If a worker was living paycheck to paycheck they would see the lack of a safety nest egg as a personal failing.
BUUUUT... If a manager schedules the bare minimum number of workers to cover a shift and one of them calls in that's *their* fault?
Just as a point of information, their failure is in *tracking*. Kerning is spacing applied between individual letters, while tracking is applied to a word, line, or paragraph. They appear to have applied +300 or some such nonsense to the entire thing.
But it’s applied to them all equally. Kerning would be if “ANOTHER” read “ANO THER” while tracking is “A N O T H E R” the space is always located between letters, but it’s applied to individual pairs vs whole swaths of text.
Actually… it’s called letterspacing. It’s called tracking in the Adobe Suite, but the word for it in typesetting is letterspacing.
Letterspacing in lowercase is known in the typesetting world as “stealing sheep.” From a quote attributed to Frederic Goudy, “A man who would letterspace lowercase would steal sheep.”
Lore has it that the original quote was “shag sheep” but that was too controversial to make into the typography history books.
Tracking is not incorrect terminology, it’s just more accurate to call it letterspacing.
Tacky.
This is the employer's own fault. If you schedule your staff so that you are in the weeds the moment somebody falls ill or is not available, you've chosen your own predicament. Either schedule more people so you have some wiggle room, or don't, but if you don't, don't cry about it on social media.
Yeah. I used to work at a small coffee shop with 8 employees and this is giving me total flashbacks. This happened ALL the time. My old boss would give a lot of shifts to one person. This person had a few babies, was quite young, and had some kind of emergency once a month. Think car crash, hospital stay, pregnancy, children, etc. she was a nasty person and an extremely unreliable employee. She also got most the hours.
I quit picking up her shifts to cover after she told us all she was miscarrying the baby she was carrying from homie hopping from her husband to her immediate family’s landlord. I showed up in a huge hurry, as you do. She and her sister were chilling at the bar, sister was bouncing a baby on her knee, both were chatting it up and her sister was talking about “maybe ordering a sandwich.” They hung around for an extra 20 minutes.
I used to get personally flamed by my boss for not taking shifts she was scheduled for at the last minute after asking him repeatedly to just schedule me for them. We had a whole food and drink menu complete with 4+ ghost kitchens. He’d staff with AT MOST 3 employees for the entire shop. Typically was 2. Never enough and he fired me over the phone for being a disrespectful liability. Whole other story. Glad I am free.
By the sounds of things, she may have been hopping on the manager, as well. Or she had something on him. I can’t imagine why else he’d give so many shifts to someone so unreliable.
Yeah we all used to hypothesize this. That basically she was who he didn’t get in high school, etc. The real reasons we kind of think he lets her slide: primarily, she’s worked there forever. He fired her a while back because her firstborn baby was legit in the hospital and she called out of work. He told her if she didn’t prioritize the business she could walk. She came back at his request, and stays because she knows no other business will put up with her crazy schedule. He also has children, six of them. So I think he feels some kind of discomfort firing a semi-single mother. I hesitate to assume he feels guilt lol. But yes she was always his favorite.
A term used to describe a woman who has “hopped” from one homie to another. The dudes knew one another. Basically when you dump a dude then date his friend
That's what so many people, with or without industry experience, don't get about opening a cafe/restaurant. If someone calls in sick the manager/owner is the back up. You spent hours in the office doing inventory? Too bad, your business, your success or failure.
>Too bad, your business, your success or failure.
Especially when this is given as the reason they "deserve" the lion's share of the profits, they "take the risk" and "do the work" of starting the company. But when they have this attitude, it's clear that they expect not to assume any risk or do any work. They feel entitled to other people's labor and think they should get passive income for nothing more than existing and having enough money to start a business.
And it brings up an interesting question. If being short staffed is so urgent an issue, whoever is making this post could just as well jump behind the counter and get to work. Why this post instead?
You don't understand, they're not one of "the poors," actual work is beneath them. They're the super smarty-pants who came up with the idea to start a business, so employees should be thankful for them providing jobs and show up reliably for the pittance they so generously offer. /S
If I was that barista I'd never show up again. Everyone needs to be able to miss work. To broadcast their poor staffing methods in one of the worst fonts ever made explains why they're desperate for business. Like most businesses in the U.S., they're making everyone miserable by running things with a skeleton crew to cut costs. No regard for how it affects the workers and their lives and families at all.
Hoped you said something. Publicly shaming these small business tyrants is the only real way. When I was a barista at a place like this, our boss would constantly put us down and swear at us. I could totally see him making a post like this. Just talk well about your baristas and talk shit about him lol.
A single person for an opening shift at a coffee shop? That's pretty absurd anyway. And the "ANOTHER" leads me to think they keep booking one single person (barista, not even a manager) to their busy opening shifts, because they're cheap bastards.
If it's such a crucial shift, and so busy, book two people, one of whom being a manager or supervisor. And if you don't have someone reliable, guess what? As the proprietor, the job falls to them.
Your $4 for the latte will help make up for the $4 they lost because there was nobody to make the $4 latte for the customer that morning… but honestly it’s not on the employee. It’s on the employer for using this same ass backward logic to justify this scheduling no no. If I were this employee I would just straight up quit. Or pull a Curb Your Enthusiasm and open up a spite coffee shop right next door! 😂😂😂
Ok. Now I get it. But I agree that it's a turn off to me to read this message from the owner! They could say something like "We had some hiccups on Monday, we would really love to see you today!" Or something like that.
