Pros
Good coworkers, good customers, sometimes really fun, free coffee, I know how to make drinks at home now
Cons
I'm going to start out by saying that a lot of this is definitely store-specific, and I'm 100% sure that not EVERY store is like this. However, I have heard similar things from people who work at different store. I also recognize that our store managers are people too and probably had more than their fair share of difficulties and stress at work. -Early mornings/late nights -Management was inconsistent. I had 3 managers in less than a year, and for about a month and a half, we didn't even have a manager. -I was not formally trained on anything other than register. I learned how to make drinks from watching my coworkers and asking them questions because none of my managers would listen to me when I asked to be bar trained. -No one in my store would get/take breaks, even when working eight hour shifts, because it seemed like we were discouraged to do so. Occasionally a shift supervisor would take one, but that's about it. The last manager I had was even reluctant to let my pregnant coworker take breaks. -Low pay, high stress. This is true for most customer service jobs though. -Upper management shoves unrealistic goals onto store managers, shift supervisors, and team members, then gets upset when those impossible goals aren't met. -We were always understaffed, which was an especially difficult problem because my store had a drive-thru in addition to front house. During the busy hours (when customers are going to/leaving work) people on the floor would often need to take orders on the headset, remember those orders while taking payment on a different order, take orders on front house, and make drinks in a timely manner on top of that. Management stresses that staff needs to make sincere connections with customers, but it's hard to make customers feel welcome when you're preoccupied by a thousand other duties. -Hours were inconsistent. Usually shift supervisors were overworked because there were only three or four of them. Some team members would get little to no hours, while others would be scheduled almost over 40 hours a week. There was a time when I wasn't given a single shift for over a month, with no explanation from my manager even when I spoke to them directly.