To: Upper Management

Management Changes

Those of us who have added our name believe that Wood Village Starbucks has incredible potential as a store and as a part of the community. We love this store, our partners, and our customers. Many of us have worked at this store for a long time and know how the store should work at its best, what helps us operate smoother, and what we can do to support each other. We’ve been told time and time again to voice our needs and how to help the store and we are not being heard, much less helped. There are many of us who are working with less than 10 hours a week despite being available for much, much more. We have always been able to get hours we need until recently. Additionally, we have had less and less staffing throughout the day. We have to shut down channels, struggle through busy half hours or hours, be stuck on a 2-3 floor with lobby, mobile and DT open, and it constantly brings baristas to tears out of stress. We are working multiple positions (DTO/DTR, DTO/Support, all three bars at once, etc) for hours on end while supposedly keeping up customer connections, creating the third place, and running time consuming tasks like cleaning the lobby, doing dishes, brewing cold brew, etc. As much as we understand that Covid slowed Starbucks’ business in general, at the height of the pandemic we had an 8 floor peak consistently, a smooth opening crew and a well staffed close. Now, the only change we’ve made is to extend our hours to make staffing even harder. We may have less customers because of Covid but the drinks are only getting more and more complicated and we are making drinks that require multiple ingredients, espresso, double blended and cold foam. It can take 5+ minutes to make a single drink.

Why is this important?

Our store deserves to operate smoothly a majority of the time. We want you to know that we love this store. We love Starbucks. We love each other. We are asking to be listened to and heard, and to find actual solutions to these problems. We are asking to be staffed so that we are not in tears on the floor. We are only asking that someone will work with us to make this store even better, so that we don’t need to transfer to other stores or leave the company we love and know can do better for us.