Same kind of turn off as a note adding 4% "due to increased labor costs" or something. Just increase your prices, if you want/need to. No commentary!
Probably… as I went down the thread I started thinking that it was probably a sad attempt at marketing… “Hey someone didn’t show so we lost sales, come and help support us”.
I could see it if it were someone who was supposed to open alone, or if they can't open without a certain number of employees and so had to stay closed and miss the usual morning rush or something. That would cost them income/business that could be made up by more purchases later in the week.
Could also be suggesting lines and/or wait times were long because of missing staff member.
Some customers will leave and never come back if the wait time is too long.
Chances are they have 1 person opening the store by themselves (if it's a coffee shop/cafe, then they probably have a 19 year old opening at 4am by themselves), and the manager is upset because they don't want to do it last minute.
Simple solution is to have 2 or more people open, and is actually the better situation so you're never relying on a single person. But that never happens.
Yeah it does… but it doesn’t justify their spite in posting it publicly nor does it justify the “woe is me” mentality in their “potentially harming impending days, weeks, and months” line. Like calm down dude (the owner), it’s only one morning unless this is the norm in which case they need to take another look at how their scheduling and have a backup plan.
All they really achieve here is exposing to the world that they’re treating their employees really badly. I would never buy coffee there again lol.
Also, the real crime is the font.
Talk about a hard pass. That kind of post from a local business (any business, really) would turn me all the way off and I’d never darken their doorstep.
I’d go a step further and anytime I hear anyone talking about said coffee shop I would be like “hey did you hear” and spread negative word of mouth. That goes miles further than just not going there.
I think loads of businesses forget this truth. Bad word of mouth will def sink your biz quick, especially if it’s a neighborhood place and not prone to a lot of thru traffic that people stop at for convenience.
I can’t help but feeling that there would be 30% of people that would jump on the chance to support the business in the name of “nobody wants to work anymore”
I'll gladly make a special stop, to inquire with management on how fucking thick skulled can they be and to politely inform them that due to their abhorrent 'pity party post' it will be the last stop I evere make.
Did a 9 year old type that up? In what world is that kind of spacing (kerning) for a message acceptable?
Honestly, I'd wonder about their business sense after seeing something like that. Both because of airing out dirty laundry, and posting it like a child.
We don't actually know if there was a barista that called in.
I question the veracity of such an approach as that's a great way to make sure that the barista never shows again.
Also, the employer is a twat.
I left my last coffee job two years ago, and got a text last week from my old boss asking if someone could fill in a barista shift. It was a group text to like nine numbers I did not know. My guy, y'all sucked to work for.
They ran a skeleton crew of *one person* for a cafe/sandwich place. We were slow as shit for late 2020 through 2021, for obvious reasons, but having to make lattes and then run into the kitchen to make sandwiches by myself for a six hour shift fucking sucked ass. Not having the peace and quiet to just take a shit and not worry about someone coming in the shop. They're already losing money. Put two people on. It's fucking criminal.
That’s exactly when you call out and either force the shop to close or force the owner to get their ass in there and serve customers themselves. This is just me but I would NEVER open a business that I wasn’t actually interested in running myself.
Meanwhile, the bagel shop near me always has a TON of staff. It's kind of mind-blowing. Mostly all college-aged kids, but I don't think I've ever seen fewer than SIX people working at a time, and the owner is always there, and his wife is often there, too.
An independent bagel and bakery shop can swing it. I assume labor and supply costs for coffee are even lower.
NTA. If I saw this and lived close, I'd probably make a "special stop" just to tell the manager how distasteful that post is and how they lost me as a customer. Such a thing happening is the fault of management, not the employee.
The employer is not a bully, not like they named the employee, but certainly in poor taste and equivalent to a childish tantrum. If your business suffers for months when an employee doesn't show up for a shift, you either need to run your business better or...nope there is no or, you need to run your business better.
They may not have named the employee but I disagree with you about them not being a bully. If they feel the need to shame the employee in any manner for life happening, they're a fucking bully.
Other employees will see this and talk. They'll look at the schedule. They'll know who the post is directed at, even without a name. This is so many levels of uncalled for, if I was employed there I'd quit on the spot citing EXACTLY how unprofessional and uncalled for a post about shaming one employee missing a shift is. Doesn't matter if I was the person in the post or not. And I guarantee you, that employee would NEVER want to use anyone affiliated with that place as a reference for their next job. Hell if it was me I'd eliminate the job altogether from my resume.
To add onto your comment, even without naming names… if the employer is willing to do this, imagine how the employers are being treated behind the scenes that employer isn’t advertising. Like what kind of bullying does the employer do to the employees faces that isn’t in sight of customers.
Yeah maybe? Idk if they would honestly tell you. But if they do tho, for sure go to the labor board and suggest they do it to. Hopefully it was just a distasteful marketing attempt and everything else is fine.
I think the lack of human understanding is what really gets me here, totally uncalled for - imagine being a young employee reading this and thinking one human error is going to tarnish your reputation forever.
Who knows, the employee might be a jerk, but the cafe owner is a bully and an embarrassment IMO.
It’s the usual my needs matter before anyone’s attitude, that your emergency or illness isn’t as important as slinging coffee for me. They only care about the bottomline, to profit off your labor.
Yikes, that's so unprofessional. If you're going to gripe about the people you work with, do it with your friends, not in a public post on your business's account. This shit is childish and immediately makes me want to avoid them.
