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Consuming Lattes and Labor, or Working at Starbucks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

Bryant Simon
Bryant Simon
Affiliation:
Temple University
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Abstract

This is an ethnographic portrait of working at one of the most conspicuous components of the neoliberal order: the upscale looking, fast-food acting coffee chain, Starbucks. Simon discusses the emotional labors of being a happy and chatty “partner” (employee), the difficulties of the uneven scheduling, the unexpected physical aspects of the job, and the culture of conformity at the nation's largest seller of coffee and affordable luxury. The essay assesses the corporations' reputation for being a good employer and contains extensive interviews with Wobblies trying to organize the chain. It suggests how workers are consumed by and with the brand in what the author calls “New Age welfare capitalism.”

Type
The Conservative Turn in Postwar United States Working-Class History
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , Fall 2008 , pp. 193 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2008

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References

NOTES

1. That number comes from Melissa Allison, “Chin Up, Schultz Tells Workers, Don't Let Critics Get You Down,” The Seattle Times, February 14, 2007.

2. For more on service work both in the present and historically, see Cobble, Dorothy Sue, Dishing it Out: Waitresses and their Unions in the Twentieth Century (Urbana, IL, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Newman, Katherine, No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City (New York, 2000)Google Scholar, Ehrenreich, Barbara, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York, 2001)Google Scholar; Schlosser, Eric, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Boston, 2001)Google Scholar; and Frankel, Alex, Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Frontline Employee (New York, 2007)Google Scholar.

3. Constantineau, Bruce, “Last B.C. Starbucks Outlets Cut Ties to Union,” Vancouver Sun, April 28, 2007Google Scholar.

4. In March 2008, a California judge ruled that Starbucks owed its workers $100 million in back tips. What the company, he ruled, was doing was sharing the tips with shift supervisors. He charged that the company was “subsidizing labor costs for shift supervisors by diverting money from the tip pools to shift supervisors instead of paying more to them out of Starbucks' pocket.” Supervisors, he added, should not be in the tip pool because they have authority to hire, fire, supervise, and direct other workers. What Starbucks was doing was, therefore, illegal. Starbucks denied that it was acting illegally. See Marcus, Miriam, “Starbucks Tips Baristas $100 Million,” Forbes, March 21, 2008Google Scholar.

5. Maher, Kris and Adamy, Janet, “Do Hot Coffee and ‘Wobblies’ Go Together?” Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2006Google Scholar.

6. Padgett, Tania, “Wake up and…,” Newsday, August 9, 2004Google Scholar; Kamenetz, Anya, “Baristas of the World, Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Company Mandated Cheerfulness,” New York, May 25, 2005Google Scholar; Maher and Adamy, “Do Hot Coffee and ‘Wobblies’ Go Together?”; Gaus, Mischa, “Starbucks Gets Wobbly,” In These Times, October 4, 2006Google Scholar; Gross, Daniel (no relation to the other Daniel Gross), “Latte Laborers Take on a Latte Liberal Business,” New York Times, April 8, 2007Google Scholar; Segal, David, “Coffee Break: Top Employer Starbucks Has a Crack in Its Image,” Washington Post, April 12, 2007Google Scholar; and Brosh, Brendan, “Steamed Workers Taking on Starbucks,” New York Daily News, August 21, 2007Google Scholar.

7. Greenhouse, Steven, “Board Accuses Starbucks of Trying to Block Union,” New York Times, April 3 2007Google Scholar; and Chan, Sewell, “Starbucks Accused of Firing Outspoken Barista,” New York Times, June 19, 2007Google Scholar.

8. “Starbucks workers' union expands to Chicago,” August 30, 2006: seattlepi.com/local.6420AP_IL_Starbucks_Union.html. For more information and additional articles, go to, www.starbucksunion.org.

9. I added to my description by using the following website: http://newyork.citysearch.com/profile/7098727. Note when I rechecked this website on June 26, 2007, I learned that Alt.Coffee had closed.

10. For evidence on how managers encourage interaction, see the ode to the company, Gill, Michael Gates, How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else (New York, 2007), 103,109Google Scholar.

11. Vaziri, Aidin, “Bob Dylan in Exclusive Deal with Starbucks?” San Francisco Chronicle, July 2, 2005Google Scholar.

12. Kamenetz, “Baristas of the World, Unite!”; Maher and Adamy, “Do Hot Coffee and ‘Wobblies’ Go Together?”; Gaus, “Starbucks Gets Wobbly.”

