From today’s Newsweek:
Starbucks has long claimed to be a “different kind of company”—one that cares about the health, safety, and well being of its workers nationwide. It doesn’t even call us workers, it call us “partners,” saying that we’re all in this together. Starbucks executives go so far as to claim that we’re a family. But if that’s the case, this is the most dysfunctional family I’ve ever seen.
I started working at Starbucks over nine years ago as a day job to support my theater career. Little did I know, I would fall in love with this job. I thrive in the fast-paced environment, adore my colleagues, and genuinely appreciate the human connection I have with the hundreds of people who walk through our doors every day.
What I didn’t realize is that this job would also bring me a lifetime of medical bills and surgeries. While working in 2018, I started experiencing a sharp pain in my hip. Due to short staffing and the fact that I didn’t “look sick,” my manager rejected my request for time off to heal.
I continued working through the pain for two weeks before it became too much to bear. One morning, I called an ambulance from work to take me to the ER, where I was diagnosed with a serious fracture and rushed into emergency surgery. What had started as a minor stress fracture escalated to a clean break through the bone, due to the continual physical demands of my job and my inability to take time off to rest. I was out of work for four months, but the chronic pain and medical bills endured.
Read the complete story here.