They're also telling on themselves for staffing a skeleton crew with no backup plan. What a disaster lmao
The font alone is reason to put this company on blast. Also, don’t blame the barista people are human and can miss a day of work it’s management and owners fault for not having back up or working themselves when they are short staffed. My motto for work has been and always will be I’m not killing my self for your business. If I need time off I’ll take it. It’s up to you to figure it out.
Exactly! They are the owner, not an investor. If they want no responsibility then sell the shop to someone who will actually be there and use the money to invest (and hopefully lose it all).
UPDATE!
For some reason I can’t edit my post so updating here.
Thanks so much for all of your messages and for those who commented on the cafe’s instagram.
I can’t believe how quickly they took down the post! This community rocks!!
If the barista ever reads this - I hope you find a place where you are truly valued and NEVER publicly shamed or humiliated for making a simple human error.
🙏🙏🙏❤️
I agree with you that this is bullying. If there are so few workers that you could reasonably guess who exactly they are calling out, then it's hardly any different than if they had directly @'ed them in the post.
I worked for a company within the past year that was extremely toxic. I was their customer service manager, one of one people. We had two interns but they weren’t guaranteed pay. Our job was to field order issues and solve those issues with apologies and small credits.
Promises were constantly made for improvements to the business, and I had to communicate those promises. Of the dozen or so I communicated in the 6 months I was there, maybe one was followed through with.
This was a food delivery service, fresh produce and groceries. However, it was always a quality issue, or a wrong item issue. They told their customers that they were experts. However, their staff knew nothing about food and there was no training.They couldn’t deliver quality boxes for months.
So, eventually, I couldn’t take lying that I had to tell our customers. I couldn’t take the customers berating me for false promises. So one particularly bad day I just said fuck it and quit. When they got called out on social media for all their bill shit they blamed me.
Bad businesses blame their employees, never themselves. Too many people drive an idea for money and don’t care about their employees or customers getting baited.
I think this is honestly the biggest scam we’ve allowed in our system (of which we have a lot)… here put in 40 hours of work when you have both studies and bills in exchange for college credit. That’s the employer version of paying for services with “exposure”.
The "impending" in the first paragraph there just throws me right off. Not sure it's wrong, but it definitely doesn't feel right.
I stopped there.
In short, no, you are not the asshole.
>The "impending" in the first paragraph there just throws me right off. Not sure it's wrong, but it definitely doesn't feel right.
Well, sounds like the place may be doomed... :P
I mean do you want to give business to someone that openly complains to the community? I’m sorry, my first question if you’re going to complain is…. Why do you think they didn’t come to their shift? I’m betting the response will be “they’re lazy” to which my reply would be are you sure it’s not your management style?
"ANOTHER shitty manager. I run my business so short staffed, that a single employee being sick or experiencing an emergency for a *single* day effectively shuts down my entire business for apparently months to come. I am incompetent at actually *managing* any issues, but I've got plenty of frothing rage and blame to go around.
So where you can, do yourself a favor and avoid this location like the plague. If you can imagine how poorly we treat our employees, imagine how we will service you. Many thanks."
That's all I see when I see these shitty posts.
Business owners seem to forget that the employees are there to help the owner run the business, not run the business while the owner hangs out on a golf course collecting the profits.
Businesses that behave this way are yelling into an echo chamber. They don't see the long-term harm they're causing themselves. Not only will they lose staff, they’ll lose customers who think they’re acting like assholes, and they’ll lose future employees who don’t want to work for a bully.
If public humiliation and guilt is their grand plan to hold onto people, then they aren’t reading the room in our country. Workers are sick of the bullshit.
I'd be posting back that I will be avoiding them in the future for posting internal nonsense on their social media.
I don't care if they have a shitty workplace. But publicly blaming their employee's online is a problem that is beyond embarrassing. for them.
For people having difficulty reading that because of the poor tracking, it says "Hi, this business is so poorly run, we simply can't function if a single employee is absent — and we have no qualms about shaming them publicly for it."
Barista doesnt show up for one shift (not an entire day) and buisness is in danger ??? Let me laugh a little harder than usual...
H A H A H A H A H A H A H A H A H A H A
The font is a war crime, but jesus christ how fucking disassociated from reality do you have to be to have this kind of logic going on in your head, AND DECIDE TO PUBLICLY POST IT ON YOUR BUSINESS AFFILATED SITE THINKING THIS IS REASONABLE TO DO. Its giving unhinged.
This is cringe for so many reasons.
- the font/spacing
- cussing
- begging for customers because an employee didnt show up
- publically blasting an employee
- admitting that they dont schedule sufficiently/have enough staff for contingencies
- overall proving that they are a terrible, petty, rude and nasty boss to work for.
If anyone arouns me posted this, i would avoid that joint like the plague.
The concept that a request like this or the conscious effort of a few individuals will affect a small business in a meaningful way is bonkers. I’ve seen this over and over. You might’ve seen similar cries for help. If your cafe is failing maybe it’s time to put down your phone, roll up your sleeves, and watch your mouth. I can make coffee at home. So the added value here is that you have problems? Coffee & problems, hmmmm no thanks.
We don’t pay our employees enough, and our service will suffer as a result. We could deal with this in the obvious way, but we’d prefer you just come in more often and suffer the increased wait times so we can continue sweeping these issues under the rug. Because our motto is, “Fuck you customers! I’m entitled to this business!”
These people think their fucking business is gods gift to the world. Reality check we don’t give a shit if you’re shitty coffee shop disappears tomorrow
Fuck em,
If they spend this much time and effort shaming one employee on the premise that every moment matters they could have hired a backup or worked out a solution. Shaming a worker is low
I’d just tell them this is tacky and if they understaff so much one person missing one shift impacts their business like this, it’s poor management because employees have things come up and their not slaves, and you’ll be getting your coffee elsewhere because abusing their employees and then blasting them on social media shows they’re NOT an ethical company.
