Why the **** don't you get **** done?
The past few weeks my openers don't do anything to make my close easier the way I have to get things done at closing to make their open easier.
Openers
(34 posts) (22 voices)-
Posted 1 year ago #
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I don't understand it either. We have some of the dirtiest, laziest openers... their excuse is that it's busy. Well, you look at the numbers, and we're just as busy... with less staff. And yet somehow everything is clean and stocked at the end of the shift. Amazing.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I've worked both [past jobs and now at Bux] and both situations suck. Sometimes as an opener, you do try and go outside and clean but the herds of morning customers just won't let you [but the closers don't believe you] Your co-workers might try and help but you probably work with lazy people or employees that are like 10+ years in the company and just don't care as much anymore and expect the closers to finish up for them. Since they leave early anyway it's like, who cares for them. Also openers tend to be older and old = more tired. Well, sometimes. I'm not trying to be mean, really...
And it is maddening when you come to close and see nothing is done. You'd think they would at least make everyone work and have one person do the important things but they never do that...
Posted 1 year ago # -
Speaking as an opener:
There is no real way to say whether openers or closers have it harder, but bear this in mind:
We are up at the a$$ crack of dawn while much of the world is still sleeping. We often don't even get the opportunity to shower or drag on our makeup before we rush out the door. Sometimes not even breakfast! In some places public transit isn't running yet, so we have to make alternate plans. Any messes left by the closers have sat over night, and despite our grogginess we have to give a crap. We have half an hour to pull the store together before the disgustomers show up, and what we do could very well set the tone for the day.
While some of our customers are still half asleep and easy to manage, many are angry and grumpy and rushing to work...and GOD HELP US ALL if their first coffee of the day isn't perfect or takes more than 60 seconds to get into their hands!
On our first smoke break, it's probably still dark outside. By the time the better rested mid-morning person arrives, a good chunk of the work is done, and they still have the GALL to complain about being tired and how much we didn't do. Seriously...I KNOW you got up at 7am ****....I'VE been up since 4am! Bite me.
When the afternoon crew arrive and it's time for us to leave...we are so happy to GTFO that naturally there may be the odd detail left undone in our exit haste. Don't wrinkle your noses, y'all got to sleep in.
/end rant.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I do both... my schedule is based upon the whim of my manager that day... Opening is definitely easier than closing, but getting up that early several days in a row gets old...
Posted 1 year ago # -
I'm an opener... I usually am out of work by 10:30... 12 the latest... What could I do to ensure a good closing for my partners?
Posted 1 year ago # -
@Frothy: Restock your lids, milks and syrups before you leave the bar. Always clean up after yourself. Oh and stop getting cheese on the oven plate (i.e. use that parchment paper), it's ridiculously hard to scrape off when it's baked onto the surface.
Posted 1 year ago # -
@DrySharpie I always use parchment paper, haha and I do those things by starbucks nature.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I've never opened, since I have to use public transport, but I used to do mornings, 7am. Which meant I woke up at about 5:30am to catch the earliest bus. I didn't eat until lunch, if I was lucky... or I'd have to wait for my break at 5pm at my other job. I worked the busiest days; we would have a line from when I arrived to when I left usually... at 1pm. And then I'd go to my other job, and get off work at 10:30... and get home at about midnight.
YET...
Everything was stocked/clean for the night shift. Always. I had to leave at 1pm SHARP, so everything got done by that time. Yes, I was tired... and hungry blah blah blah... but I wouldn't dare leave the place a mess. I even got falsely accused a few times and reprimanded for leaving things undone... but somehow now that I'm not working mornings, the other employees get away with this.
So I have no sympathy.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I'm in the second half of a clopen as we speak, I got to walk into a beautiful close and have an easy open. I'm so efficient without any help to do anything for me.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I'm an opener and despite getting up at 2:30am, I always do my best to leave the floor in working order but its never good enough for our closers and the fact of the matter is that if they had to start their day at 2:30 they'd forget a couple things too so I've given up caring what the night crew Bitches about.
I'm clearly bitter, lol
Posted 1 year ago # -
I've usually been an opener, and this is usually what happens.
I arrive at 5:30. The shift shows up at 5:45. I have 15 minutes to find the pasty trays and arrange them according to the siren's eye, label them, and unpack the big tray things. Meanwhile, customers have arrived at 5:55 and start banging on the door. If I'm lucky, my shift is a good one and sticks around to help. If I'm not, the shift opens the doors and goes to the back to "count the safe" for the next two hours. After an hour, I've finally gotten everything under control, and the next person shows up. Then, I have to go take my 10, because it's either now, or 11 am. Around 7:30/8, the rush starts (notice, this is NYC midtown rush. It varies by place). This won't die down till 11:30. Quite often, someone calls out. We try and restock, but sometimes, it's "grab that, and just throw it at me, cause I'm out!!" THEN, I DO restock before I go home at 2, but 3:00 is when the high school students get out, and by the time the closer gets there at 4/5, the place looks worse then it did when it did at 11:30.
