#soc111

[erintries]

To wind down the sociological portion of this blog I decided to recall a time that was hard for me personally, but showed genuine concern from regular customers I had at Starbucks at the time and the support of the company and my partners.

In June 2011 my house burned down. It was sad and awful and definitely a growing experience that I never wanted to have.

The cool part of this story was the aid and support I received from customers I knew and people I didn't. Whenever regulars saw me they would ask how my family and I were doing and some gave us money so we could start rebuilding what we had before.

The partners at my store and in my district gave us money and donated clothes and make up and countless other things (like clothes compliant with Starbucks dress code). My store manager spent weeks collecting money from people in her church and shopping for me and my family.

Prior to the fire I had bought my uncle a father's day present from Starbucks. Naturally plastic and extremely high temperatures aren't a good match so it was lost. One of my supervisors purchased a new one for me to give to my uncle.

Finally, the company as a whole aided me by giving me resources to get back on my feet financially. Starbucks has a fund available to their partners called the CUP Fund. The Cup Fund for partners who need financial aid not for college, but for moments in life that are a crisis. I'm not saying they gave me a fortune but they definitely sent me a substantial amount of money.

To wrap up this sob story, I remind all retail, service, and food workers that customers can be awful and insane, but there are brighter days ahead (the holidays can't last forever) and hopefully companies will start catching on to the idea of taking care of their employees to take care of their customers.

To the customers, don't be ridiculous. Be kind and understanding, and remember that these people touch your food and beverages. They don't control the prices nor the flow of business. Whatever is going wrong is probably not their fault.

[erintries]

This meme bring up so many memories of Starbucks.

I really can’t even count the times people complained to me about pricing, or how the company switched from AT&T wifi to Google wifi, or that it was really cold in the café – all things I had zero control over.

I always found it interesting when customers got this crazy idea in their head that we controlled the pricing of food and drinks. Unfortunately it’s hard to explain that different areas have different pricing based on the cost of overhead, labor, ingredients, etc.

Barista’s and servers don’t pick the prices; I pushed the buttons and told the customer their total. That was the depth of my control over pricing.

[erintries]

W I L D C A R D

29 Struggles Every Holiday Retail Worker Knows To Be True

This is more of a humorous take on the holidays for a retail worker. Anyone who has worked in retail from November to February knows that it is the craziest time of year and surprisingly people are more rude and inconsiderate. I feel like this Buzzfeed article does a great job articulating the retail struggle, if you will.

When I was working Black Friday at Starbucks, the people I bunkered down with from 3 AM to 11:30 AM were people that I grew to appreciate, creating a kind of social solidarity. Despite that day being one of my least favorite work days in my time at Starbucks, I also somehow remember it fondly- possibly because I will never have to experience it again.

[erintries]

This post from tumblr user zell-dincht expresses the desire to be better represented as a service worker. She brings to light how poorly workers are treated by customers, and that the companies that employ do nothing but essentially reward customers for being – in all honesty – completely ridiculous.

When I was in the food/service industry I often cited one of my reasons for wanting to find a different job was that I felt that I was treated like a lower class of human and that my customers thought they were “better” than me. The fact that a lot of people in that industry feel that way is not only unfortunate, but unacceptable.

I think this assumption that service/food/retail workers don’t deserve to be treated the same as someone in a different industry is another display of status hierarchy. I also think that assuming someone is of a lower class or status than someone else because of their occupational prestige is incredibly disrespectful and shows such poor judgment.

[erintries]

In “Grin and Abhor It: The Truth Behind ‘Service with a Smile’” author Sarah Jaffe confronts the misguided belief that if the person taking your order smiles at you and is friendly they are clearly in love or infatuated with you. What’s really going on when you walk in and an employee at the establishment you visit makes their face light up is emotional labor. Per The Sociology of Emotional Labor: “Emotional labor refers to the process by which workers are expected to manage their feelings in accordance with organizationally defined rules and guidelines.” Which means employees are being instructed and coached by their employers to smile and make you feel special, and if they don’t they will likely face a decreased tip rate from customers and possibly corrective action from their employer. I think my favorite part of this article is in the last paragraph:

“It’s time to stop pretending that enjoyment of the job is its own reward; I couldn’t eat smiles or customer’s phone numbers, and neither can the barista at your local Starbucks.”

