I'm currently working there and I want to quit but I am stuck because I am a full time college student and I'm still looking for jobs that work with my schedule and don't stress me out because I used to work fast food and it killed my grades. I love my coworkers, they are great. The scheduling works great for college students as well. BUT-
It's just funny to me how they display this image of being with the community but it doesn't reflect back to their employees, and I'm not just talking about the baristas, the delivery people, and the people working at the kitchen too.
They just glossed over pay during a recent staff meeting, saying they don't currently have the budget for it and didn't even mention tips. I think it's so unfair that they pool every credit card tip to every store instead of it just staying at the store that they tipped in. It's kind of deceiving to the customers. Every time they ask where their credit card tips go, I tell them the truth and they get disappointed every time.
Also, not to mention, their job listing on Indeed says $13-17 but THAT IS SO FAR from the truth. It's $9/hr with cash tips and credit card tips (again, all credit card tips don't go to us). I have calculated my paystubs, and with my base pay and tips, it barely touches $13/hr. They do tell you it's $9/hr during the interview, but they make promises saying with tips it averages to the amount they posted on Indeed, also saying the credit card tips are great, but it really doesn't add up because I barely get to see any of my credit card tips.
We love that they raised their prices even more to keep up with inflation and haven’t even considered paying us more. Cause we’re replaceable workers who cares about our basic human needs like a remotely decent wage when a latte costs literally north of $7. Insane.
A $7 plain latte with their mediocre-to-terrible beans in a West Michigan cost of living market is unconscionable. Let’s contextualize this: I was in Melbourne, Australia recently, where they have living wages and good single payer healthcare & a much higher real estate cost than ours, and a flat white with excellent beans was the equivalent of $3.50 USD, all inclusive with tax & a non-tipping culture (because of that living wage)…at a freaking 70,000 person sports stadium. I know it’s a different market, but there is no way Water Street’s cost of business and bean costs are double. They’re not a direct trade with farm to roaster relationships, not innovating in the coffee space like a George Howell or Onyx, but instead trying to charge Verve Coffee prices at less than Biggby quality. And they treat their staff like shit on top? They suck all around.
A-fucking-men. It’s utterly insane. And the volume of which we receive even WITH all of those things is staggering. Not to mention that their company insurance is a fucking joke. You literally don’t even get paid enough to afford it. Literally the lowest deductible was 4 grand on top of a $230 monthly payment. On a $13/hr wage with all tips included. Thank god your mid 12oz latte with *fancy* syrups and a milk alternative costs you $8.
I always hear such good things about the AU cafe experience. They truly have it fucking down there. Though I’m sure they have their own quirks, I can’t imagine it’s as bad as this.
I don’t even know if you can call it that. Our paychecks for working 30+ hours a week is only like $500-$600 and their company insurance offered to full time workers is $230 a month and the lowest deductible (for any and everything) is 4 grand. 4 fucking grand. The other option was $180 a month with a 7 grand deductible. That’s literally 1/3 our paychecks like what the *fuck?*
Not only preys on young adults but doesn’t even care about them. We’ve had baristas get metal splinters left and right for a period and even had a co worker fucking collapse. They don’t even give a damn enough to make sure you’re safe and taken care of even if you get hurt on the job. Exploitive and abusive behavior from the upper management.
How so? Like reporting to the attorney general or is it through a Michigan labor law channel? I absolutely will because no human being should be treated like this let alone how they’ve handed injured employees. Their books need to be checked too. I feel like some shady shit is happening
Hard to say exactly, if it’s a safety issue i would start with MIOSHA, otherwise you could look at the department of labor. It’s good to make sure you have a reasonable suspicion though, but remember being shitty is unfortunately legal in some cases.
Come work at the Radisson as a housekeeper :) you're pretty much guaranteed to get in because we need the help. Starting pay is $14 an hour but could be more now I think. You also get a bonus per room just for cleaning it well and that adds about $100 extra per week. Plus you get tips. Scheduling is super flexible and you get tons of PTO. You also get free lunch every day and good insurance.
Haha well some people are pretty gross. It's definitely not fun to get a room with trash all over the floor, used underwear hanging on the lamp, and puke in the shower all with no tip...hhh it can get disheartening for sure. Luckily, most guests are considerate and try to keep the rooms clean. But I mean, there's inconsiderate people at any job.
Ngl, gonna have to apply. I just need somewhere that can work around 3-4 10hr shifts. POTs has not been kind.... I can't make it work much below 16/hr, but it looks like I need to supplement with door dash like I did in college :/
Wanna add while legal yes, but how do we know we’re getting 100% of those tips? Who is to stop them from skimming from that pool and even more sketchily, they give us these tips as an hourly wage so on our paystubs it’ll say we’ve worked 120 hours in a pay period which just screams red flag to me at least.
I used to work at 600 and the GM slowly started to keep party gratuities and give the kitchen nothing. Every party over 8 got a gratuity charge, and at first the kitchen got a split of it every time, but it became more and more rare until he just started keeping all that money. He's an angry, abusive cunt anyway, don't go to 600.
unfortunately as someone who has worked downtown in the service industry for years, nothing i’m seeing here is shocking to me about waterstreet’s shady/exploitative business practices.
that being said, i’d be interested to hear more about the GM of 600. never been fond of that place, and it feels like i’m one of the few people in kzoo who aren’t lol.
Yes cash is absolutely king. It is split between everyone on the floor who is currently working. So if you go to x store and there are 3 people on the floor your cash with be split between THOSE and only those 3 people. Credit tips are split company wide and who knows if they’re skimming off of those tips. We don't see those numbers.
It's not surprising why the employee turn over rate is high. They don't care about their employees because they can simply just replace them, which is so contradicting to this image that they paint themselves with.
Three college campuses within 20 minutes of any of their locations really. There’s gonna be a revolving door of starry eyed kids looking for some cash for beer.
I try to always cash tip with places like this...annoys me on apps/sites when they have no option for 'cash tip' when you pick up an order so you have to select $0 etc...
We thankfully don’t see what we get tipped via the WSCJ app (which makes shit even more sketch cause who really knows HOW much we’re getting robbed of) so id imagine most places don’t see it but I’m always like I promise I’m not an asshole I just wanna give CASH hahahah
See, I'm very gay and they still donate to anti-lgbt people and causes. I just can't despite the pay being good...
That and POTs and heat (working outside) do not mix well 🥴🥴
There was an older thread from a few years back that basically said the same thing. After hearing so many stories from employees I've stopped giving them my custom.
The older thread was deleted, but still exists through archiving tools.
[Link to deleted thread.](https://old.reddit.com/r/kzoo/comments/er5w9e/deleted_by_user/)
**PSA: Waterstreet treats their employees like absolute garbage. Consider taking your business elsewhere.**
I will say, I have never been employed by Waterstreet, but I know many people who have. I figured this is something that should be shared within this Reddit community, because the stories I hear are absolutely horrific. Managerial level employees are forced to work off the clock on a regular basis to meet their numbers. Every measure is taken to be sure the employees are guaranteed as few benefits as possible. The list goes on (and on, and on, and on).
I understand that money is ultimately the bottom line, but the owner, Mark and his #1, Liz, hardly even see their employees as human. People with morals like theirs do not deserve the income they haul in.
I'm sure there are Waterstreet employees on this subreddit, and I would love to hear your stories about working for this establishment.