So, it's not just the opener not restocking. Sometimes the midday shift is kinda screwed.
Also, when we have to waste our time filling caramel bottles and cleaning dishes, it takes up time we can use to restock. . . just saying.
Posted 1 year ago # -
i wake up @ 3:30 so sit on ittt mang
Posted 1 year ago # -
It's a vicious circle at my store. The openers complain that the store was a mess and nothing was prepped. The closers complain that when they got in they had to spend their whole shift cleaning up the openers' mess.
Posted 1 year ago # -
It's the same way at my store, stranger.
It's hard for me, because there are openers and closers, with me and the SS's left to float between the two. I'm typically an opener, but once every week or two I'll close and I'll have to hear the closers **** about the openers and how much they don't do.
I once served 42 customers in a half hour period during morning rush. When *exactly* am I supposed to clean the ice bins???
Posted 1 year ago # -
@KDH, yup! I am only an opener but I hear enough of what goes down as far as b***ing about the openers from other people I work with... I'm the one that everyone talks to because I keep my dang mouth shut, unlike others that I work with. I prefer to keep drama out of work as much as possible. When I am handing over a shift to our main closing shift I always get crap for what ISN'T done too... she'll come in and give me the cold shoulder and one word answers and sassy retorts to, well, this is really the only thing that is not done, or the other day I told her everything was done from our mid day stuff and she still b***ed about me cutting one girl an hour early to cut some labor. Then I come in to open and find the entire page in the cash log filled up with her lists of what they didn't do... yeah, it drives me crazy. It's like... such a double standard, don't expect me to get everything done on my shifts all the time because things happen, you know? People call out, we get busy at weird times when we would be finishing up the big tasks such as ice bins... you know this, it happens on your shifts too, so either get EVERYTHING done every night you work so you don't leave me novel-lists or stop giving me crap about not always getting everything done on my shifts. By the way, Friday is confrontation day I think... if she comes in with attitude again, I don't care what's going on, I'm pulling her off the floor and asking her what's up because I am so frustrated with her passive aggressive attitude and the only way to possibly get it to stop is to confront her because clearly she's not going to confront me first.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I am shift that does all closes. I am new so I have gotten TONS of complaints that my pre closers and closer werent doing what they were supposed to do..my SM thought they were taking advantage of me being new and slacking on their duties. I called BS on that..my closers have been with Starbucks for several years. And have taught me how to close the store, My SM said they days she has opened that my closes were as close to perfect as can be. I thought the openers were just picking on me cause I am a newbie, so tonight I told my closers we were getting complaints. One of the openers had the nerve to say to me "what do you guys do all night..you cant possibly need more than 15 minutes to close a store". UGHH..your wrong. me and my closers had a discussion on this...its funny cause none of the other closing SS or partners have ever had the nerve to complain about the openers..WE totally get that you get up in the middle of night, have crazy rushes and when your watch hits your end time you wanna rush off the floor!
This was actually brought up in our store meeting last night, "setting up the next shift for success". All I want is to be told what needs to be done...If you dont have time in the morning to make more whips, carafes, ect.. the least you can do is tell the next partner "hey sorry we were slammed but we need more whips, ect" Thats all just give us the heads up...oh and please at the very least whip your counter and take the trash to the back..your going that way anyway!!Posted 1 year ago # -
In an ideal situation, business that night is slow and you can get a ton of crap done within 30 minutes of the doors being locked.
Whipped creams, milk carafes fine. These things should have been done earlier during the night, and before the milk count.
Mocha, skinny mocha, frapproast, (iced coffee? iced tea?) no. That stuff is the OPENERS' responsibility.At my store, only a few girls are strictly openers, but there are morning and midday baristas who close from time to time. There are no complaints about closes now, unless we did something outrageously stupid (sht happens right?).
Posted 1 year ago # -
Dry Sharpie..seriously Mocha, skinny mocha, frapproast all those are opening tasks. Those are listed at my store as pre close duties and we have to leave out the pitchers with the tea bags in them at night, next the hot water so that all they have to do is grab the pitcher and fill it with water.
Posted 1 year ago # -
@unsure_shift, everything we do for the openers is courtesy. We too prep the iced tea pitchers with teabags and put date dots on them. We leave the mixing volume pitcher, whisk and the skinny/regular mocha bags on the counter.
Both skinny/regular mocha go bad in 24 hours. Frapproast expires in 48. Iced teas for 8 hours. Iced coffee for 8 hours. My numbers may be off but it's close enough. Making product at store close and leaving it sitting overnight for up to 6+ hours unused is stupid and a waste of our valuable time.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I'm a closer. And our openers do absolutely NOTHING. We set everything out for them. I mean everything. We set out the tea pitchers, ice coffee pitchers, day dot of course. We do the entire pasty case, and set out the pastry tags for them. We make ALL the prep. Mocha, Coffee Base, all the whips (god forbid we leave one). Fill all the shakers. Carafes. All the typical closing stuff. Everything. We even go so far as to put the rags in the santizer trays/buckets for them. All they gotta do is add sanitizer.
