Avoid at All Costs - Barista Birch Coffee Employee Review

Where to begin. I left this position three-four weeks after starting due to massive mismanagement on almost every conceivable level from training practices to base wage to how they implemented punishment for tardiness/lack of adherence to dress code. I've worked in coffee for the better part of ten years and have never had such a negative experience in a workplace before. The management team oversees every granular detail of employee performance, going as far as to take employees aside and instruct them on which words to edit out of their greetings (literally. I had a manager ask me to 'cut out saying 'the' after using a specific phrase) to customers in order to 'streamline' the checkout process. You can't make this stuff up folks. This hyper micro-managed atmosphere is made possible because one of the two owners, who is on the personnel side rather than the roasting side, is himself imposing these standards on not only the baristas but also the management team. He was known to come into various locations without saying a word to the employees, watch them from the corner while they served customers, leave without saying anything, and then report any supposedly poor performance to his team who would then contact you and dole out punishment. It was wild. They also started me, someone who's been trained in specialty coffee on both coasts, at $14/hr, which is at best disrespectful and at worst dehumanizing as NYC cost of living is so high. Another disturbingly noteworthy element is how Birch frames its customer service experience which also informs a lot of how they frame internal communication with employees. This is done using very specific verbiage, with the cups even being branded with the phrase 'Birch loves you.' The same language is used across employee communication, this idea that the company does x, y, or z because they 'love' their employees. This didn't sit well with me initially, and after I worked for them for a bit I realized that they used this language strategically as a manipulation device. My advice would be to avoid working with Birch in any capacity, no matter how good the prospect seems.