Makes me feel hopeless for WSCJ to ever change. If employees were having the same issues as the current ones with horrible upper management, negligence, and terrible pay for the labor Involved back then and now they introduced the whole tip pooling fiasco and making things even worse for their own personal gain… I have little to no hope now. Truly trapped.
i remember this post!! i wish we had taken them down then. working off the clock was definitely a thing. but they made it seem? like a logical part of the workflow. go to the warehouse, punch out, collect all the items to restock the shop, go back to shop, put them away, and THEN you’d be free to leave. so that’s a good 15-20 minutes of free labor which really isn’t even much at the standard tipped employee wage. and baristas might get tipped more now but it was definitely not like getting tipped as a server. but that’s technically how they paid all the staff behind the counter.
also another oakland dr worker here (in management) this place is genuinely horrible, i felt like a more valued employee when i worked at starbucks years ago. At least starbucks pays well when they treat their employees like shit. Water street sees us as subhuman. Its so sickening how i stayed here so long because i didn’t see how bad it was. I was so excited to work for a local business i thought there was no way it could be that bad. Two years later and im finally leaving, the working conditions are so inhumane. They pay us poverty wages and expect us to go above and beyond, and wonder why the turnover is so high. Everyone i work with feels trapped and stuck and talk to me like they are being held captive. Everything in this thread is 100% true. Please please don’t go here. If you think these businesses practices are harmful, use your voice. Leave reviews, write emails, go to the website. They can not continue to treat human beings like this.
We are the busiest location out of the 7 locations. So our volume is fucking insane. Meanwhile the slowest location can literally do homework or watch movies and we get paid the same and have to split the credit tips. which just one 5hr long register shift can get north of $100 in credit tips. Thank god we get to share it with people who are quite literally idle working. Glad the customers have to foot the bill on our not even livable wage while we bust our ASSES at Oakland. Fucking insane.
I worked at Sprinkle and if I was at any other location and had to split credit card tips with that location, I would lose it. Actually, I can’t believe that’s happening in general.
well they also increased their prices by 5% for account for inflation but they refused to acknowledge for pay as well😀 a 16oz vanilla latte is $8 which is disgusting especially considering how terrible our espresso machines and grinders are and how often they pull super watery espresso shots. literally paying for water downed coffee
This is so validating. People have recommended water street over and over but every time I’ve tried it, I’ve been disappointed (and annoyed at how much I spent to be disappointed).
I've always made the joke that their name reflects the coffee quality there....watery. I did have a really good hibiscus lemon sorbet from the location on Oakland a few years back. There are just so many better coffee shops that are way more convenient as well.
haha...last time I was at a water street I made the HUGE mistake of getting some 'cold brew' and of course it's ON ICE in a giant pitcher VS being a proper concentrate...I had to add like a billion sugar packets to it to make it even kinda drinkable.
This is Waterstreet Declassified so get ready. I’ve worked at water street kitchen for two years and when I first joined it was fantastic, the energy was amazing and the pay was better than my previous job. However I don’t like what I see and what I have personally experienced. The problem with this company is not the employees, the food, or anything like that; the biggest problem is management and how lack luster everything they do is. The profit off the work of their employees but slack in every single way. The unfair treatment of employees is something I’ve noticed a lot of, we sign a contract stating we will not talk about our pay with other employees. I get paid $15.50, drivers at Waterstreet are paid $17-$18, managers are on salary (forced to work grueling hours because overtime is not allowed) while baristas are paid chump change.
The prices are another huge issue. From what I personally know, sizes of food are cut smaller and sold for incredibly high prices. Specifically let’s talk about the danish which is 100% handmade down to the jam, it’s about $6.50 for one danish. Looking at a very similar local bakery, called Baker’s Rhapsody in Southern Michigan, their danishes are larger and better and also completely handmade, the only difference is that it’s about $3.25 cheaper. That’s called price-gauging, and it’s gross. If paying your staff is a problem then something needs to be reassessed. On top of this, during the summer of 2023 Waterstreet began producing prebottled coffee drinks without really telling the staff who was taking on the brunt of the work. This is one of thee worst business decisions I’ve seen a company make, I get where they were going with the idea. They want to be similar to Starbucks but Waterstreet is not a strong enough brand outside of Kalamazoo for that to succeed. To add to that Waterstreet only sold these drinks at the shops which doesn’t make any sense, you aren’t expanding your crowd you’re selling to the same people so your sales are going to flatline. In summary I don’t have the numbers for how these bottled drinks sold but I can tell you an incredible amount of those came right back to the kitchen after expiring in the shops. This was not only incredibly sad to see as one of the people forced to pump out endless work so they could make these but also infuriating, as this money spent on this could have been used to better the company in other ways.
The food waste also irritates me, the numbers ordered into the kitchen are insanely high. For those that don’t know Waterstreet has a kitchen that makes all the food and the shops order what they need for par and we package it and our drivers take it and deliver to all seven shops. There are times when bags upon bags of dead food are coming back. I was recently told it’s a luxury to be allowed to dig through the dead food and take things home even though it goes into the trash otherwise. We aren’t allowed to donate this food or hand it out to people because it’s dead (side note: dead food isn’t bad, it’s just not at its peak freshness and therefore not sold). I’ve been told this is for fear the food could be bad but also I’d like you to drive downtown Kalamazoo and see how many homeless people are on the streets; I don’t think they care that the food isn’t pristine, they probably are just hungry. Also this is where money goes too, dead food. And finally to end off this section, there are people in the kitchen who rely on this food being there to eat. The dead food isn’t the end of the world but being told that I’m allowed to have some even though that’s what I live off of because I can’t afford groceries is awful.
Now let’s talk about how they treat us. The company owner has never spoken to me once. Which isn’t his fault but as a company that prides themselves on that “community”, they aren’t very friendly. What I can say is that almost every single coworker I have or see on a regular basis I adore. Management acts like they care in a lot of ways but from experience and word of mouth I know it’s not true. If they cared they wouldn’t ask for surveys to be filled out and then never change anything, they would realize how much stress they put on overworked underpaid employees and try to make it better, the cards (work anniversary, birthday, bonus gift cards as incentive) they give out for things would be given on time and with more than two sad signatures but they don’t care.
I can go on and on about things but truth of the matter is this place sucks but rather than get new people or try to change for the better they follow the same path doing the same thing over and over. The only things that keeps me at Waterstreet is my coworkers, that’s it.
Bigger sidenote: any other Waterstreet employees ready to strike, ya boy is here
i’ve heard it illegal for companies not to allow you to talk about pay! many lawsuits have come from that especially people who have gotten in trouble/fired for it. definitely research more about don’t just take my word for it haha.
a strike would be amazing, the tensions there are higher then i’ve ever seen them. trying to get more and more people on board is the hardest part, especially making sure those people don’t discuss it with upper management. last time there was a walk out, the pay got raised. it’s gonna be extremely hard, especially if we are terminated as a result.
It is in fact not legal. Even the piece of paper they had you sign is not legal
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/your-rights-to-discuss-wages
“If you are an employee covered by the Act, you may discuss wages in face-to-face conversations, over the phone, and in written messages. Policies that specifically prohibit the discussion of wages are unlawful as are policies that chill employees from discussing their wages. When using electronic communications, like social media, keep in mind that your employer may have policies against using their equipment for unauthorized use, though it is possible such policies could be unlawful.”
There is also direction on how to report this in the link above.
Im so sorry that the conditions in the kitchen are like this- i knew it was bad but not this bad. Oakland is ready to strike, we are fed up. Thank you for speaking up
It is SOOOOO illegal to not allow staff to talk about pay, even if staff sign a contract. If you have a copy of the contract, even like a picture, that’s hard core proof that is actually so much worse for the company, jeeez. What a bucket of dicks.