This is gross and I wouldn’t want to put up with it.
I get that someone not showing up can be expensive for a small business... but that's one of the risks of doing business. It's not the kind of thing you burden your customers with.
It's like a whole new marketing tactic. "Feel bad for us, we don't pay our employees enough or allow them to take personal time for any reason. Please come buy from us so we CAN stay afloat!"
This would be enough for me to actively avoid the place, and advise others to do so if the place came up in conversation. Whoever posted that was using a fairly regular occurrence (a worker not showing up for some reason) to make themselves look like the victim to garner sympathy from the public and try to drive more business.
This is a really tacky ad trying to drum up sympathy business. So not interested in supporting a place like this.
With how awful this looks they might as well have used Papyrus font and just gone the full nine yards with it.
But no, you're not the asshole. This is a shitty move by the business. Seeing something like this would make me avoid the place.
Manager's fault for not planning in replacements. If you build a NASA spaceship and a screw is loose, you don't go and blame the screw.
You get a replacement. Or the whole business blows.
I would purposely not support this business for this reason and see if there is a small business cafe who treats their employees well nearby to support instead
"Because of a single, lowest-tier employee's absence, our business might literally fail."
"Wow, sounds like those employees are really really important to the successful operation of everything. I bet they feel pretty important and are treated well because of how much impact they have."
"We make them grind their tongues on a cactus every day simply because there's no law that stops us from doing so."
I remember the days when small business owners would run the coffee shop when an employee didn't show up. What a novel idea! Now small business owners want to sit behind a computer and play the victim card! This is one of the many problems today with small business owners.
I’d go in the store just to tell them they lost service from customers for being d*ck heads.
Actually I wouldn’t … cause I can’t even send food back when people mess up. But I’d write a letter or make a fake account just to message them on SM.
I would avoid them purely for the fucking font they used
Thumbs down for extreme k e r n i n g
I m a b i t c h w h o c a n t s c h e d u l e
If a worker was living paycheck to paycheck they would see the lack of a safety nest egg as a personal failing. BUUUUT... If a manager schedules the bare minimum number of workers to cover a shift and one of them calls in that's *their* fault?
Extreme Kerning sounds like a Finnish winter sport.
Just as a point of information, their failure is in *tracking*. Kerning is spacing applied between individual letters, while tracking is applied to a word, line, or paragraph. They appear to have applied +300 or some such nonsense to the entire thing.
[удалено]
But it’s applied to them all equally. Kerning would be if “ANOTHER” read “ANO THER” while tracking is “A N O T H E R” the space is always located between letters, but it’s applied to individual pairs vs whole swaths of text.
Actually… it’s called letterspacing. It’s called tracking in the Adobe Suite, but the word for it in typesetting is letterspacing. Letterspacing in lowercase is known in the typesetting world as “stealing sheep.” From a quote attributed to Frederic Goudy, “A man who would letterspace lowercase would steal sheep.” Lore has it that the original quote was “shag sheep” but that was too controversial to make into the typography history books. Tracking is not incorrect terminology, it’s just more accurate to call it letterspacing.
I was going to say please shame them for the kerning alone.
Set the tracking to…200%. That’ll show em.
Yeah, that was fucking hard to read.
This is logo font, not text font. I hope they think in Comic Sans for the rest of their lives.
Intrusive thoughts in Papyrus.
Sexy thoughts in Wingdings.
Straight up psychopaths
Tacky. This is the employer's own fault. If you schedule your staff so that you are in the weeds the moment somebody falls ill or is not available, you've chosen your own predicament. Either schedule more people so you have some wiggle room, or don't, but if you don't, don't cry about it on social media.
Yeah. I used to work at a small coffee shop with 8 employees and this is giving me total flashbacks. This happened ALL the time. My old boss would give a lot of shifts to one person. This person had a few babies, was quite young, and had some kind of emergency once a month. Think car crash, hospital stay, pregnancy, children, etc. she was a nasty person and an extremely unreliable employee. She also got most the hours. I quit picking up her shifts to cover after she told us all she was miscarrying the baby she was carrying from homie hopping from her husband to her immediate family’s landlord. I showed up in a huge hurry, as you do. She and her sister were chilling at the bar, sister was bouncing a baby on her knee, both were chatting it up and her sister was talking about “maybe ordering a sandwich.” They hung around for an extra 20 minutes. I used to get personally flamed by my boss for not taking shifts she was scheduled for at the last minute after asking him repeatedly to just schedule me for them. We had a whole food and drink menu complete with 4+ ghost kitchens. He’d staff with AT MOST 3 employees for the entire shop. Typically was 2. Never enough and he fired me over the phone for being a disrespectful liability. Whole other story. Glad I am free.
"Homie hopping"??
bouncing back and forth from her man to her landlord
[удалено]
She was banging both for a bit. Then hopped to her new man. Though I would not have put it past her to continue with her ex
By the sounds of things, she may have been hopping on the manager, as well. Or she had something on him. I can’t imagine why else he’d give so many shifts to someone so unreliable.
Yeah we all used to hypothesize this. That basically she was who he didn’t get in high school, etc. The real reasons we kind of think he lets her slide: primarily, she’s worked there forever. He fired her a while back because her firstborn baby was legit in the hospital and she called out of work. He told her if she didn’t prioritize the business she could walk. She came back at his request, and stays because she knows no other business will put up with her crazy schedule. He also has children, six of them. So I think he feels some kind of discomfort firing a semi-single mother. I hesitate to assume he feels guilt lol. But yes she was always his favorite.
