the OPEN THREAD. || Jump to the second page of comments.

Comments

[baristamclane]

I didn't have my first job until I was 19, but I was pretty outspoken when I was 16 and wasn't afraid to stand up for myself (at the very least, I wasn't afraid to get my parents involved to do the yelling for me). If this girl wasn't mature enough to say no, or bring this to the attention of her SM/DM/RD, then this just affirms my attitude that Starbucks shouldn't employ minors.

[livin' la VIA loca]

Today is National Donut Day. No, you may not have a free donut at Starbucks.
Did anyone have to "just say yes" to this?

[eoj Nanillah]

Is it me, or does Cliff Burrows seem as incompetent as BP's CEO Tony Hayward?

[Christinschu]

I quite like Cliff Burrows, but more as a person. I guess he charmed me in person.

[Melody (reply to eoj nanillah and Christinschu)]

[quote=Christinschu]I quite like Cliff Burrows, but more as a person. I guess he charmed me in person.[/quote]

@eoj Nanillah and Christinschu Coincidentally, I recently had a chance to meet Cliff Burrows, and I was totally impressed.

[Coffeejocky]

Does anyone know what happened to Andrew Alfano's case?

[SBUX Alum Bill]

I must say that Cliff Burrows is very personable and approachable. My impression is that he has very little to do with the steady decline in values at Starbucks since the end of the Howard Behar era.

[Karl Dahlquist]

I heard they gave her $50,000 and a year's supply of Iced Via marked out as tall drip.

(that was sarcasm!)

[Manny]

Cliff is not very charismatic but unbelievably focused

[meme]

ahhhh Howard Behar, I miss him so.

[javagirl666]

Im sure the new focus around respect and dignity has to do with Alfano.

[melody admirer]

Melody can you please tell me your story I've seen your post and they are always really good and I'm amazed at your sbux knowledge sometimes more than me and I'm a partner.

[no beuno]

Fantastic, another stupid lawsuit cause everyone wants a handout. We'll just have to up sell more customers and makeup for the missing cash from the bottom line. More sexual harassment training videos and training labor blown over incompetence of others. In the mean time we start to push away customers as we now can't have smoking. Just say yes! To customers, scammers, pathetic lawsuits, unless you're a smoker.

[Waltie]

Hasn't smoking been illegal in most places for, like, the past decade or so?

And rightly so! Say what you will about Starbucks, but the fact that we don't allow smoking in our stores is a good thing.

[baristamclane]

I think no bueno is referring to the policy that takes effect in California beginning on Monday. Smoking will no longer be allowed in outdoor seating areas either. Personally, I'm okay with this policy, because the only thing more disgusting to me than a smoker is an inconsiderate smoker.

[Barista Ben]

the California policy has already been policy in my city and a few nearby cities so we didn't really care. Our's is actually a bit harsher, I think its 25 feet from a doorway not 10 that the state law says.

[dottie]

Actually if you read the sign it says no smoking in outdoor seating areas pf within 10 feet so Starbucks is much harsher than the city ordinance in most areas

[slaw275]

did any of you watch the 20/20 on the lawsuit? It really seemed to me like this girl got caught doing something bad and her parents blamed Starbucks. After her mom threw a fit about her daughter having sex with an older guy, Starbucks transferred this girl to a different store to ensure she wouldn't have any unwanted contact. She continued to meet him in parking lots for sex, and when her mother found it she said it was because "Starbucks wasn't doing enough" to protect her daughter. Thoughts?

[baroosta]

Has anyone been in the test market for IMS? My store was selected to start using it in July. Thoughts?

[miguel]

I didn't know ims was still in the testing phase we've had it for 3 months, its good but at first you run out of stuff a lot because there is no standing order and also its a lot of work because you have to count all the inventory and check for variances.

[baristamclane]

@slaw, that was the impression I was given. The girl was probably (willingly) fooling around with the SS, and when Mommy and Daddy caught her, she cried sexual harassment.

[.]

I hate IMS.

[teapartylemonade]

What is IMS?

[baroosta]

IMS = inventory management system. I think it works by keeping track of every item that is rung through the registers and then suggesting what should be ordered? I'm not sure I just saw that my store was selected for it to launch in July. If anyone else can fill us in, please do! :)

[Dottie]

IMS is awful. You have to constantly be on it monitoring what it is suggesting if anything. Also, for our RP order, it had us getting a case of Orange Mango every week when we really only need to order it every 4 weeks. so its a constant zero out and adding. And there is no doing the RP order early anymore, you have to do it the day it is due which also sucks.

I still haven't fallen in love with it like my DM said I would.

[chaichai]

I agree with the IMS. it seems to be more of a problem than anything. Our orders have been screwed up since we launched.