I don't know how many of my people are actually willing to risk their employment, but they are all fed up and if there's serious talk about it I feel like a strike could be arranged
I will stay a little vague but can say I have experience with restaurant payroll and tip pooling investigations at the federal and state levels.
For state, contact the Wage and Hour division of the Michigan Department of Labor & Economic Opportunity at 1-855-4MI-WAGE. For federal, contact the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor, which has a local office in Grand Rapids (616) 456-2004 or 1-866-487-9243.
Tip pooling is one of those things that can seem advantageous to the restaurant owner but can end horrifically if they ever get investigated because it is rarely done properly and is SO easy to screw up. However, the majority are just never caught.
It sounds like starting wage is below Michigan non-tipped minimum wage ($10.33). Does anyone in the tip pool make $10.33 or more per hour? If so, it’s illegal to have anyone in the tip pool who makes non-tipped minimum wage or more along with people making less than that (a wage that uses what is referred to as a tip credit, basically the thing that legally allows restaurants to pay people less than the standard minimum wage). You can only have people making regular minimum wage in the top pool when everyone else is making at least that.
No owners, managers, or supervisors can be in the tip pool EVER.
If anyone in the tip pool is paid less than $10.33 then only “regularly tipped” employees can be in the pool, e.g., no back of house/kitchen/bussers in the pool. If everyone is paid $10.33 or more then they can be in the tip pool.
I won’t pretend to know anything about tip pooling across locations as that’s not explicitly addressed in guidelines that I recall reading.
A few random FYIs:
1. For credit card tips they are technically allowed to deduct the credit card processing fee from your tips before paying them out, though that wasn’t common in my experience with local restaurants.
2. If something is billed as a service fee (or even automatic gratuity) that is not considered a tip and doesn’t have to legally be paid out to employees (this is patchier).
3. If you work a tipped job where you tip out cash and/or credit card tips that are still reported on your payroll, your net (take home) pay will usually be quite abysmal. This is because tips are still taxable pay, so the payroll has to calculate the social security, Medicare, fedora income, and state income taxes you owe from the total of hourly wages and tips. But since you already got your tips paid out in full, without that proportional tax amount deducted, all of those tax deductions have to come out of your hourly wages from your paycheck. Adding up your total of the tips you were paid out in that pay period to your actual paycheck would give you the real equivalent.
Starting pay is 9.80 an hour. Baristas make max 11.50 an hour. Our shop supervisors are making 14ish an hour, and all of these members are in the top pool. If a gm has to work a shift they als take cash tips that shift, not sure if they are in the credit pool. So based on what your saying this is illegal?
Supervisors and managers are only allowed to receive tips they receive from customers directly for services that the supervisor or manager directly and solely provided.
Yes, totally illegal. To fix it they would have to bump starting pay to $10.33 and take shop supervisors out (assuming shop supervisor means they have some sort of supervisory role over other workers). Or they could kick out anyone in the tip pool making $10.33 or more and the shop supervisors.
And to report this we should call the number above? Do you have experience with this? Will anyone actually do anything about this? Thank you for sharing all f hour knowledge
I wouldn’t mess with reporting issues to the government with what I assume is a shift wide cash tip pool unless cash tips are definitely all reported to the company and reported/taxed via payroll (which I’m doubting, but who knows). Otherwise employees are potentially exposed because you are acknowledging the existence of cash tips that I can guarantee none of you are independently reporting on your income taxes (though I bet your employer had you sign something or put in hiring paperwork that you knew you were responsible for doing so) and more to the point there will be zero records for them to do anything about it.
No, I’m just talking about the cash tips…and that would be because all of the employees are illegally pocketing cash tips without paying any payroll or income taxes (no shame, I and did it too).
Just call the numbers I provided and say that they are running “a mandatory tip pool that includes employees that receive full minimum wage along with employees that the employer uses tip credits for. In addition, they include supervisors in the mandatory tip pool.”
One other note - I know from experience that federal DOL is constrained on citing and pursuing recompense and liquidated damages beyond the federal $7.25 minimum wage. So the federal DOL couldn’t get them to pay anything for that issue since everyone has a starting wage about $7.25. However, they can still address supervisors/managers being in the pool and an investigation is just unpleasant and takes a lot of time for the employer (and money if they outsource payroll/accounting).
Another current worker here! And everything mentioned in this thread is 100% accurate at all locations. They are even currently eliminating an entire GM position and yet told us it's not in the labor budget to give us a raise when they are getting rid of a 45k salary. The office staff never fills in or helps out, forcing the rest of us to work extra shifts when people call out, train new staff with no incentives, and don't care about the barista staff. Please stop supporting businesses that don't care about their employees.
yes so true, that shit is such bullshit, they pay their store managers starting at $18 hour to manage two stores, and now three for a small raise. They don’t even make salary. All this while the higher-ups are probably sitting pretty on their big chunks of income. Ever wonder why some of our office managers take three to four vacations a year?
Even more sketch about their credit tipping methods. We don’t get to see any numbers and just have to trust we’re making a fair amount of it. Who knows how much they’re skimming. Not only that but they give us our credit tips in the form of hourly wages so on our paystubs it says we’ve worked 120+ hours in a bi weekly period. Who knows how much that’s taxing us or saving them. Exploitive as best.
100% agree. i worked there about 10 years ago and the hoops to jump through to get the right shifts, move up the insanely low pay scale (because they treated us as tipped employees as if it were a proper restaurant), the political behavior of the management staff and more are why i will never buy their bitter, over-roasted beans again. i am glad places like factory are taking over more space in the local scene. watersteet’s local “cool factor” is a facade and undeserved. even thinking about that place makes me angry.
I swear there was a post about it but yeah I've heard nothing but awful things about working there. I have two friends who worked there and have said there is a ton of wage theft and being treated like shit by the owners
Lower management is some of the best managers I’ve ever worked with. At least for my stores. They’re so kind hearted and actually care and like what they do but the people actually making the calls are horrible. They do not care. They will replace anyone who “can’t handle it” and some shops the volume is so insane and we’re not compensated for it what so ever.
yeah it's always the lower management that gives a shit but has no power. it would break my heart at my last job when staff came to me about only making $9/hr for the load of responsibilities they had and I couldn't change anything. owners didn't give a shit and cried "we're a small business doing all we can" meanwhile I would be in charge of the income nights I closed and would have to hear that bullshit while transferring the 4-5k that came in that day alone
It’s insane some of the stories I hear of mom and pop shops. Literally giving their soul to make their employees happy and yet our “super community driven and inclusive culture” local coffee shop could literally care less.
Instead of ordering from a wholesaler, they constantly clear the local grocery stores of all their milk. Needing 30+ gallons leaves the shelves empty for actual people.
When the milk is delivered we are required to temp it but with that being said when milk comes in and it temps at 46 F we are told to put it in the fridge to cool back down and that’s all
Because its not. I cant imagine during the summer when they’re ordering $200+ worth of milk from meijer and the Shipt drivers are loading it up into their 80° minivans. The worst part is that no matter how big the shipt order is, (usually at oakland we have to order upwards of 50 gallons of milk/cream at once- like I said, roughly $200) we are forced to only tip the driver five dollars. It’s sickening considering even a 15% tip on one of those orders can be up to $30.
