Lamppost Coffee Reviews

Please read every detail of this so that you have clear idea of what it was really like to work here, I promise you the owner and upper management can be very manipulative and mislead you into thinking they care about their employees; when in reality they do not. I want to preface that 1. I will not name names for the sake of abiding by the community rules of Glassdoor. 2. I was warned previously about some of the issues that existed within lamppost upper management but unfortunately did not realize the extent of those issues until I suffered from it personally. To keep this as brief but straightforward as I can, I will focus on the recurring instances that I witnessed to have caused problems for not just me but many other people across the company. The owner emphasizes creating a space that loves coffee and loves people, however I should clarify that they only love the customers and even then it’s not love just greed. I will only speak from my personal experience as I can not speak for others, but I among many others are more than aware of the shocking wage discrepancy that exists at lamppost; whether it be between locations or between new hires and baristas and even between assistant managers and managers. Multiple times I had been told that the owner “wished they could pay us more but that just was not in the cards” and this is simply a way they attempted to make me feel pity for others and make me complacent but I will not stand for that. I have the knowledge as to how much specific people made and without giving those amounts away, they were all horribly inconsistent with one another. I also was personally accused of either negligence or poor treatment of others or even doing things on company time when I shouldn’t be. These were all lies and it got to the point where I was being accused of things by the owner, to my face, about things that they had spun themselves and did not have any evidence of it occurring; which it never did. The owner also openly slandered one of our previous employees to the entire location and that to me is wildly inappropriate, a form of slander, and highly unprofessional, not to mention they disclosed their pay to us as well as a tactic to paint them as a liar. That instance was ironic to me because these people (upper management and the owner) are the ones who are negligent, liars, slanderers, exploitative, unresponsive and manipulative. I wish I could have been more specific because I could write an essay on the things they did to not just me but many other employees at this location that are simply unjust, but please take my word for it, the owner of this company will exploit you as much as they can, gaslight you as much as they can, and manipulate you as much as they can until YOU feel guilty about things that THEY have done to cause the suffering of everyone but those closest to them. Please find a job where they compensate you appropriately, actually value you as an individual, and do not just view you as something to exploit or a means to an end.

Very sexist operations team. Even with more experience, women get paid at least $2-3 less than male employees. The baristas are never respected or encouraged by the operations team, you will only receive criticism and unnecessary micromanaging. The first 3 months are pretty great and fun, and then it quickly goes downhill as you start to realize how they are really treating you and other baristas. The female manager is extremely unappreciated by owner and operations team and under-paid, often forced to take on tasks that aren’t in her job title. The new food menu is amazing, great-quality but the new manager/chef is very unprofessional and disrespectful towards employees. They take advantage of the baristas’ time and work and if they have a problem with a barista or just doesn’t like the person, they will cause a scene (often in front of customers) and report untrue things to operations about said person. For example, a barista lost their job because the chef just didn’t like them and couldn’t let certain things go and have a face-to-face conversation with barista. On top of that, they’ve had several minors who work over the legal amount of hours, just because they don’t have enough employees. Baristas commonly experience burnout, each underpaid and unappreciated. Each barista has opened or closed the entire store by themselves at one point or another, sometimes every week. Operations team holds onto grudges, even after you make a mistake and apologize for it. It is clear and obvious that this company priorities money over their employees, which of course is common, but it is getting to the point where they are losing an employee every week. They advertise themselves as a Christian company, but does the exact opposite of how Jesus would treat others. “Christian Coffee Shop” is all just to make them look good and get more business. Final thing, although I could go on and on, the operations team will never confront you in person. It is all over text, often paragraphs and screenshots of passive-aggressive criticism which leads to miscommunication and unprofessional conversations.