13. I filled in some of the details here from an interview with Daniel Gross. See Padgett, “Wake up and …”.

14. From the Rev. Billy quoted in Penn, Kevin, “Performance Artist Delivers Anti-Consumption Message,” Allentown Morning Call, May 1, 2005Google Scholar.

15. Philip Potempa, “Coffee, Tea, or Me?,” nwtimes.com, posted December 29, 2006.

16. Schultz, Howard, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time (New York, 2000)Google Scholar; Miller, Matt, “The Senator from Starbucks,” Fortune, July 26, 2006Google ScholarPubMed; “A Full-Bodied Talk with Howard Schultz,” Business Week, November 22, 2004: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_47/b3909098.htm; and Witchell, Alex, “Coffee Talk with Howard Schultz: By Way of Carnarsie, One Large Hot Cup of Business Strategy,” New York Times, December 14, 1994Google Scholar.

17. Frankel, Alex, “Confessions of a Starbucks Barista,” Brown Alumni Magazine, September/October 2007Google Scholar; and Frankel, Punching In.

18. See: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2006/snapshots/1267.html.

19. Another Starbucks spokesperson said the exact same thing to a Seattle journalist; see Allison, Melissa, “Union Struggles to reach, recruit Starbucks Workers,” Seattle Times, January 2, 2007Google Scholar.

20. Kamenetz, “Baristas of the World, Unite!”

21. See “Following Public Campaign for Trademark Efforts, Coffee Giant Starbucks Signs Licensing Deal that Could Bring Millions to Ethiopian Farmers,” May 9, 2007: www.demoracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/1515200.

22. Montgomery, David, Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles (Cambridge, 1979)Google Scholar.

23. Just as a side note, since our meeting, Daniel and Suley have lost their jobs with Starbucks. Daniel got fired after the company claimed he threatened a manager at a union rally held to support another barista. Out of work, he entered law school at Fordham University. He continues his union activism. To the best of my knowledge, this is what happened to the rest: Suley lost her job after refusing to remove a Wiccan pedant. Starbucks said it violated the company's dress code; she said it was a matter of religious faith. Tomer remains with the company and the union. Kevin's whereabouts are unknown.

24. Hochschild, , The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley, 1983)Google Scholar. See also on emotion work, Leidner, Robin, Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life (Berkley, 1993), 4, 26Google Scholar; Lloyd, Richard, Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City (London, 2005), 179–204Google Scholar; and Grazian, David, On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife (Chicago, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. Learning Journey Guide, 98, 122.

26. Sharmistha Choudhury, “Brewing Racism in Canada,” posted October 21, 2004: http://nation.ittefaq.com/artman/exec/view.cgi/23/13263. Another Candian woman was apparently fired for wearing a silver stud in the middle of her tongue. Miller, Jacquie, “Starbucks Hip to the Latest Trends—up to a point,” Ottawa Citizen, April 17, 1997Google Scholar.

27. A union source reported that Christina Rosevear asked for time off to deal with severe morning sickness, only to have her hours severely cut. See Worker Freedom, “Victory For IWW Barista Against Pregnancy Discrimination at Starbucks!” at www.starbucksunion.org.

28. One company critic wrote to ihatestarbucks.com on June 26, 2006: “False employee benefits. They give part-time workers (20 hr week) health insurance. However, I have received hundreds of e-mails from employees that consistently receive 19.75. 15 minutes shy of earning those costly benefits.” Clearly she/he saw a company conspiracy afoot here.

29. Nowadays the company calls its scheduling software “Star Labor.” This is according to Taylor Clark, quoted in Clark, Taylor, Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture (New York, 2007), 240Google Scholar.

30. Simon, Bryant, “Choosing Between the Ham and the Union: Paternalism in the Cone Mills of Greensboro, 1925-1930,” in Leiter, Jeffrey, Shulman, Michael, and Zingaff, Rhonda, eds., Hanging by a Thread: Social Change in Southern Textiles (Ithaca, 1991), 81–100Google Scholar. For an excellent account of how welfare capitalism worked, see Zahavi, Gerald, Workers, Managers, and Welfare Capitalism: The Shoeworkers and Tanners of Endicott Johnson, 1890–1950 (Urbana, IL, 1988)Google Scholar.

31. Starbucks's marketers often call the stores third places. The idea is that home is the first place, work the second place, and then third places are locations that are neither, but serve as gathering places. Starbucks borrows this term from the sociologist Ray Oldenburg. See Oldenburg, , The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of Community (New York, 1993)Google Scholar.

32. For another example of this, see uber-believer, Gill, How Starbucks Saved My Life.

33. Schlosser, Fast Food Nation.