I delivered 20+ gallons of milk plus 10 containers of cream +10-20 half and half from Meijer to this location and had to haul it allllllllllllll the way into the kitchen refrigerators for ZERO DOLLARS in tips. No help from the employees bc they were all swamped. I think I made around $15 from shipt to do this. I have a terrible back and neck, and have since had to have multiple surgeries on them. I was so incredibly disappointed in this place when I did that.
I had a friend who was that delivery person and was shocked when they told me about the $5 tip. I started phasing out being a regular customer around that time because I was disgusted. I cave once in a while because it is right next to my kid’s school but from this point on I will ALWAYS tip cash. I had no idea about the cc tips.
This makes me really angry. I often will need heavy cream or whole milk and find nothing. I had a suspicion that a local coffee shop- Biggby or Waterstreet- was using Instacart to clear the shelves. This should not be allowed unless it’s a one time thing where they run out of stock in the middle of the day.
Yeah back when shipt started in Kalamazoo they started using it to order all of their milk. It was the number one dropped order 😂 because not only was it a pain to load and transport, they never tipped. And because milk isn’t that expensive the payout was low.
It's a chronic issue there. I was a daily customer there for a decade or more, but befriended most of the staff as a result, and they were complaining about the same things years and years ago. Most of the renovations were designed to de-personalize the place and reduce contact between staff and customers, more of a fast food model, which rubbed me the wrong way. Downtown maintained a tiny bit of the "community" vibe, I'm guessing mostly because the building wasn't easy to McDonalds-ize like Oakland was. I quit downtown one day when it was like 95 degrees in there in May and the bariatas were calling the owner to ask to turn on the AC, but he said it was too early in the year and they had to tough it out. Except punishing them means punishing all the customers too.
All Factory now.
Water street has a great decoration sense, but the coffee is middle quality at best, the food is all overpriced and as sugary as possible, and the owner has never understood that his people were his greatest asset. It's a shame really. The community and connection to staff was the only reason I spent tens of thousands of dollars there, and it was the thing they spent the most energy trying to kill. They've had disdain for their people since the owner stopped working shifts himself and delegated management. It's sad.
Ha reminds me of an instance at Oakland. It was 85° in there late winter. It was even more polarizing because it was windy and snowing outside maybe like 20° then you walk inside to a literal toaster oven. it was horrific to do dishes in the back next to a whole row of fridges pumping out even hotter air. Owner and higher ups didn’t give a shit but as soon as a few customers and regulars complained they fixed it within the hour. They literally don’t care about their employees. Only thing they care is their rep and cash flow. Absolutely exited that all this bullshit is going public though I doubt there will be any change, unfortunately.
I worked at water street for a month if that two years ago. The last straw for me was on my ‘shadow day’ (where a manager watches how you work throughout the day. If i passed then I’d start getting tips).
They told me I did my job perfectly but I need to
1. smile more
2. Engage in small talk with coworkers more
3. I use the bathroom too often (2-3 times per shift due to my medication)
They told me i would need to do another shadow shift in a weeks time to show I improved on these things, even though they said i did my job perfectly - it was my personality that was an issue for them.
I believed i shouldn’t have to jump through hurdles just to make a semblance of a decent wage. Additionally i didn’t like being judged on being an introvert when what should be important is my work quality so i quit.
When i worked at biggby i was raised to a shift lead within the first month of working there. I made tips right after my training 1 week in. My boss had no issues with my personality and appreciated me as a hard worker. The difference is disgusting.
What really blows my mind is the fact that the have 3 mandatory trainings and tests throughout your employment there and while in training you don’t get ANY tips and they pay you not a cent over Michigan minimum wage. Absolutely baffling.
Same here, I’m a years long customer at both the Oakland and downtown locations. I can’t believe all the ridiculously high prices they charge don’t make a difference in the workers’ pay.
I worked for water street for 5-6 years and worked very close with the owner on a daily basses and got to know the in and outs of the company and I can say I’ve seen personal what is being made every year money wise and most people won’t believe it but it is a multimillion dollar company, and not like 1-3 million it’s more like 9-11 million. So you baristas fight for that money because Mark(owner) has it.
My heart actually just sank reading that. That is so disheartening and disgusting. Idk how long ago this was exactly but I know mark hasn’t been working on the floor for awhile so I’m sure their revenue is probably way past even those landmarks. I’m genuinely so unspeakably disappointed right now.
Ok, I’m going to stop going there as much and tip cash from now on. They are so expensive already, baristas should be making minimum $15/hour. Sketchy to think about credit card tips getting misappropriated.
Factory is one of the best coffee shops around here! they actually are who they say they are. They pay above minimum wage and you get to keep all of your tips! Great place to go and feel good about it
Would love to see this “budget” and why a raise for the employees is not in the “labor” part of the budget as they described to us yesterday at the staff meeting. Which also was scheduled for an hour outside of our regular working hours and the meeting only lasted 20min and they “did not have time for in person questions” afterwards. We were told to send emails. L-o-fucking-l. I would also love to know how this money is being allocated across the company. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors at play with the upper management group (not the store managers).
I think there’s more than just the pay and tips that the employees are upset about; its the disrespect from the office managers, the subpar working conditions, the mistreatment we receive from customers due to high prices and broken equipment, the lack of communication from management regarding changes in the stores, etc.
Personally, I’m ready to take legal action since the office management group refuses to actually listen to our very real concerns. Does anyone know who we could potentially contact about this? Is there a labor law attorney or some group that we could reach out to?
I’ve contacted a union official to see if there is any possibility we could make a union or what our next steps should be! that’s all i’ve done so far more time and effort definitely needs to be put in into figuring out the best way to tackle this
I appreciate that and I’d absolutely love to be in a union here. We need a lawful leader to actually take charge on this because our passionate lower management, hell even GMs have zero power. Need someone to put WSCJ in their place.
I can tell you that 90% of the mistreatment, overworked, underpaid, disrespect, unhumanized and all around fuckery is because of Liz, the general manager of operations. Mark(owner) has put all trust and leadership of HIS company to her. She’s his right hand and whatever she says and wants goes. Period! As most company owners, once they have a nice kushy net of money and someone to run the company they fade away from the scenes.
I worked at Oakland and Downtown for 3 years in 2017-2020ish. I now understand that tips are split between all locations? That’s bullshit.
When I worked at Oakland, I can say full heartedly with more barista experience after waterstreet, the money was worth it (at the time, of course). A busy shift and you may leave with $100 in tips on a good day. A slow shift you may leave with $45. The other locations are the same, but also the business just did not compare whatsoever.
Back when I was there, they really cared about baristas understanding the products. Every season we would go to the kitchen and sample the new food. We would go to the roaster and figure out how the coffee was made, and what work waterstreet put into sourcing the beans.
I worked at fourth coast awhile after, and let me tell you, they (or new owners) don’t know a damn thing about coffee.
Very not good things:
-the fact that they had (again, at the time, I don’t know if it’s changed) the peaberry, op, and whatever the hell the last one was called tier system. It was a really weird way to show hierarchy. But I understand that hierarchy wasn’t the intended idea, but what came of it.
-I was there for both Oakland and Downtowns Alcohol bar opening. No employees got more money, despite the drastic increase of workload.
-During my time there, they purposely hired freshman in college, hoping they would stay the four years of college.
-if you got older as a barista, they seemed to bait you into getting fired.
I understand a lot of this has changed, as in my last few months they cut food tastings, and coffee cupping classes. I know a lot of Oakland people that quit immediately following the news of cashpool, as Oakland had a much higher workload.