However, I didn't know this was in testing? I thought it was just launched for everyone?

[ex-sbuxmanager]

@slaw275 and baristamclane

Whether or not the girl is blameless doesn't matter at all. She was underage. Another way of saying that is that she was a child. The supervisor was an adult. Unlike many other crimes,statutory rape doesn't have a requirement that the defendant intend to have sex with a minor; the act itself is a crime. And when sbux became aware that a crime had been committed by one of their employees within the confines of their workplace, all they did was transfer the victim to a different store. They didn't fire the supervisor even though he had committed this crime and even though sex with a direct subordinate is in violation of the official sbux sexual harassment policy.

If you were on the jury in this case, you would be asked to 1. determine whether or not they acted as a reasonable employer would under the circumstances and if the company's failure to act reasonably led to the injury (the statutory rape). BTW, they would only be held responsible for all the sexual acts that occurred after they had notice that the two of them were in a relationship.

Given what we know from the various news articles, there is no way that starbucks acted as a reasonable employer should have. The managers that knew of the relationship should have fired him immediately. Those that knew and did nothing should have also been fired themselves. That would have been the reasonable thing to do.

Now whether or not that led to future (statutory) rapes is a harder question. She alleges that managers knew about the relationship and did nothing. If that's true, then sbux should be liable for all the (statutory) rapes that occurred until she was transferred. After that, its probably hard to prove that not firing him led to the (statutory) rapes since it appears that they met after work.

Given the cost of the litigation, the settlement was probably a good idea by starbucks. Although there use of dirty tactics, like calling the girl a slut on national TV probably brought down the value of the suit a little bit. No one likes to be called a whore in open court.

[baristamclane]

@exsbuxmanager-- Starbucks alleged in a statement that the plaintiff (minor) did not make light of the relationship and therefore was not in a position to act since the company did not know of it.

I did work in a store where a sexual harassment incident did occur, and in that situation the parties were transferred to different stores and no one was terminated. Since I don't have the Safety and Security handbook in front of me, I can't accurately state that there is or is not a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment.

[ex-sbuxmanager]

@baristamclane -

From what I remember, any violation of the sexual harassment policy could lead to corrective action up to and including termination. That's an intentionally vague statement designed to give the company the discretion to fire someone (or not) for violating the policy.

Not all instances of violation will or should be punished by termination. That being said, this instance (IMO) should have resulted in the supervisor getting fired. The fact that he's an adult and she was a minor makes it a much worse situation that two consenting adults or some offhanded offensive remark.

And there are different versions of events. The girl says the company knew, and the company says they had no idea. That's why we have trials; it would have been for the jury to decide who was telling the truth. Both sides wisely decided to settle because once it gets to a jury, no one knows what's going to happen.

[Beckie]

I was asked to do some favors before I was hired...

[formerpartner]

I'm sorry, but I think statutory rape is soooo 20th century. Like a 16, 17 year old doesn't know just as well as the 19 year old that this relationship could appear "inappropriate" on the back end (no pun intended). If we are beginning to try 13 and 14 year olds as adults these days in almost every state where the crime is significant, then can't we then postulate that 16 and 17 year old teenagers have that same frame of reference between right and wrong? I suppose most will say that my post-progressive comment here is offensive, but I think assuming that 16 year olds are naive is completely offensive.

[spence]

Beckie, Seriously??? If you were asked for sexual acts, it needs to be reported. Right away.

[LV]

formerpartner -

Yeah, if statutory rape is soooo 20th century, and 13 and 14 year olds can be tried as adults, then there's nothing wrong with adults having sex with said 13 and 14 year olds. If you agree with this statement, you have no idea how easily children and teenagers will consent to being taken advantage of when someone is older or in a position of power, and how damaging it is to their frame of reference for the rest of their lives. There has to be an age at which you assume responsibility for life-altering and potentially dangerous actions, but I think you'd agree it's certainly not 13. Maybe you think it's 16 instead of 18. Ok. What about when someone like you comes along and says, "Come on, you can't tell me a 14 year old doesn't know just as well as a 16 year old that the relationship is inappropriate..." After all, it's only 2 years away from the "better" age of consent of 16! Just like 16 is two whole years away from 18. A lot of growing up can be done between the time one is entrenched in high school teenager insecurities, to the time one is about to graduate high school and is thinking about what they want as an individual for the beginning of their adult life. Different priorities come into play.

[LV]

Regarding the new smoking protocol for California: I really like it. Mostly because the obnoxious smokers ruin it for all the other normal smokers out there by throwing butt after butt into our bushes and on our patio, practically covering the landscaping every few days. Then I have to get out there and pick up each of hundreds of individual butts for people who are too obnoxious to throw them in the trash can 3 feet away.