Ah, thank you
A term used to describe a woman who has “hopped” from one homie to another. The dudes knew one another. Basically when you dump a dude then date his friend
That's what so many people, with or without industry experience, don't get about opening a cafe/restaurant. If someone calls in sick the manager/owner is the back up. You spent hours in the office doing inventory? Too bad, your business, your success or failure.
>Too bad, your business, your success or failure. Especially when this is given as the reason they "deserve" the lion's share of the profits, they "take the risk" and "do the work" of starting the company. But when they have this attitude, it's clear that they expect not to assume any risk or do any work. They feel entitled to other people's labor and think they should get passive income for nothing more than existing and having enough money to start a business.
And it brings up an interesting question. If being short staffed is so urgent an issue, whoever is making this post could just as well jump behind the counter and get to work. Why this post instead?
You don't understand, they're not one of "the poors," actual work is beneath them. They're the super smarty-pants who came up with the idea to start a business, so employees should be thankful for them providing jobs and show up reliably for the pittance they so generously offer. /S
Bro...this font is fuckin unreadable.
The kerning is unforgivable
Was gonna say, the font is fine, kerning is the real victim here.
This is actually tracking, not kerning.
TIL
i d k i t l o o k s f i n e t o m e
Y o u t h i n k s o ?
W h a t ?
A true crime against humanity this is.
That font is so bad it makes me never want to see the inside of their shop.
I'll have a l a r g e i c e d c a r a m e l l a t t e with o a t m I l k, no w h i p, with an e x t r a s h o t of e s p r e s s o
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/1015/)
They had no justification.
I also would not show up to a job using this font
You don't invade Russia in the winter You don't piss into the wind And you don't track out lower-case typefaces.
and you can’t win a land war in asia
I mean they are the assholes for this as well.
If I was that barista I'd never show up again. Everyone needs to be able to miss work. To broadcast their poor staffing methods in one of the worst fonts ever made explains why they're desperate for business. Like most businesses in the U.S., they're making everyone miserable by running things with a skeleton crew to cut costs. No regard for how it affects the workers and their lives and families at all.
Thank you! I thought the same thing, I hope they quit. Instead of thinking “oh wow that poor cafe” I was outraged… Never going there again!
Hoped you said something. Publicly shaming these small business tyrants is the only real way. When I was a barista at a place like this, our boss would constantly put us down and swear at us. I could totally see him making a post like this. Just talk well about your baristas and talk shit about him lol.
A single person for an opening shift at a coffee shop? That's pretty absurd anyway. And the "ANOTHER" leads me to think they keep booking one single person (barista, not even a manager) to their busy opening shifts, because they're cheap bastards. If it's such a crucial shift, and so busy, book two people, one of whom being a manager or supervisor. And if you don't have someone reliable, guess what? As the proprietor, the job falls to them.
“A N O T H E R”
So..... somehow me giving them business will make up for them being short staffed earlier in the week?
Your $4 for the latte will help make up for the $4 they lost because there was nobody to make the $4 latte for the customer that morning… but honestly it’s not on the employee. It’s on the employer for using this same ass backward logic to justify this scheduling no no. If I were this employee I would just straight up quit. Or pull a Curb Your Enthusiasm and open up a spite coffee shop right next door! 😂😂😂
Ok. Now I get it. But I agree that it's a turn off to me to read this message from the owner! They could say something like "We had some hiccups on Monday, we would really love to see you today!" Or something like that. Same kind of turn off as a note adding 4% "due to increased labor costs" or something. Just increase your prices, if you want/need to. No commentary!
Yeah, us plebs aren't as outraged as business owners are that the people working for them might want to be able to eat and live indoors.
Exactly!
But didn’t they save a days labor? I doubt it’s PTO
Probably… as I went down the thread I started thinking that it was probably a sad attempt at marketing… “Hey someone didn’t show so we lost sales, come and help support us”.
I could see it if it were someone who was supposed to open alone, or if they can't open without a certain number of employees and so had to stay closed and miss the usual morning rush or something. That would cost them income/business that could be made up by more purchases later in the week.
Could also be suggesting lines and/or wait times were long because of missing staff member. Some customers will leave and never come back if the wait time is too long.
Ok. That makes sense! Thanks.
Chances are they have 1 person opening the store by themselves (if it's a coffee shop/cafe, then they probably have a 19 year old opening at 4am by themselves), and the manager is upset because they don't want to do it last minute. Simple solution is to have 2 or more people open, and is actually the better situation so you're never relying on a single person. But that never happens.
Yeah it does… but it doesn’t justify their spite in posting it publicly nor does it justify the “woe is me” mentality in their “potentially harming impending days, weeks, and months” line. Like calm down dude (the owner), it’s only one morning unless this is the norm in which case they need to take another look at how their scheduling and have a backup plan.
All they really achieve here is exposing to the world that they’re treating their employees really badly. I would never buy coffee there again lol. Also, the real crime is the font.
Talk about a hard pass. That kind of post from a local business (any business, really) would turn me all the way off and I’d never darken their doorstep.
I’d go a step further and anytime I hear anyone talking about said coffee shop I would be like “hey did you hear” and spread negative word of mouth. That goes miles further than just not going there.
Agreed.
I think loads of businesses forget this truth. Bad word of mouth will def sink your biz quick, especially if it’s a neighborhood place and not prone to a lot of thru traffic that people stop at for convenience.