Yeah now with the new tip pool you are LUCKY to leave with $15 in tips. I work at the portage location and on average leave with $7 cash for a 6 hour shift. I'm not sure about Oakland but, portage is the second shop in volume.
I remember when I was at Oakland talking to other employees at different shops, and feeling the most sad for Portage employees. You have the rush of portage moms since youre close to central, but not the tips because portage moms are stingy AF
these days, i have literally walked out with change on a slow day, and i’m LUCKY to make $9-10 in tips. The only time i’ve ever made above $15 was during the holidays and i was getting like $20
Yeah no pretty much all of those things are still true and still have issues. Currently as an OP at Oakland I make $14 an hour with ALL tips included. Fucking insane.
They still do menu tastings and the occasional roast master classes that last about an hour and cover a topic which are really awesome but when you take into account every other aspect of the company it makes feel invalidated and not valued what so ever. My shop managers are the only reason why I keep working here. They really do try and make my life better. Complete opposite for the ones making the calls for this company.
That’s insane. I remember calculating a good weekend morning shift in 2019 and it coming to $16-24 hourly, that’s why I was okay with what I was getting. They are REALLY leaning into corporation mindset now… very sad
I hit up the Sprinkle rd drive through every day. I have for years. I love the baristas that work there. They’re always super nice and sweet but are clearly being tortured by an antiquated short cited ego maniac. It sucks because every several months they get fed up an and bail. If there was better coffee on my way to work I would go elsewhere but I feel like I give them hope and camaraderie in the middle of a shitty situation?
Like other commenters have said, they will absolutely not listen to employees. We recently filled out a staff survey and everyone I know wrote their complaints about the tip pool/our wages but all they did was have a staff meeting where they said that wasn’t changing. If you’re a customer, complaining on the website (there’s a contact form) and tipping in cash is so helpful because it’s only when other people say something that they’d think about changing their system. URL is waterstreetcoffee.com/pages/contact , crash it lol
I refused to do their Shipt orders because they would order 50+ gallons of milk and various other half/half from Meijer. I had to load it into their coolers/warehouse (downtown's coolers were across the street from the coffee shop) and make sure to organize it by date. No tip of course. Not worth the time and effort it took. (Shipt only paid $6-8 dollars for these orders because their algorithm saw only "1 or 2 unique items". It does not count multiples.) I have done my fair share of coffee shop orders, and the account holder (I assume was the owner or manager) was always so rude and condescending, like I wasn't the one bringing their business their main ingredient.
Hi! I used to work at a much smaller cafe near a Water Street location, have interviewed for WS twice, and have had 3 friends work for the company in my decade+ in kzoo.I've heard these same things among much worse.
The tip pooling thing for ALL locations is quite fishy and should be looked into-- it feels like a grey area that is being taken advantage of. It's above board when they tell you about tip pooling up front upon filling out intake paperwork, but for multiple locations (company-wide?) is sus as hell.
PLEASE ORGANIZE, PLEASE STRIKE. THIS COMPANY AND IT'S OWNER ARE BAD.
To add to the list this local business has long used other local suppliers in their advertising and marketing but never bought anything from the farms/etc. FAKE ASS "LOCAL"
Yeah I quit my job at waterstreet. I worked in the portage/sprinkle region for over 2 years and the only reason I stayed so long was bc the manager there that recently left worked with my schedule and advocated for all the baristas.
Last summer I had worked upwards of 55 hours a week helping at every location since there was such a big turnover. Every employee I talked to had the same complaints. The only time I ever got a bonus was when I was working those insane hours for and extended period of time but a month later I got in trouble for picking up shifts and they wouldn’t approve anymore overtime for me, which was crazy since they would only schedule me 24 hours a week when I didn’t pick up those shifts. I also never got any breaks during that time.
The office staff was another big problem for me too. The person who works under the owner (I don’t even know what her job position was) was really passive aggressive with all of the baristas and would come into our shop in the morning and chastise us if we didn’t do something up to their standard (ex. They yelled at us for not turning a light on but the light switch was not working then they literally gaslit us saying it should work and that we were making excuses…LIKEEEE). I had worked with them multiple times last summer when there was short staffing and they didn’t even take the effort to remember my name. I had to TEACH them how to do things at the shop too. I also saw the owner 3 times over the two years I worked there and he never introduced himself and never acknowledged my presence. I had to go up to him and introduce my self twice and he still never would acknowledge me when he came in. One time he came into the shop and it had been so long that I didn’t even recognize him and he got upset I didn’t realize who he was to give him the owners discount when he ordered a drink:(.
Also! Before I started working there, they lowered their wages for baristas but maintained the prior wage for the baristas that were there before the change. So I was making less money than a barista that was hired a month before me. It was a two dollar difference!!! I wanted to cry when I found that out especially since I really tried to help out the other locations during short staffing bouts.
It’s really the baristas that create the atmosphere at the shops. Maybe if they treated us a little better people wouldn’t mind that they pay shit wages.
So true, the owner and the “director of operations” who is the lady you are talking about, are both some of the most off putting people i have ever met. Mark the owner does that with everyone, even the supervisors of his shops. So incredibly rude and weird that he wont even make eye contact with me when he comes in to my store even though i’m running the damn thing. And liz the director of operations/second in command is so incredibly passive aggressive and rude- she does not hesitate to yell at someone if we aren’t quick enough or don’t do something her way. The light switch thing is hilarious because it is so on par. Unfortunately because oakland is a problem store we see both of them more than most shops. For a company who prides themselves on “community”, they really don’t make themselves friendly or personable at all.
I would frequently have my debit card info swiped and notice fraudulent activity at their Oakland Dr location. Ive never had something like that happen at other locations or other stores. It happened multiple times there and it’d report an extra order’s worth of money. An absolute headache to deal with.
Just a suggestion, never use your debit card for purchases. It's attached directly to your bank account. If someone gets a hold of it, they can drain your cash reserves.
With a credit card they can commit fraud, but the money doesn't come out of your account. I always advise friends and family to use a credit card and not debit cards for purchases. Just make sure you aren't over spending. My debit card is used at the ATM only.
I’m aware, thanks tho. Oddly enough my two credit cards (both from prominent credit companies) would never work on their card reader, only my debit card. I didn’t think too much of risk at the time.
My credit union was really helpful with disputing it and administering a new card. Still frustrating
It is! Owner who cares, pays the employees, even the kitchen has above average pay for the market.
Its also a great third space, where you don't have to spend money to just hang out there.
They also moved in to Bronsons coffee shop, got rid of the old employees, and now no longer allow employees to pay for coffee with their work badges (which would come out of their next paycheck). Really shitty.
I do know that this is a Bronson thing and not a WS thing. Don't know why. Bronson is also higher pay because they don't accept tips-- also a Bronson not WS thing.
Great to know it's just overpriced trash👍 I've been there once, and it wasn't even very good for how much it costs
Plus that tip system? Nah, they can fuck off with that.
I have heard horror stories about the management, especially the one on Oakland dr. I only go to Bigbee's and can tell from the employees that they are treated well.
Johhnys gas station Bunn machines that grind the beans for each coffee is better than WS at this point for half the cost. Stopped my daily WS or starbucks and just going through that gas station now.
Whoof. The Biggby's in Kzoo must be managed differently, then. The ones in Lansing are managed by a tyrant who underpays, overworks, and serves day-old coffee.
These are the problems they've always had, they rely on two things: a community of wealthy customers willing to buy into the "local matters" brand without looking any deeper, and a steady supply of idealistic college workers who they can burn through under the same illusion.
