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Good Employers a dying race?

Extraction_PointExtraction_Point
edited January 1970 in Coffee Industry related subjects
Emagine this..... Your an experienced barista with a good track record and referee's that moves to a country town of around 70,000.
You take a job at one of the "best cafe's in town" only to find that they want the coffee made at 75-80 degrees and no latte art is allowed as it wastes time. Ok they do pay my wages afterall but a request to replace the 1950's catering cups gets ignored and the "head barista" can walk out in the middle of a mourning or lunch rush without notice and still have a job the next day because he took them from a 1kg a day cafe to 3kgs. i spend 6 months there and doubled that 3kgs into 6-8 kgs and a day off nearly costs me my job. Daily threats and abuse is not acceptable regardless of what you pay someone. If your going to be a coffee shop Nazzi so to speak then hire staff that dont care to begin with as they wont care in the end anyway. He had a permanent add in the local paper for positions vacant, I watched 30+ employees go through this place in 8 months all of wich were female and none of wich had any skill whatsoever! I could go on forever about the amount of A-holes i've worked for over the years but i have had enough of the industry i loved for so long. It's not easy to do what you love and not go home with a smile on your face at the end of the day. I GIVE UP!!!!
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  • askthecoffeeguyaskthecoffeeguy
    move town or change jobs! ;)
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  • taztaz
    Emagine this..... Your an experienced barista with a good track record and referee's that moves to a country town of around 70,000. You take a job at one of the "best cafe's in town" only to find that they want the coffee made at 75-80 degrees and no latte art is allowed as it wastes time. Ok they do pay my wages afterall but a request to replace the 1950's catering cups gets ignored and the "head barista" can walk out in the middle of a mourning or lunch rush without notice and still have a job the next day because he took them from a 1kg a day cafe to 3kgs. i spend 6 months there and doubled that 3kgs into 6-8 kgs and a day off nearly costs me my job. Daily threats and abuse is not acceptable regardless of what you pay someone. If your going to be a coffee shop Nazzi so to speak then hire staff that dont care to begin with as they wont care in the end anyway. He had a permanent add in the local paper for positions vacant, I watched 30+ employees go through this place in 8 months all of wich were female and none of wich had any skill whatsoever! I could go on forever about the amount of A-holes i've worked for over the years but i have had enough of the industry i loved for so long. It's not easy to do what you love and not go home with a smile on your face at the end of the day. I GIVE UP!!!!
    Which town is it. I like a good laugh. I used to live in a small town like that, now im in Melbourne and its just the same but on a bigger scale. Just go home and laugh at the silly idiots. You can only be the best person you can be and who cares about them, its their life.  ;)
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  • askthecoffeeguyaskthecoffeeguy
    a place i once worked did 1000 coffees per day with just me on the machine and a manual 'call order' system, where all coffee orders were verbalized (not written down) - and I was expected to put out a coffee every 20 sec - when a coffee rush was on I was expected to heat four or five 2lt milk jugs until they were glowing, and to pre-pour 20 or more shots of espresso at a time, to turn the coffees over these conditions were far from ideal, and i would never make coffee that way again, but i still learned some things from that place about systems and proving a certain type of service to a certain type of client - who was perhaps more interested in speed an efficiency than in quality control now in one of my stores we regularly do 800 coffees per day, but made to order without the atomic milk, but some of the same strategies in turn-around came from my old job, but with a renewed emphasis upon quality control pat
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  • One-a-dayOne-a-day
    Turn him back into a 1kg shop by opening up your own outlet or kiosk
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  • askthecoffeeguyaskthecoffeeguy
    i should also like to note that the demand for skilled baristi by far exceeds supply - certainly in melboure - we are crying out for skilled staff as there now seems to be a new cafe on every street corner, and another one in between!
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  • Coffee_FiendCoffee_Fiend
    LOL i know where he is talking about ahhh well atleast your somewhere better now with that damn sexy Mirage with the foot pedal for the steam wand, (by the way do you use that pedal??).
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  • Unknown
    if you are as good as you say you are. Then (and I don't mean this offensively), have the balls to stand up to your boss/s and state that you are more than capable of achieving a higher quality product without any time erosion. That in your opinion, it's NOT ok that the other barista can behave how they like and not lose their job, and that you work hard for them and do deserve respect. If that fails, pick a less popular cafe to work at and build up their trade. I actually have intentionally done this in the past, as A. I would become invaluable and B. have the satisfaction of achieving a more satisfying situation for myself. There is no point in being a little fish in a big pond hey! What does that achieve? But firstly, make sure you are as good as you think you are, and get some advice/judgement from someone you respect, not your girlfriend/boyfriend ;) . Good luck
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  • Extraction_PointExtraction_Point
    OK! So it's been some time since i posted my thread and i must now go on the record saying that while there ARE some idiot employers out there...i finally found a good one that appreciates my input and acts accordingly. I can now say that the place i made reference to in the first post was Bluey's cafe in Lismore owned by John Ross. No more needs saying as im above and beyond him now! :) umm... Coffee Fiend? You obviously know who i am and where im at now..but im not sure who you are? A clue please? lol To answer your question .. YES i do use the foot operated steam pedal :) It took a couple of days to get it all co ordinated but i havnt really used the knob side since.
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  • askthecoffeeguyaskthecoffeeguy
    nice one guys good to hear some solid resolutions coming out there - I'm happy to go on the record as saying that any employer who does not value the contribution that their employees make is asking for trouble!  I for one simply do no have the time or energy to decide what is right for everybody and the entire establishment - so I throw it open to the group - questions about rostering and when to schedule staff training etc and I let my staff decide how it could best work - that way I arrive at much better results than I could possible hope to achieve on my own and I owe a lot to my fantastic team who literally walked in off the street asking for work!!!!!  
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