Let’s be honest, we’ve all been there. Breaking down in a back room at work is a pretty much universal experience, whether that be due to a nasty customer or a nagging boss.
However, one Starbucks employee caused controversy recently by sharing a video of him doing just that.
The employee can be seen breaking down in tears during the video as he is scheduled to work an 8-hour shift.
In the now-viral clip, the tearful barista can be seen hiding away in what appears to be a backroom, wearing one of the instantly recognizable green Starbucks aprons.
“People wonder why we need a union at Starbucks, and I am literally about to quit,” he begins.
“I don’t know if I’m going to do it but like I really want to, I almost walked out today,” he says. “And I’m crying in the back room right now. I almost cried on the floor.
“I’m a full-time student, I get scheduled for twenty-five hours a week. And then, on weekends, they scheduled me the entire day, open to close, that one’s scheduled for 8 and a half hours, both Saturday and Sunday.
“I’m like 3 and a half hours into my shift. There’s so many customers and we only have 4 people on the floor all day. Only 5 people were put on the schedule, and somebody had to call out.
“There are 4 people running the store. There are so many customers and they scheduled 5 people.
“We only have thirteen people employed in this store. And there’s so many customers…” He pauses for a quick crying break.
“We don’t have fair scheduling, managers don’t care about us.
“Our manager was supposed to come in this weekend, and he took himself off the schedule, so he wouldn’t be able to be held accountable for calling out, he just literally tore out the schedule that he was scheduled on and put up a new schedule.”
The employee criticized his boss for not wanting to be “held accountable,” and explained that “they don’t want to help us.”
This leads him onto giving reasoning as to why the employees “need a union”.
“This can’t happen. We need fair scheduling. We need managers to hold themselves accountable for helping their workers.
“They refuse to turn mobile orders off. We need the liberty to be able to do that because there’s so many mobile orders and I need to get through all of them.
“And then people are yelling at me because I don’t have orders ready. I don’t know what to do.”
With currently over eleven million views, the clip has divided opinion.
One person said: “This is why everyone hates the older generation because y’all will say you want the best for our generations and then when we want it to be better y’all whine about how you had it worse and essentially say we deserve the same. I will never understand why you wouldn’t want better.”
However, another disagreed: “The kids these days think 8 hours is doing a double shift.”