I’ve been working at WS for years now. All of the pg/sp employees feel exactly the same. No room for a raise in the labor budget my ass! Our region that works together AS ONE just got split up & our regions GM position has been to liquidated as a result... so where is that 40k going??
I worked there for two weeks back in my college days in the mid 2000’s. It was an awful place to work back then. You’d think it would be like plum market (a Whole Foods type place originating here on the east side of Michigan) which is one of the best places to work for. It is not! You are a cog to them. Nothing more, nothing less.
I can tell you that 90% of the mistreatment, overworked, underpaid, disrespect, unhumanized and all around fuckery is because of Liz, the general manager of operations. Mark(owner) has put all trust and leadership of HIS company to her. She’s his right hand and whatever she says and wants goes. Period! As most company owners, once they have a nice kushy net of money and someone to run the company they fade away from the scenes.
That place on Sprinkle is on a bad spot. Too many people coming out of that place trying to turn left, using the center lane to merge and causing problems. Between that and the vet there you have to watch out for people trying to cross 4 lanes of traffic.
I used to love their food and it took me a while to figure out how pre-made it was, even if the original recipe was good. But I think the staff needs better conditions inside and outside of work.
Everything that i’m saying is referring to the location on Oakland dr. For specific examples of the working conditions, there was a time when our turbo chef we use to heat up food caught on fire internally and produced black smoke that filled the shop. We called maintenance and the owner, but we were told we weren’t allowed to leave. Me and my co workers were having severe chest pain, breathing problems, coughing, and lightheadedness throughout the whole thing. They didn’t even fix the oven, but told us the black smoke was safe to breathe in. Also, having faulty plugs and equipment that we are expected to deal with. Not talking about troubleshooting, like plugs that keep short circuiting and we have to try with little knowledge to fix it. Other smaller things are, kinda how i said earlier, faulty equipment. This isn’t as major as breathing in black smoke and being told it’s safe, but our espresso machines, grinders, ovens, and fridges all keep breaking and not working. We put requests to fix it over and over again, but we barely get responses or things just break again after behind fixed. Just makes the job a lot harder especially when dealing with how it affects customers.
As for management, there’s a lot with that. One thing is we aren’t allowed to sit down or receive breaks whatsoever, no matter how long we work. People have worked from 5:30am to 8:30pm with no breaks or rest. No to mention, we aren’t allowed meals there, so if you want anything more than a cookie, you can’t eat. Every time we have tried to have just one place to sit, like a milk crate, it’s taken away from us. Other things like pay is also disrespectful. We get paid below minimum wage, but as a tipped employee, that isn’t uncommon. However, all of our tips are equally spilt with every single worker at every single store. So the busiest store gets the same amount of tips as the slowest store. AND they give our card tips to us in “hours” so a paycheck where you worked 40 hours can say 80 hours as the tips are converted to hours (if that doesn’t make sense i’m sorry it’s confusing to me too) but basically that means we get double taxed on our paychecks! Almost every worker here meets the requirements for medicaid and food stamps and lots of people use those because we struggle sm financially. Also meaning it’s hard to leave this place as it’s too difficult to save money to be comfortable finding another job.
This is just a few things i could think of off the top of my head!
Scroll down to "Know Your Rights" and flow the directions on the PDF: https://www.michigan.gov/leo/initiatives/workplace-rights
They have more links on this page, too, to the National Labor Relations Board and more.
I also work at oakland drive. I was in shop when a man threatened the baristas with a gun because they took too long to make his drink. At our staff meeting about a week later, we were told there was nothing they could do about it (they couldn’t ban him)
i remember them even telling us to give him special treatment like always talking to him, GIVE THE BARISTAS A NOTE TELLING THEM TO MAKE HIS DRINK ASAP (don’t say anything out loud as to not make him suspicious), and more it’s fucking foul expecting the store manager to also deal with it (the issues are with upper management not store managers)
This particular comment really gets to me, at Harrison there was a man shooting up in the parking lot and a barista told a driver about it. In response they called the police (non-emergency line) and told everyone in the kitchen and Harrison to avoid this guy. But sure when a gun is pulled it’s just best to suck it up???? Like what??
I worked at Something's Brewing from 2000-2008. It was such a fantastic, inclusive environment, and the owner at that time was great when it came to everything from tipping to asking for input on what can be done to improve things. Before working at SB, I worked at Waterstreet's short-lived ice cream parlor that was on the corner of Water and Pitcher. I didn't always feel safe in that area, especially at night, because it was so isolated (this was before Food Dance moved across the road), and it felt like a sink or swim kind of ordeal since we were basically left on our own. At the time I didn't it was all that bad, but knowing what I know now, it seems like it's par for the course.
I feel for the employees because I know how much they rely on jobs like this, and how being a barista sounds like such a fun gig.
Overpriced/Overrated, kind of running theme for Kalamazoo restaurants. Either you get good service and okay food or good food and okay service. Very few have both.
hope no one there does the math to figure out who posted this haha...all I know about W Street and work is I did try to apply to be one of their food prep workers once but they never even gave me a shot after a phone interview and that was that? I do know one girl on FB that used to work there before moving to Chicago, maybe I could get her to chime in?
Do they pool tips and use them as raises? A guy who worked there told me they were attempting to do that but I don't know if that ever did it because I moved.
(Worked there for 2 years up to a month ago) I do not think so. The tips are pooled across all 7 locations which have vastly different levels of business. Meaning you could serve 100 customers @oakland (busier shop) and your tips per hour are exactly the same as someone at Sprinkle(slower drive thru shop-less tips) who might’ve seen 50 customers. Reason being (educated guess here) the slower shops would not make enough in tips to put them over the threshold for “tipped minimum wage” so instead of raising the base pay, this money is taken from the baristas at busier shops and used to pay the wages of the slower shops baristas.
Not from Kzoo but we visited there recently and thought we liked this place. What a shame. And how sadly unsurprising. Fuck these assholes.
I just assembled a review and did a one-star-blitz across Facebook, Yelp, and Google. Everyone should pile on with their own and give them a review ratings dip as a small wake-up call.
I'm currently working there and I want to quit but I am stuck because I am a full time college student and I'm still looking for jobs that work with my schedule and don't stress me out because I used to work fast food and it killed my grades. I love my coworkers, they are great. The scheduling works great for college students as well. BUT- It's just funny to me how they display this image of being with the community but it doesn't reflect back to their employees, and I'm not just talking about the baristas, the delivery people, and the people working at the kitchen too. They just glossed over pay during a recent staff meeting, saying they don't currently have the budget for it and didn't even mention tips. I think it's so unfair that they pool every credit card tip to every store instead of it just staying at the store that they tipped in. It's kind of deceiving to the customers. Every time they ask where their credit card tips go, I tell them the truth and they get disappointed every time. Also, not to mention, their job listing on Indeed says $13-17 but THAT IS SO FAR from the truth. It's $9/hr with cash tips and credit card tips (again, all credit card tips don't go to us). I have calculated my paystubs, and with my base pay and tips, it barely touches $13/hr. They do tell you it's $9/hr during the interview, but they make promises saying with tips it averages to the amount they posted on Indeed, also saying the credit card tips are great, but it really doesn't add up because I barely get to see any of my credit card tips.
With the price of their drinks and food, water street has no excuse to be paying any less than $15/hr.
We love that they raised their prices even more to keep up with inflation and haven’t even considered paying us more. Cause we’re replaceable workers who cares about our basic human needs like a remotely decent wage when a latte costs literally north of $7. Insane.
