Talking about stuff I should know by now.

i will now make a confession that most of you as my readers will not know.  i work at a fortune 500 company that sells coffee-type beverages and just recently announced that they were closing 600 locations.

you may or may not know that i’m a believer in God but have had my share of frustrations with church.  when i first joined this company it’s because i saw a company who was doing things that the church wasn’t even doing: taking care of people, investing in employees as well as farmers on the other side of the globe, running on a system of integrity beyond what i had ever seen or heard in any company.  my experience when i began working was the same.  i found more acceptance and love from fellow partners than i had felt at most churches i’ve been a part of.

we’re quite the hodge-podge of diversity in this regard.  i’ve met several other church-goers who work there, as well as people of all sorts of alternative lifestyles, working the floor together and creating an experience for each other and customers simultaneously.

something changed about a year ago.  i can’t put my finger on it, but the “feel” that i had come to the company for started to disappear.  a year later, my fellow shifts and i feel like we are overworked, underappreciated (not so much by our store manager as our district manager, which makes it harder for our SM), and like we don’t know how to do our job anymore.  labor has been cut, expectations raised, duties increased, but we’re still making the same hourly rate we were a year ago when things were more fun and had more heart.

i understand that in the light of this economy that “drastic times call for drastic measures”.  i posted earlier about how we’re trying to adjust life for the cost of gas.  our customers who have known us forever are doing the same thing.  so while i understand the reasoning behind the recent decision to close 600 stores, my heart hurts for these partners who, whether i have met them or not, i feel connected to in a special way.  i’m fortunate to be in the 93% of safe stores, but i no longer feel safe, warm, loved on, and accepted.  it could have just as easily been MY store, MY partners, MY home away from home, MY livelihood.  and a 2 weeks severance wouldn’t exactly pay my rent.

so remember, the next time you walk into your favorite “third place” and see those baristas who are an extension of your family, that deep down, they may just ache for the partners losing their stores, even if they’re not nearby.  even with the loss of a “feel” over the past year, i will still say that starbucks partners have an innate way of creating a family within their stores, and caring deeply about other people.