Where to start? Development is awful!!! They make false promises to keep good employees around and never follow through on them. They underpay for almost every level and put the most incompetent people in DM and above positions. I had an RVP literally tell me they know so much is wrong, but they don't know where to even start to be able to fix it. Upper management is constantly fooling around with other managers and upper level employees...they had a VP get fired for this, you can look it up online. When DMs or SMs don't like someone they tell lies to get them fired and the PRSC (Starbucks equivalent of HR), always takes their side and never believes the lower position, even when there is definitive proof! I've personally seen this multiple times and was party to it myself at one point.
The smartest partners are the ones at store level and no one ever listens to them. They see the action first hand and have great ideas, most of the time their ideas are stolen by upper management then implemented poorly due to lack of understanding of the original idea, or just poor planning in general. Speaking of poor planning.....every year at the end of the year they cut back on resources, labor and pay increases to make up for their wild spending habits from earlier in the year.
They make huge public displays for hiring "opportunity youth", then trot them around like they're show ponies, which is disturbing and disgusting. What they don't tell you is that over 70% of them didn't even make it past 3 months! They need extra help and attention and you fail to give the SMs those resources, then couldn't care less until a discrimination suit comes up, (which are all settled out of court and not shown by the media...I've personally known of at least 20 in the 10 years I worked there).