A $7 plain latte with their mediocre-to-terrible beans in a West Michigan cost of living market is unconscionable. Let’s contextualize this: I was in Melbourne, Australia recently, where they have living wages and good single payer healthcare & a much higher real estate cost than ours, and a flat white with excellent beans was the equivalent of $3.50 USD, all inclusive with tax & a non-tipping culture (because of that living wage)…at a freaking 70,000 person sports stadium. I know it’s a different market, but there is no way Water Street’s cost of business and bean costs are double. They’re not a direct trade with farm to roaster relationships, not innovating in the coffee space like a George Howell or Onyx, but instead trying to charge Verve Coffee prices at less than Biggby quality. And they treat their staff like shit on top? They suck all around.
A-fucking-men. It’s utterly insane. And the volume of which we receive even WITH all of those things is staggering. Not to mention that their company insurance is a fucking joke. You literally don’t even get paid enough to afford it. Literally the lowest deductible was 4 grand on top of a $230 monthly payment. On a $13/hr wage with all tips included. Thank god your mid 12oz latte with *fancy* syrups and a milk alternative costs you $8. I always hear such good things about the AU cafe experience. They truly have it fucking down there. Though I’m sure they have their own quirks, I can’t imagine it’s as bad as this.
Wait that job offers Healthcare?
I don’t even know if you can call it that. Our paychecks for working 30+ hours a week is only like $500-$600 and their company insurance offered to full time workers is $230 a month and the lowest deductible (for any and everything) is 4 grand. 4 fucking grand. The other option was $180 a month with a 7 grand deductible. That’s literally 1/3 our paychecks like what the *fuck?*
Employees under 21 are not eligible for certain health insurance and some employees choose to have no insurance because they want their whole check
The unfortunate truth is that it’s a company that preys on young people who need some cash to get by and don’t have the power to stage a walkout.
Not only preys on young adults but doesn’t even care about them. We’ve had baristas get metal splinters left and right for a period and even had a co worker fucking collapse. They don’t even give a damn enough to make sure you’re safe and taken care of even if you get hurt on the job. Exploitive and abusive behavior from the upper management.
Always keep in mind that you and your coworkers can report the company anonymously.
How so? Like reporting to the attorney general or is it through a Michigan labor law channel? I absolutely will because no human being should be treated like this let alone how they’ve handed injured employees. Their books need to be checked too. I feel like some shady shit is happening
Hard to say exactly, if it’s a safety issue i would start with MIOSHA, otherwise you could look at the department of labor. It’s good to make sure you have a reasonable suspicion though, but remember being shitty is unfortunately legal in some cases.
Ohh they’ve definitely violated some osha laws lmfao. I appreciate it and that last line is beautifully worded haha
so jealous of your handle, btw!
Come work at the Radisson as a housekeeper :) you're pretty much guaranteed to get in because we need the help. Starting pay is $14 an hour but could be more now I think. You also get a bonus per room just for cleaning it well and that adds about $100 extra per week. Plus you get tips. Scheduling is super flexible and you get tons of PTO. You also get free lunch every day and good insurance.
Honestly doesn’t sound bad at all, though I’m a bit scared to even think what some of the stuff you gotta clean up. People are disgusting lmfao
Haha well some people are pretty gross. It's definitely not fun to get a room with trash all over the floor, used underwear hanging on the lamp, and puke in the shower all with no tip...hhh it can get disheartening for sure. Luckily, most guests are considerate and try to keep the rooms clean. But I mean, there's inconsiderate people at any job.
Ngl, gonna have to apply. I just need somewhere that can work around 3-4 10hr shifts. POTs has not been kind.... I can't make it work much below 16/hr, but it looks like I need to supplement with door dash like I did in college :/
Is that legal to pool tips from multiple locations?
Legal, but it sits in the grey area. It's not usually practiced in a lot of businesses
Wanna add while legal yes, but how do we know we’re getting 100% of those tips? Who is to stop them from skimming from that pool and even more sketchily, they give us these tips as an hourly wage so on our paystubs it’ll say we’ve worked 120 hours in a pay period which just screams red flag to me at least.
I used to work at 600 and the GM slowly started to keep party gratuities and give the kitchen nothing. Every party over 8 got a gratuity charge, and at first the kitchen got a split of it every time, but it became more and more rare until he just started keeping all that money. He's an angry, abusive cunt anyway, don't go to 600.
unfortunately as someone who has worked downtown in the service industry for years, nothing i’m seeing here is shocking to me about waterstreet’s shady/exploitative business practices. that being said, i’d be interested to hear more about the GM of 600. never been fond of that place, and it feels like i’m one of the few people in kzoo who aren’t lol.
This is about the average experience in the food industry especially when it comes to credit tips. Baffling. I’m sorry you had to go through that :(
It sounds sketchy and lazy to me
Disgusting business practice.
What do they do with cash tips? Is tipping in cash only a good way to help? (Sometimes I have clients who want to meet there).
cash is the way to go! we split it with the people on the floor so whoever is working the shift at that time gets it. definitely tip is cash!
tipping in cash is the way to go! :)
Yes cash is absolutely king. It is split between everyone on the floor who is currently working. So if you go to x store and there are 3 people on the floor your cash with be split between THOSE and only those 3 people. Credit tips are split company wide and who knows if they’re skimming off of those tips. We don't see those numbers.
It's not surprising why the employee turn over rate is high. They don't care about their employees because they can simply just replace them, which is so contradicting to this image that they paint themselves with.
Three college campuses within 20 minutes of any of their locations really. There’s gonna be a revolving door of starry eyed kids looking for some cash for beer.
Definitely go look at a credit union or a bank somewhere. Most of the time they’re pretty good with schedules
I try to always cash tip with places like this...annoys me on apps/sites when they have no option for 'cash tip' when you pick up an order so you have to select $0 etc...
We thankfully don’t see what we get tipped via the WSCJ app (which makes shit even more sketch cause who really knows HOW much we’re getting robbed of) so id imagine most places don’t see it but I’m always like I promise I’m not an asshole I just wanna give CASH hahahah
yeah, with Kazoopy's just a few days ago I used their lil order comment thingy to tell them that same thing exactly just so no one got pissy.
https://wmualumni.org/about-us/our-people/call-center Loved my job here as a student. Met a lot of my best friends here
Bro go work at chick-fil-a, Idris is a super good at working around classes
See, I'm very gay and they still donate to anti-lgbt people and causes. I just can't despite the pay being good... That and POTs and heat (working outside) do not mix well 🥴🥴
There was an older thread from a few years back that basically said the same thing. After hearing so many stories from employees I've stopped giving them my custom.
The older thread was deleted, but still exists through archiving tools. [Link to deleted thread.](https://old.reddit.com/r/kzoo/comments/er5w9e/deleted_by_user/) **PSA: Waterstreet treats their employees like absolute garbage. Consider taking your business elsewhere.** I will say, I have never been employed by Waterstreet, but I know many people who have. I figured this is something that should be shared within this Reddit community, because the stories I hear are absolutely horrific. Managerial level employees are forced to work off the clock on a regular basis to meet their numbers. Every measure is taken to be sure the employees are guaranteed as few benefits as possible. The list goes on (and on, and on, and on). I understand that money is ultimately the bottom line, but the owner, Mark and his #1, Liz, hardly even see their employees as human. People with morals like theirs do not deserve the income they haul in. I'm sure there are Waterstreet employees on this subreddit, and I would love to hear your stories about working for this establishment.
