It's Friday, and Starbucks Gossip regulars know what that means....

It's time for another weekend OPEN THREAD, where anything Starbucks-related is open for discussion. (Posts that aren't civil will be deleted and those who write them face a possible ban.) || Jump to the third page of comments.

Comments

[Holier than than thou has spoken, whatever]

I want to be a perfect as green_cup because being omnipotent like they are, is what religions are founded on.

After the first five words, I knew it was you and jumped to a more relevant comment, garbage makes my skin crawl.

Don't bother with a response because I won't read that either.

Have a nice day! :)

[Jonas JOnes]

on the whole, the customer is always wrong, or at least incorrect. The people posting on here are ridiculous. It is just coffee, but I am supposed to "make their experience fantastic, effortless, flawless and fun." GTFOH. We do not even have A/C at our store so it it over 90 degrees most of the day. Do I care that much about customers when I am dripping sweat. NO. do they care? NO. I just want to do my job and go home. All of you people who think that they need to live out the mission statement are crazy. Just be nice and give them what they ask for. Just don't give more than that. It is all they wanted. Do not bend over backwards for all customers. It only encourages this sort of behavior.

[Tike]

I have to say that Green Cup is totally delusional. Please come back to the real world and recognize that spending $4 at a Starbucks does NOT make you a king who feels entitled to not only coffee, but barista's blood, too.

We are human. Please recognize this fact. And, open your eyes, next time you are in a Starbucks, and see if anonymous' observations aren't true.

[aeiou]

hmmm...yeah: I talked to my manager about it because the Cintas guy asked me last week if we wanted to increase it again and she said that increasing it would be great *if* Starbucks would approve it. I just don't understand why they would cut the order in the first place.

[blueinmd]

I'm disgusted - my DM has told my manager NOT to hire people with a college degree, or even those who plan to attend classes while working at SB's.

I wonder if this is a directive that's coming down from corporate. Anybody know?

[Sedg]

blueinmd: It's probably a combination of two things - you're not likely to get long-term commitment from someone with a degree, and someone who's going to be attending classes won't fit into a set schedule.

Neither of those reasons are good ones, but thinking from Starbucks' current way of thinking, that would be the reasoning behind it.

green_cup - You get better service if you stop treating the staff on the other side of the counter as serfs who only exist to serve you. Just saying.

[uncle buck]

Posting schedule clarification. Prior to labor cut back, Starbucks policy was for SM to post their schedule three weeks out. Meaning this week, next week, and the following week. Since the labor cut back, there's a new policy. SMs are require to post their schedule two weeks out, meaning this week and next week. According to sbux, by doing this SMs can adjust their schedule accordingly to current business trend.

[just say yes is outdated]

@greencup

"Just say yes." Doesn't mean ALWAYS just say yes. We have customers like you who think you own the store walking around going through our cabinets to help themselves to sugars and what not.

Customers who come in and buy a 40 cent bag of tea... then come back for a free cup of hot water half an hour later? Just say yes? Occasionally, yeah, why not. But everyday?

The just say yes policy was meant for simple things such as: an extra straw, blending the drink three times, extra pumps of vanilla in the vanilla latte that already has vanilla, etc. It does not entitle the customer to receive free drinks because they didn't read the promotional print. I understand that customers fail to read the small print and occasionally give them a free drink. It just depends.

The just say yes policy has allowed for people to demand a tall coffee in a venti cup topped off with steamed milk and caramel topping and only pay for a tall coffee. That's a freaking Venti misto plus add caramel sauce. (whatever the prices are for your regions.) The idea is for us to say yes to the drink order, but not to the price. We're a company and sometimes, just sometimes, have to think like one.

All i am saying is that customers are our first priority, yes. but they are not god. We're not disgruntled employees with no customer service skills (if we were, we would've been the first to get fired with the hour cuts.)

---side note, just venting here, but STOP THROWING YOUR MONEY AT US. I throw back the change sometimes. And for the people who throw their money at me and put out their hand for the change, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? When you couldn't place the money in my hand the first time?

[Jealous]

I have to day I'm actually kinda jealous of the partners and they they have 30+ hours every week.

I am shift with open availabilty and I still get stuck with only 25-30 hours a week. 30-35+ would be perfect!

None of my partners (except 2 out of 4 shifts) get enough hours either and we just hired someone else.

Needless to say I need to look for another job to pay my bills.

[Jealous]

ugh! sorry for the typos.

[-]

@ blueinmd

If you feel that is the case you should call business compliance with your concerns. To not hire people with degrees is discriminatory and would against the company policy on diversity as best as I understand it.