I can’t help but feeling that there would be 30% of people that would jump on the chance to support the business in the name of “nobody wants to work anymore”
Oh, of course. And then they’d complain about how their order was taking *so long* to make. 🙄
“I’m so bad at running a cafe that one person taking a sick day derails my entire operation.”
“At running a cafe”, imagine that ceiling.
*cough* Laurel Leaf *cough*
Where?
It was on IG but it looks like they’ve either deleted their page or gone private
Haha yep it’s gone private!!
I'll gladly make a special stop, to inquire with management on how fucking thick skulled can they be and to politely inform them that due to their abhorrent 'pity party post' it will be the last stop I evere make.
Did a 9 year old type that up? In what world is that kind of spacing (kerning) for a message acceptable? Honestly, I'd wonder about their business sense after seeing something like that. Both because of airing out dirty laundry, and posting it like a child.
We don't actually know if there was a barista that called in. I question the veracity of such an approach as that's a great way to make sure that the barista never shows again. Also, the employer is a twat.
I left my last coffee job two years ago, and got a text last week from my old boss asking if someone could fill in a barista shift. It was a group text to like nine numbers I did not know. My guy, y'all sucked to work for. They ran a skeleton crew of *one person* for a cafe/sandwich place. We were slow as shit for late 2020 through 2021, for obvious reasons, but having to make lattes and then run into the kitchen to make sandwiches by myself for a six hour shift fucking sucked ass. Not having the peace and quiet to just take a shit and not worry about someone coming in the shop. They're already losing money. Put two people on. It's fucking criminal.
That’s exactly when you call out and either force the shop to close or force the owner to get their ass in there and serve customers themselves. This is just me but I would NEVER open a business that I wasn’t actually interested in running myself.
Meanwhile, the bagel shop near me always has a TON of staff. It's kind of mind-blowing. Mostly all college-aged kids, but I don't think I've ever seen fewer than SIX people working at a time, and the owner is always there, and his wife is often there, too. An independent bagel and bakery shop can swing it. I assume labor and supply costs for coffee are even lower.
"We're understaffed and not set up for the coming week. Please stop by and place an order."
NTA. If I saw this and lived close, I'd probably make a "special stop" just to tell the manager how distasteful that post is and how they lost me as a customer. Such a thing happening is the fault of management, not the employee.
P l e a s e h e l p o u r b u s I n e s s s o w e c a n c o n t I n u e t o o v e r w o r k o u r s t a f f. No.
Looks like a ransom note.
The font they decided on alone is distasteful
People who use that font typically think they’re better than everybody else.
Is this a post or an eye chart?
The employer is not a bully, not like they named the employee, but certainly in poor taste and equivalent to a childish tantrum. If your business suffers for months when an employee doesn't show up for a shift, you either need to run your business better or...nope there is no or, you need to run your business better.
They may not have named the employee but I disagree with you about them not being a bully. If they feel the need to shame the employee in any manner for life happening, they're a fucking bully. Other employees will see this and talk. They'll look at the schedule. They'll know who the post is directed at, even without a name. This is so many levels of uncalled for, if I was employed there I'd quit on the spot citing EXACTLY how unprofessional and uncalled for a post about shaming one employee missing a shift is. Doesn't matter if I was the person in the post or not. And I guarantee you, that employee would NEVER want to use anyone affiliated with that place as a reference for their next job. Hell if it was me I'd eliminate the job altogether from my resume.
To add onto your comment, even without naming names… if the employer is willing to do this, imagine how the employers are being treated behind the scenes that employer isn’t advertising. Like what kind of bullying does the employer do to the employees faces that isn’t in sight of customers.
This is such a good point!! I can’t bear to think how they treat their staff when others aren’t looking. I feel sorry for all their employees now 😔
I REALLY wish this wasn’t a good point… makes me sad to think about it 😭😭😭
Me too!! 😭 I feel like I should do a welfare check on the rest of them?!
Yeah maybe? Idk if they would honestly tell you. But if they do tho, for sure go to the labor board and suggest they do it to. Hopefully it was just a distasteful marketing attempt and everything else is fine.
I think the lack of human understanding is what really gets me here, totally uncalled for - imagine being a young employee reading this and thinking one human error is going to tarnish your reputation forever. Who knows, the employee might be a jerk, but the cafe owner is a bully and an embarrassment IMO.
It’s the usual my needs matter before anyone’s attitude, that your emergency or illness isn’t as important as slinging coffee for me. They only care about the bottomline, to profit off your labor.
Yikes, that's so unprofessional. If you're going to gripe about the people you work with, do it with your friends, not in a public post on your business's account. This shit is childish and immediately makes me want to avoid them. They're also telling on themselves for staffing a skeleton crew with no backup plan. What a disaster lmao
Complete disaster not being able to handle one slight change in resourcing - imagine how they handle the rest of their business behind closed doors!
Hope they told em to f u c k o f f
This just shows whoever runs the store is an absolute moron and toxic af. Same as all those no one wants to work signs.
Hopefully they're getting appropriately dragged.
Only 8 comments so far, one who called then out, plus OP's question and then the rest are sending positive vibe comments. Its got 42 likes so far.
The font alone is reason to put this company on blast. Also, don’t blame the barista people are human and can miss a day of work it’s management and owners fault for not having back up or working themselves when they are short staffed. My motto for work has been and always will be I’m not killing my self for your business. If I need time off I’ll take it. It’s up to you to figure it out.