Not to mention last week a stray cig caused a small fire in the dry bark on our landscaping, right next to the store. Some thoughtful customer fetched a display water bottle off of our drive through hand-off plane to put it out. We gave him a free drink to thank him.

[Barista Ben]

IMS is awful. If you haven't gotten it yet, let me tell you, ignore your DMs when they say to trust it. We've been "trusting" it and last weekend it sent us 0 sandwiches for two days. No breakfast sandwiches. Really? What a waste. And this weekend? It send us 40 sausage sandwiches and 30 reduced fat turkey bacon. We threw out about all of them. The system is a PAIN IN THE ARSE. They obviously didn't test this very well and its a bad system. Don't let them fool you - if you think you're getting too much or not enough of something, you're probably right.

[Barista Ben]

Ok so here is how IMS seems to work. It tracks sales trends. Ideally, if you're selling out of high sale items like say Maple scones every day, and early, it will increase your maple scones so you will get more automatically. Good idea, yeah? Unfortunately the it seems to work is that it takes data from what I assume a week so say one day you have a customer come in and buy all of one item for a meeting, the next few days you are given twice as many of that item.

It just seems like a bad system. It 'auto' orders items, but you have to watch it because it is very silly sometimes. You will find one day you're getting 5 packs of maple scones, and the next day you're getting none.

Milk? Oh god! So you can't really set a par for milk, you have to put in how much you need every day. So every day our opener has to go in and change it because it's usually set too low. On the off chance you miss changing it, you're screwed. RP Order? It has to be done on your order day, before a cut off time. Basically whoever handles your RP order has to do be working that day before that time.

for me? It means every Tuesday before 1 pm I have to do the order. If my SM doesn't schedule me (which has happened twice now) I have to go in or it wont get done. It is a silly change that just made an easy order somewhat harder.

On the plus side you can search for certain items and the RP order is really much easier, it is just stupid that you can't do it earlier. I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to do it a day or two in advance.

Anyways IMS will eventually probably suck less but for now, I don't trust it. It made our mark outs increase horribly..

Just keep in mind that it will order crazy and don't trust it! If you really think "20 egg salad sandwiches and nothing else? Ok if it says so" No! Ignore it! 50 sausage sandwiches when you normally sell about 20 a day? CHANGE IT!

and make sure you watch it for Zeroing out items. It does that a lot. You'll see it not ordering items that your DM will tell you they want in your store every day. So every day you have to get all your openers to make sure they add those items.

[(former) FLA SM]

Sounds like the IMS is another step in the process of eliminating the SM position, or at least having multi-store SMs as a matter of course. If the DM already has to approve most HR decisions, and the various software programs automate scheduling and ordering, why have an SM?

[BOSTON STARBUCKS REBEL]

I think even if that girl is a nymphomaniac she still isn't old enough to make a good judgement decisions about engaging in sexual behavior with another person who is older and who should be held responsible.

[Christinschu]

HOw is IMS any more work than we already have to do? I aready DO have to monitor inventory levels on a daily basis and not only check the order and adjust, but sometimes enter the ENTIRE order in myself. I think I would prefer to adjust an existing order rather than enter in a completly new order. That's just me though, I guess.

We don't have Milk pars in NYC. We already have to monitor milk usage and adjust daily with the pastry order if needed.

I really don't see how IMS is that much extra work.

[miguel]

@ (fired) fla sm
Ims is not automated its suggest an order and we have to adjust accordingly, that last post that said that ims "sent" to many or too low of anything just means they were to lazy to check and verify what was going to be ordered, stop being so bitter because you got fired.

[Alex from New Orleans]

I have a question that the partners on this board can probably help me with.

I'm a customer, and a partner at a SBUX I've been going to has never, as far as I've seen anyway, been genuine/polite/Starbuckian towards customers or her coworkers. She's kind of bratty, actually.

Today I went in to try a JCF and she kind of huffs up to the register (she was talking to off-the-clock partners) and goes "WHAT are you having today..?" and it gave off the impression that I was budding in to her "me" time. So I ordered and yadda yadda and tried to lighten it by asking how her shift was, etc. She ignored all of it, hastily threw the frappuccino together and covered the financial business. She then went on to go back to the off-clock partners and gossip about customers she dislikes and then groaned as a customer she recognized pulled up to DT.

She also kept trying to ask other partners on shift about customers that annoyed her or about how the store's garbage was full. She's been there a while, and the other partners were too busy to talk with her. One dude sounded like he didn't want to.

ANYWAY (sorry for the length, for those who are reading), I was wondering if I should try to contact the store's SM or some customer service line and say something? I don't want her punished or reprimanded, I simply feel the need to let a higher up know that they need to work a little harder on their customer interactions at that store.