[Not Happy]

So I waited to post something about this until we got final word but my significant other was recently laid off from the ASM position along with the rest of the ASM's in the district. They were offered no severance and no stores were available to transfer to. This is happening in the Bay Area and isn't really getting talked about. Based off the last round of layoffs we always knew the position was at risk but you think doing a great job, receiving high marks, and raising your stores scores would mean something? I'm really upset with the way that the company handled this and don't understand why there was no severance offered and not to mention they didn't make contact about what they were doing for almost a week. Really showed no respect at all. Just want this to get out there so people know whats going on. I'm sure you'll hear more stories like this soon as it's happening to more and more people. Not going to include any specifics because it's not fair to any of the parties involved but seriously Starbucks, "Get your act together!".

[CamSpi]

I enjoy a good green_cup post every once in a while. A different perspective is always interesting. *Although another perspective doesn't necessarily mean a right opinion. Its good to be open minded...

[yosimiteyukon]

--my DM has told my manager NOT to hire people with a college degree, or even those who plan to attend classes while working at SB's.--

blueinmd - while I haven't heard this myself, it certainly sounds like something my DM might say.

It seems that they don't really want intelligent partners anymore, people who can think for themselves and may have creative ideas of their own.

Instead they want partners who will do anything they are told, will not question anything, and who will be frightened into going to work sick.

[Melody]

I need to vent a moment about Starbucks online site! Last night I couldn't log into MSI, or Starbucks, or StarbucksGold or anything because everything was down for maintenance. Now, everything is back up, but of course lots has been changed.

StarbucksGold/ starbucks card management are now one log in:

* So it appears that a person can now have 4 cards registered to them, not 3.

But where is my gold card! And where is my balance! Previously, the site automatically knew which card was the gold card and displayed a picture of the gold card. Now there are 3 generic pictures for the 3 cards I have registered and all show a balance of zero which is definitely wrong!

Unfortunately the numbers wear off the back of the cards so I have no idea which is which.

* You can now transfer funds between cards! Of course everyone knew that one would be coming. People don't necessarily like to go into the stores to do that.

* On mystarbucksidea.com now when you log in it prompts you to agree to terms and conditions - of course that's fine! But then it routes you to a screen to pick a "username". This is frustrating. I have a username that I have been using for the 16 months I've been on MSI - It's "Melody" but NO I can't just type in Melody because it tells me that that name is already in use! Grrr.

Well, on the plus side the ability to register 4 cards and transfer balances between cards will make some people happy - Those are ideas that come up often at MSI.

[AmericanoMan]

Basically affirming what Melody said above.

All the Starbucks sites are still broke this morning. Cannot access any of my Starbucks Cards (Gold and Plain) or MSI. Even the basic Starbucks site is slow and flaky.

Everyone must be busy playing with Mr. Potato Head.

[Melody]

@AmericanoMan - I cleared all my cookies and started over, and that seemed to help. The site found my balance, and I finally got logged into MSI. Yep, Mr. Potato Head is still getting put back together!

[AmericanoMan]

@Melody - glad clearing cookies worked for you, it has not worked for me. Without getting too technical, basically the people who programed the new site features violated some cardinal rules of programing (one of which is changing core addresses) which leads to many 404 (page not found errors). Try https://www.starbucks.com/goldCard/login.aspx for an example.

I have sent their tech support a detailed email, but I doubt they have the smarts to understand it.

[ChaseW]

Have any SM's or former SM's joined the class action lawsuit out of Florida re: SM's not being paid overtime? Just curious. I got a letter asking me to join....

[erstwhile]

@green_cup

Pay baristas minimum wage, expect to get minimum service (and the attitude that goes with it). Sad but true.

Although I will agree that if people aren't happy working at Starbucks, they ought to find somewhere else. It's easy enough. You can get paid the exact same for working at Wal-Mart and you're not expected to be anywhere near "legendary" there.

Unfortunately for Starbucks (and its customers), all the good people are leaving as they're realizing this. And you're getting a lot more of the minimum-wage attitude and lack of motivation. Who do you blame? We're not magically going to get a whole bunch of people willing to overperform while earning peanuts in compensation.

[Elizabeth]

Two Questions: is it true that when shaking the ice tea's, splenda and other products should not be in the shaker, and instead placed directly in the cup? Second, some stores are not grinding coffee ahead of time, instead putting whole beans in the containers and when coffee is needed grind it then. Has anyone heard of anything? thanks!

[Mrs. Tillinghamshackles]

Elizabeth,
You can shake splenda or any other behind the counter sweeteners we have in the shaker.

Second, all company run US stores should be using the Lean Brewing System, which includes grinding coffee everytime we brew.

[Mariana]

Can someone tells me what is the Brand Managemet structure in the companay. Do you have a Marketing VP, Brand Manager, Marketing Manager...Im just corious to know how the marketing team runs?
xoxo

[a]

Can someone give me any information on how they prepared/presented for their PIAT?