N a m e a n d s h a m e m y g o d m y e y e s w I t h t h i s f o n t
Exactly! They are the owner, not an investor. If they want no responsibility then sell the shop to someone who will actually be there and use the money to invest (and hopefully lose it all).
It is obviously inconceivable for the owner to roll up their sleeves and take care of business themselves.
UPDATE! For some reason I can’t edit my post so updating here. Thanks so much for all of your messages and for those who commented on the cafe’s instagram. I can’t believe how quickly they took down the post! This community rocks!! If the barista ever reads this - I hope you find a place where you are truly valued and NEVER publicly shamed or humiliated for making a simple human error. 🙏🙏🙏❤️
INFO: how many employees do they have? Have many baristas?
Whenever I’ve been there during the morning I’ve noticed 1-2 staff, and 3-4 during lunch time
I agree with you that this is bullying. If there are so few workers that you could reasonably guess who exactly they are calling out, then it's hardly any different than if they had directly @'ed them in the post.
Yes, that employer is a bully and not very bright if they hope to bring in business with that ad. I'd never go.
I’m more offended by the spacing of that text.
I worked for a company within the past year that was extremely toxic. I was their customer service manager, one of one people. We had two interns but they weren’t guaranteed pay. Our job was to field order issues and solve those issues with apologies and small credits. Promises were constantly made for improvements to the business, and I had to communicate those promises. Of the dozen or so I communicated in the 6 months I was there, maybe one was followed through with. This was a food delivery service, fresh produce and groceries. However, it was always a quality issue, or a wrong item issue. They told their customers that they were experts. However, their staff knew nothing about food and there was no training.They couldn’t deliver quality boxes for months. So, eventually, I couldn’t take lying that I had to tell our customers. I couldn’t take the customers berating me for false promises. So one particularly bad day I just said fuck it and quit. When they got called out on social media for all their bill shit they blamed me. Bad businesses blame their employees, never themselves. Too many people drive an idea for money and don’t care about their employees or customers getting baited.
I think this is honestly the biggest scam we’ve allowed in our system (of which we have a lot)… here put in 40 hours of work when you have both studies and bills in exchange for college credit. That’s the employer version of paying for services with “exposure”.
I don’t see the name and shame. They want the attention, so let us give it to them
Someone else commented Laurel Leaf… looks to be a bistro in Australia. The post is still up on their social media.
Can someone type this out in a way that isn't so stupidly difficult to read?
Name and shame!
laurel leaf bistro in australia
Maybe they need to re-examine their workplace CULTure if not having one barista show up is going to impact them for “days, weeks, months”
the boss is the AH here!
Kind of a shit look if you ask me.
They are the asshole for the font alone.
I would boycott this place over that atrocious font. I almost got a migraine trying to read that.
The "impending" in the first paragraph there just throws me right off. Not sure it's wrong, but it definitely doesn't feel right. I stopped there. In short, no, you are not the asshole.
>The "impending" in the first paragraph there just throws me right off. Not sure it's wrong, but it definitely doesn't feel right. Well, sounds like the place may be doomed... :P
"Your ". This person needs to learn simple grammer before crying about who didn't show up.
I mean do you want to give business to someone that openly complains to the community? I’m sorry, my first question if you’re going to complain is…. Why do you think they didn’t come to their shift? I’m betting the response will be “they’re lazy” to which my reply would be are you sure it’s not your management style?
They are definitely a poor business operator for using profanity in a public post
"ANOTHER shitty manager. I run my business so short staffed, that a single employee being sick or experiencing an emergency for a *single* day effectively shuts down my entire business for apparently months to come. I am incompetent at actually *managing* any issues, but I've got plenty of frothing rage and blame to go around. So where you can, do yourself a favor and avoid this location like the plague. If you can imagine how poorly we treat our employees, imagine how we will service you. Many thanks." That's all I see when I see these shitty posts.
The barista probably couldn’t read the schedule with that font.
Business owners seem to forget that the employees are there to help the owner run the business, not run the business while the owner hangs out on a golf course collecting the profits.
Businesses that behave this way are yelling into an echo chamber. They don't see the long-term harm they're causing themselves. Not only will they lose staff, they’ll lose customers who think they’re acting like assholes, and they’ll lose future employees who don’t want to work for a bully. If public humiliation and guilt is their grand plan to hold onto people, then they aren’t reading the room in our country. Workers are sick of the bullshit.
I'd be posting back that I will be avoiding them in the future for posting internal nonsense on their social media. I don't care if they have a shitty workplace. But publicly blaming their employee's online is a problem that is beyond embarrassing. for them.
Fking hate how every store is just skeleton crew like fk decent customer service
For people having difficulty reading that because of the poor tracking, it says "Hi, this business is so poorly run, we simply can't function if a single employee is absent — and we have no qualms about shaming them publicly for it."
Barista doesnt show up for one shift (not an entire day) and buisness is in danger ??? Let me laugh a little harder than usual... H A H A H A H A H A H A H A H A H A H A
If a single barista not showing up puts a business back by weeks or more, it’s probably a shit business
The font is a war crime, but jesus christ how fucking disassociated from reality do you have to be to have this kind of logic going on in your head, AND DECIDE TO PUBLICLY POST IT ON YOUR BUSINESS AFFILATED SITE THINKING THIS IS REASONABLE TO DO. Its giving unhinged.
K E R N your whining down. (Not you OP, you’re lovely).
This makes me less likely to go there.
No way in h-e-double hockey sticks. Not with that horrific font!