So.. thoughts?

[heckyes]

absolutely complain. Here is the place for just that: http://www.starbucks.com/customer-service/contact/retail-stores-form

[beejers]

IMS sounds an awful lot like something that I have been using at another coffee company for almost 2 years now. And yes it can be a pain in the ass. But it also has its benefits. We saw our waste/variance decrease considerably once it was ensured that it was being used properly.

If counts arent being entered properly, items sold not being rung correctly, and suggested orders not dilligently reviewed, then yes, you are screwed. There's simply too much room for operator error.

What needs to be understod is that it is not a magic pill that will take care of everything for you. The info it gives you is only as good as the info it is given. We're 2 years into our launch, and I still have to modify 75% of my orders. It generates based on historical sales trends(in our case, 10 weeks running). No one knows your business like you do, and IMS is just a tool to help identify what you might need.

In the end, the only person to blame is the person submitting the order... the program is only there to offer (in our case) often misguided advice. Don't trust it like they tell you to, trust your gut and make the changes needed.

[Georgia Latte]

Alex, call and talk to the store manager. This isn't rocket science, let the SM know. I worry that you would have to ask us on this site for guidance with what is an obvious answer that most people would think of.

[redcup]

There's a good article in nytimes.com that i just read about how recent (college) graduates are turning down jobs in this economy if they feel that the offers are beneath their self value. There's a pic of sombre looking partners who (obviously I'm inferring) look like they just entered a prison sentence. Kinda peeves me off. Maybe I'm just too idealistic.

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/is-any-job-better-than-no-job/

[gc]

Or maybe a Starbucks job isn't as up there as you want it to be...

It's a retail foodservice job. It's the type of job one has in high school or college to have some fun money lying around.

It's not meant as a career (at least not any position in a store; the SSC is a bit different, I'd imagine.)

Regardless, of course they're somber. They went out, got educated and are having to work at a place that is beneath their skill level. Sucks, but that's life.

Those will the first to get out of Starbucks, though, and get real jobs once this economy picks back up. Those that have been at Starbucks for the duration will be those who are there after the pickup. You're stuck as it's the perfect job for your skill level.

[(former) FLA SM]

@ miguel:

It appears you have some difficulty grasping simple concepts such as the difference between accepting a severance package and being fired in addition to your embarrassingly poor grammar and spelling. Please allow me to help you.

"Ims [should be all capitalized] is not automated [end of sentence requires a period] its [why an "s"?] suggest [need an "s"] an order and we have to adjust accordingly, [end of sentence requires a period, not a comma] that [should be capitalized] last post that said that ims [again, should be all caps] "sent" to [I think you mean "too"] many or too low [I think you mean "few"] of anything [end of sentence?] [new sentence beginning here maybe?] just means they were to [again, I think you mean "too"] lazy to check and verify what was going to be ordered, [again, end of sentence should be a period instead of a comma] stop [should be capitalized] being so bitter because you got fired."

Perhaps when you can elevate yourself to a third grade level, we can take your posts seriously. Until then, please take your incorrect and unwarranted and vitriol elsewhere.

[miguel]

@ (fired) fla sm
1) if you must know I usually post on here from my phone and I am not to concerned with my sentences being perfect since it would be such a pain in the butt being that I'm using my phone.
2) can you please attack my arguments and not me personally. By the way check your post I believe the last sentence has 2 "ands"
3)we have already established in another thread you were fired. You don't remember how other partners posted that in their district's there was a lot of movement in order to keep the good managers and give the bad ones severance(*cough* fired) packages.
4) IMS is not automated. It is a lot more work so no they are not eliminating the sm they only eliminated you.
5) if you are not bitter why are you here? All your post are negative and you are always talking bad about my company.

[Alex Root]

@Georgia Latte, I called the store later and requested to speak with the SM (who I've become acquainted with a few times in and out of the store). Turns out she's on vacation for a week and a half, so I was asking this board of partners for advice since she's gone. I've written a letter to SBUX via their website complaint system.

Thanks for the advice though, guys.

[@PaPi]

@ ALEX ROOT

It's people like you that make the WORLD suck.. You don'thave a life so you have to ruin other peoples. Who the ufck do you think you are? Do you want a back rub and your toes done as well? Get your drink and get the hell out of the store you lose, and get some friends...

@MIGUEL
(FIRED) FORMER FLA SM is still bitter that he was a less than par SM and was given his walking papers. He is so damn negative and is what we call a groupie just trying to bash the rest of us partners because he sucked at his job and REALLY knows he is to blame for his demise, another loser with no friends don't waste your breath...

I HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A NICE CUP OF BOLD!