Again I remind you that whoever is serving you or taking your order or making your drink is working for the same reasons you are – to afford living – and is paid to smile and be nice. Be kind, be respectful, be patient, and tip well.

[erintries]

Holy Reflection Post, Batman!

Reflection 1

Keeping with the theme of tipping I have going on in the last post (and probably the post to follow this), I’m recalling all of the good and bad experiences I had with tipping as a barista.

Bad experiences:

Every single time someone thought the tip jar was a take-whatever-change-you-need jar. It’s not. Never has been. Once I had to watch in horror as one of my coworkers essentially scolded a customer for digging in the tip jar because he didn’t want to give us the change he had in his hand (that’s a call to corporate just waiting to happen). The customer put the change back, that’s for sure. In moments like this I was always torn between my role as a supervisor and my desperate need for money as I am a broke college kid. Do I reprimand my coworker in the name of customer service or do I stay quiet and make as much as possible in tips that week? (Hint: cash is king)

Good experiences:

My aunt and uncle spent the early part of their marriage strapped for cash and living on whatever they were graciously given by others, which gives me hope that there are people in the world who know how to tip. I quickly picked up their habit of over-tipping when I moved in with them and got my job at Starbucks. Let’s be real, the best tips usually come from the people who watch you struggle to financially stay afloat, at least mine did. The people I served every day, the regulars, hardly tipped if they did at all. There were a few that were different but typically we got their $0.53 in change after they purchased their $5 drink. Fair trade? Not really; they were literally giving me their leftovers, and my coworkers and I deserved better than that from the people we created bonds with on a daily basis (or tried to: some people can’t be satisfied).

Maybe the negative stands out above the positive, but the only time people kindly dropped a handful of cash in the tip jar was on holidays, which is great, but we all worked just as hard (honestly probably harder) every other day of the year. Money is tight, but believe me when I say the people who make less than you do and can’t afford daily lunch at a pricey coffee shop know that so well that they depend on your kindness to survive.

I could go on for days.

[erintries]

Why It Is Important to Tip/Respect Your Servers (Reblog w/ Commentary Post)

Why It Is Important to Tip/Respect Your Servers

This blog linked above is a first-hand description of a waitress’ day at Denny’s. Some acquaintances come to her restaurant and she serves them because it’s “easy to take care of people you know.” Service was normal, seemingly done well, until the check was delivered to the table and one of the guests began complaining incessantly about the prices of her food and drink. Honestly that’s probably normal there as customers at any establishment will complain about pricing. Overall that portion of the experience was annoying, but the worst part is the $0.25tip left on the table for the waitress.

The poster of this story explains that that little of a tip is insulting. Based on the information given about their check and their tip, they tipped .01% of their bill, which makes it sound even worse. The author goes on to remind us all that you waiter/waitress is also trying to pay bills and survive, followed by stories of large bills being tipped poorly but laden with compliments- which we all know (and our author reminds us) “compliments don’t pay the bills.”

To me this touches briefly on occupational prestige. Encyclopedia.com says “Occupational prestige refers primarily to the differential social evaluation which is ascribed to jobs or occupations”, essentially: how people judge you based on your job and where you sit in the status hierarchy. Everyone knows that waiters, waitresses, bussers, etc. in the restaurant industry get paid at a level called the wage floor. I’m not sure if that is why these employees are treated so poorly (and tipped so poorly- which is completely backwards) or if it is because a lot of people have this misconception that working in the food/restaurant/service industry isn’t a “real job”. Realistically, this industry is incredibly difficult to work in because you actually have to work for your money. If that’s not considered a real job, I’m not entirely sure what is.

[elizabethrsimmons]

Teamwork is a big theme throughout the camp community. Camp encourages kids to use their skills and knowledge to work in teams. Team-building is one of the keys to success through personal growth and cooperation of others. Just as kids are expected to learn how to be a functioning member of society, kids are encouraged to work well with others in order to be a functional member of camp.  

The high and low ropes courses are usually the main providers of team-building activities, but team-building is practiced all throughout camp.