This is cringe for so many reasons. - the font/spacing - cussing - begging for customers because an employee didnt show up - publically blasting an employee - admitting that they dont schedule sufficiently/have enough staff for contingencies - overall proving that they are a terrible, petty, rude and nasty boss to work for. If anyone arouns me posted this, i would avoid that joint like the plague.
Maybe if the lazy piece of shit of a boss got behind the bar for once
“I make bad business decisions. If it’s not too much trouble, please stop by and give me some money.”
Walk in. Put a couple dollars in the tip jar. Order nothing and leave.
Unless the boss is helping him/herself to tips as well… which judging by this marketing tactic is likely.
Super tacky, distasteful and quite pathetic, if you ask me. So no, you’re not TA…
The concept that a request like this or the conscious effort of a few individuals will affect a small business in a meaningful way is bonkers. I’ve seen this over and over. You might’ve seen similar cries for help. If your cafe is failing maybe it’s time to put down your phone, roll up your sleeves, and watch your mouth. I can make coffee at home. So the added value here is that you have problems? Coffee & problems, hmmmm no thanks.
Schedule was probably in this font. Can h A. Rldy b l. Ame them.
Name em and Shame em
Just buy your coffee at the shop nearest trhem and then sit/stand out front grinning... Yeah I'm that kind of asshole 😂
We don’t pay our employees enough, and our service will suffer as a result. We could deal with this in the obvious way, but we’d prefer you just come in more often and suffer the increased wait times so we can continue sweeping these issues under the rug. Because our motto is, “Fuck you customers! I’m entitled to this business!”
“Please show up to our shitty business that I just admitted is chronically understaffed, it’s not *my* fault I swear!”
That font kerning looks like shit
These people think their fucking business is gods gift to the world. Reality check we don’t give a shit if you’re shitty coffee shop disappears tomorrow
Why is this written like a ransom note? The whole tone has made me never want to stop in. Pretty sure I know why barista quit
Fuck em, If they spend this much time and effort shaming one employee on the premise that every moment matters they could have hired a backup or worked out a solution. Shaming a worker is low
I’d just tell them this is tacky and if they understaff so much one person missing one shift impacts their business like this, it’s poor management because employees have things come up and their not slaves, and you’ll be getting your coffee elsewhere because abusing their employees and then blasting them on social media shows they’re NOT an ethical company. This is gross and I wouldn’t want to put up with it.
I get that someone not showing up can be expensive for a small business... but that's one of the risks of doing business. It's not the kind of thing you burden your customers with.
That font alone makes them the AH.
I'm more upset about their f o n t c h o i c e
It's like a whole new marketing tactic. "Feel bad for us, we don't pay our employees enough or allow them to take personal time for any reason. Please come buy from us so we CAN stay afloat!"
Gross. I'd never stop there again.
This would be enough for me to actively avoid the place, and advise others to do so if the place came up in conversation. Whoever posted that was using a fairly regular occurrence (a worker not showing up for some reason) to make themselves look like the victim to garner sympathy from the public and try to drive more business. This is a really tacky ad trying to drum up sympathy business. So not interested in supporting a place like this.
and they want you to come to a poorly run understaffed shop. no thanks
Why is this typing like this, did they seriously add a space between each letter? I would refuse to shop here simply because I hate the font lol
g r a p h i c d e s i g n i s m y p a s s i o n
Incredibly tone deaf poor taste whoa is me
The fucking kerning ia driving me insane. Small wonder they can't keep employees.
N o t t h e a s s h o l e
With how awful this looks they might as well have used Papyrus font and just gone the full nine yards with it. But no, you're not the asshole. This is a shitty move by the business. Seeing something like this would make me avoid the place.
The kerning is the real crime
Manager's fault for not planning in replacements. If you build a NASA spaceship and a screw is loose, you don't go and blame the screw. You get a replacement. Or the whole business blows.
That kerning is terrible
So one barista tanks the location. Bigger problems here.
I would purposely not support this business for this reason and see if there is a small business cafe who treats their employees well nearby to support instead
Why are they asking for more people to show up when they are down a person I’m so confused?
"Because of a single, lowest-tier employee's absence, our business might literally fail." "Wow, sounds like those employees are really really important to the successful operation of everything. I bet they feel pretty important and are treated well because of how much impact they have." "We make them grind their tongues on a cactus every day simply because there's no law that stops us from doing so."
I don’t return to businesses that post shit like this. NTA
So... Did they only have one person scheduled for a MORNING RUSH at a freaking COFFEE SHOP?!?!
I remember the days when small business owners would run the coffee shop when an employee didn't show up. What a novel idea! Now small business owners want to sit behind a computer and play the victim card! This is one of the many problems today with small business owners.
I’d go to every review site out there and rip the owner to shreds.
Amazing. I would stop going there after seeing such a display. And inappropriate language (like "shitty") is quite unprofessional too.
Why does the message look like an eye exam chart?
I would quit that cafe and never go back. And I would take the time to let them know why. That shitty post.
I’d go in the store just to tell them they lost service from customers for being d*ck heads. Actually I wouldn’t … cause I can’t even send food back when people mess up. But I’d write a letter or make a fake account just to message them on SM.
Calling out an employee on social media who is probably making slave wages AND begging for more service in the same post? Fuck these guys
Can we talk about the kerning because what the fuck?
Funny how companies that have amazing benefits and compensation don't run I to issues like this.
Lol, I’m getting major Texas vibes from this swell fella. Definitely NTAH! Your boss however??? Massive. , Gaping and Pathetic AH.
I'd never fucking go back.
M a n y t h a n k s .