Do we do this as a courtesy? Nope. If we don't do EVERYTHING, they leave nasty notes all over the store and make our lives hell. Everyday I go in, the first thing I do is stock cups, lids, sleeves, milks and do 2 trash runs. Why? Because they DO NOTHING all day. How do I know this? I check the numbers. FTH - 22 at 10am. Thats it. The rest of the day, FTH - 8/10. My FTH for the night? A consistent 20 until we close. And we still manage to get everything done.
Posted 1 year ago # -
XH_Latte, you need to switch to opens and whip them into shape. Make them REGRET being openers. "If I catch you standing around doing nothing, I have deepcleaning tasks for you too."
Posted 1 year ago # -
I should! Except i'm super grumpy at 5am :/
I would probably make it worse! Unless I could sleep in the back till noon?
Hmmm...Posted 1 year ago # -
Noon is far too early.
Posted 1 year ago # -
In the amount of years ive worked for the bux and in all of the stores i have worked at, this has always been an "issue". I have had my fill of opens, closes and pre-closes. The general idea I try to tell partners is this: there is NO better or worse shift to work. Opening and closing both havetheir struggles. Morning focus is customer service, evening focus is cleaning/prep. Simple as that. Not to say there are anomalies to certain dayparts. Or that stores may differ. Ive worked at 4 (wait, 5? I lost count) different stores and each had their own little method of doing things. But seriously, its common sense...days and nights are different, regardless.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Setting up pastries and getting treated like a human being is nice.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I just LOL at thus because I had open availability. I opened and I closed and worked the mids in between. My old store, ALL OF THE BUSINESS was before noon. Yet the closers were high maintenance. Ice closed on the busier nights too and hey you know what? The mornings are still busier. Yeah, the cafe would be full of people, but nobody bought anything. I won't leave the bar after a morning shift without stocking it. I won't leave the bar for a 10 without stocking it. But that's me. Don't want to clean anything? I digest you stop closing or even better, get a new job. At 5am everyone is a pain in my ****. You got to go out the night before? You got to sleep in until noon? You can wash my dirty dishes then.
I might have sounded mean, and I realty didn't mean to. But I come from a store of whiney little babies. And their closes are ****. And they can't do anything to standard. So **** them.
Posted 1 year ago # -
^ YES. I AGREE.
Posted 1 year ago # -
+1 to that ^^
And to mirror it, I worked at a university cafe store and our mornings would be straight up dead and the nights would be hopping with dozens of f***ing frappuccinos lined up the entire night, each paired with a dam* bagel that needed toasting. So our morning team prepped up the night. We just knew better because we would all be fu**ed otherwise.
Teamwork! Why can't we all just get along??! :-p
Posted 1 year ago # -
The battle between openers and closer's is as old as the restaurant business. It doesn't just happen at Sbux, it happens at pretty much any restaurant/retail establishment. Oftentimes there is some truth to the complaints from both sides, but that isn't always the case. In my store, the openers really needed a wake up call, and I tried to give it to some of them very politely, some of them were even my friends. And I think I got through a little bit, but some of them were just really dense and unappreciative.
You see, at my store closer's went above and beyond all the time, and I mean we did a ridiculous amount of stuff that wasn't standard to set up for the openers. And the openers didn't even really need us to. For the first 2 hours they hardly had any business, then after that they started to get a little more business, and a third person. Was usually a half hour to an hour after that, that it really picked up. And yet they would complain about one or two stupid little things that weren't done, like a few carafe's not being filled. Oh man! That will take them so long, to fill a couple things with milk. We did so much extra stuff for them, and basically they got really super spoiled. When I explained this to one of them, they claimed that "even though all the extra stuff was nice, it was what our manager wanted and therefore the expectation, blah blah blah". I had to explain I had been at the store way longer than her, and that none of it was anything our manager had ever asked us to do, enforced, or had any intention of enforcing. It was extra stuff we did to be nice. Not only that but closes used to be slower (which is why we started doing it in the first place), but they had become a lot busier in recent years, and yet we still did all this extra stuff anyway to be nice! I got through a tiny bit, but the blockheadedness of some people is amazing.
And worse yet, the openers never did a damn thing for the closer's. Never. Closer's were lucky if we came in in the afternoon and anything was stocked at all, lucky if the cafe wasn't at total disaster. And yet things slowed down way before we arrived, and the openers would just lazy around now that rush was over and not lift a damn finger. And yet, the closer's never complained. I don't say we because I regularly worked all shifts since I had very weird availability, including mid's too. I could regularly see both perspectives, opener and closer, and the closer's were definitely right on this issue. And still, the only time the closer's complained, was when opener's complained about them because of something stupid. Some people are just spoiled, ungrateful brats.
Posted 1 year ago #
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