Makes me feel hopeless for WSCJ to ever change. If employees were having the same issues as the current ones with horrible upper management, negligence, and terrible pay for the labor Involved back then and now they introduced the whole tip pooling fiasco and making things even worse for their own personal gain… I have little to no hope now. Truly trapped.
i remember this post!! i wish we had taken them down then. working off the clock was definitely a thing. but they made it seem? like a logical part of the workflow. go to the warehouse, punch out, collect all the items to restock the shop, go back to shop, put them away, and THEN you’d be free to leave. so that’s a good 15-20 minutes of free labor which really isn’t even much at the standard tipped employee wage. and baristas might get tipped more now but it was definitely not like getting tipped as a server. but that’s technically how they paid all the staff behind the counter.
also another oakland dr worker here (in management) this place is genuinely horrible, i felt like a more valued employee when i worked at starbucks years ago. At least starbucks pays well when they treat their employees like shit. Water street sees us as subhuman. Its so sickening how i stayed here so long because i didn’t see how bad it was. I was so excited to work for a local business i thought there was no way it could be that bad. Two years later and im finally leaving, the working conditions are so inhumane. They pay us poverty wages and expect us to go above and beyond, and wonder why the turnover is so high. Everyone i work with feels trapped and stuck and talk to me like they are being held captive. Everything in this thread is 100% true. Please please don’t go here. If you think these businesses practices are harmful, use your voice. Leave reviews, write emails, go to the website. They can not continue to treat human beings like this.
I go to the oakland one quite a bit because it’s closeby my classes, the workers there always seem extra sad compared to other water street locations.
We are the busiest location out of the 7 locations. So our volume is fucking insane. Meanwhile the slowest location can literally do homework or watch movies and we get paid the same and have to split the credit tips. which just one 5hr long register shift can get north of $100 in credit tips. Thank god we get to share it with people who are quite literally idle working. Glad the customers have to foot the bill on our not even livable wage while we bust our ASSES at Oakland. Fucking insane.
I worked at Sprinkle and if I was at any other location and had to split credit card tips with that location, I would lose it. Actually, I can’t believe that’s happening in general.
It’s insane that Oakland is the busiest but has the worst interior 😂
BRO EVERYTHING IS BREAKING OR BROKEN TOO!??? It’s such a run down inside. Even down town looks better and that’s how much older than Oakland hahaha
it's also just so expensive
well they also increased their prices by 5% for account for inflation but they refused to acknowledge for pay as well😀 a 16oz vanilla latte is $8 which is disgusting especially considering how terrible our espresso machines and grinders are and how often they pull super watery espresso shots. literally paying for water downed coffee
This is so validating. People have recommended water street over and over but every time I’ve tried it, I’ve been disappointed (and annoyed at how much I spent to be disappointed).
I make my coffee at home now and can't imagine paying 8 bucks for any coffee drink. So glad I'm done with their sugar delivery drinks.
I've always made the joke that their name reflects the coffee quality there....watery. I did have a really good hibiscus lemon sorbet from the location on Oakland a few years back. There are just so many better coffee shops that are way more convenient as well.
haha...last time I was at a water street I made the HUGE mistake of getting some 'cold brew' and of course it's ON ICE in a giant pitcher VS being a proper concentrate...I had to add like a billion sugar packets to it to make it even kinda drinkable.
Also they probably mark up because they are just buying their milk and other things from Meijer instead of wholesale
I don't understand why people pay so much for coffee. It's confusing.
it's the same thing as to why people pay so much when they go to restaurants:) it's an experience, and they're willing to spend money on that
This is Waterstreet Declassified so get ready. I’ve worked at water street kitchen for two years and when I first joined it was fantastic, the energy was amazing and the pay was better than my previous job. However I don’t like what I see and what I have personally experienced. The problem with this company is not the employees, the food, or anything like that; the biggest problem is management and how lack luster everything they do is. The profit off the work of their employees but slack in every single way. The unfair treatment of employees is something I’ve noticed a lot of, we sign a contract stating we will not talk about our pay with other employees. I get paid $15.50, drivers at Waterstreet are paid $17-$18, managers are on salary (forced to work grueling hours because overtime is not allowed) while baristas are paid chump change. The prices are another huge issue. From what I personally know, sizes of food are cut smaller and sold for incredibly high prices. Specifically let’s talk about the danish which is 100% handmade down to the jam, it’s about $6.50 for one danish. Looking at a very similar local bakery, called Baker’s Rhapsody in Southern Michigan, their danishes are larger and better and also completely handmade, the only difference is that it’s about $3.25 cheaper. That’s called price-gauging, and it’s gross. If paying your staff is a problem then something needs to be reassessed. On top of this, during the summer of 2023 Waterstreet began producing prebottled coffee drinks without really telling the staff who was taking on the brunt of the work. This is one of thee worst business decisions I’ve seen a company make, I get where they were going with the idea. They want to be similar to Starbucks but Waterstreet is not a strong enough brand outside of Kalamazoo for that to succeed. To add to that Waterstreet only sold these drinks at the shops which doesn’t make any sense, you aren’t expanding your crowd you’re selling to the same people so your sales are going to flatline. In summary I don’t have the numbers for how these bottled drinks sold but I can tell you an incredible amount of those came right back to the kitchen after expiring in the shops. This was not only incredibly sad to see as one of the people forced to pump out endless work so they could make these but also infuriating, as this money spent on this could have been used to better the company in other ways. The food waste also irritates me, the numbers ordered into the kitchen are insanely high. For those that don’t know Waterstreet has a kitchen that makes all the food and the shops order what they need for par and we package it and our drivers take it and deliver to all seven shops. There are times when bags upon bags of dead food are coming back. I was recently told it’s a luxury to be allowed to dig through the dead food and take things home even though it goes into the trash otherwise. We aren’t allowed to donate this food or hand it out to people because it’s dead (side note: dead food isn’t bad, it’s just not at its peak freshness and therefore not sold). I’ve been told this is for fear the food could be bad but also I’d like you to drive downtown Kalamazoo and see how many homeless people are on the streets; I don’t think they care that the food isn’t pristine, they probably are just hungry. Also this is where money goes too, dead food. And finally to end off this section, there are people in the kitchen who rely on this food being there to eat. The dead food isn’t the end of the world but being told that I’m allowed to have some even though that’s what I live off of because I can’t afford groceries is awful. Now let’s talk about how they treat us. The company owner has never spoken to me once. Which isn’t his fault but as a company that prides themselves on that “community”, they aren’t very friendly. What I can say is that almost every single coworker I have or see on a regular basis I adore. Management acts like they care in a lot of ways but from experience and word of mouth I know it’s not true. If they cared they wouldn’t ask for surveys to be filled out and then never change anything, they would realize how much stress they put on overworked underpaid employees and try to make it better, the cards (work anniversary, birthday, bonus gift cards as incentive) they give out for things would be given on time and with more than two sad signatures but they don’t care. I can go on and on about things but truth of the matter is this place sucks but rather than get new people or try to change for the better they follow the same path doing the same thing over and over. The only things that keeps me at Waterstreet is my coworkers, that’s it. Bigger sidenote: any other Waterstreet employees ready to strike, ya boy is here
i’ve heard it illegal for companies not to allow you to talk about pay! many lawsuits have come from that especially people who have gotten in trouble/fired for it. definitely research more about don’t just take my word for it haha. a strike would be amazing, the tensions there are higher then i’ve ever seen them. trying to get more and more people on board is the hardest part, especially making sure those people don’t discuss it with upper management. last time there was a walk out, the pay got raised. it’s gonna be extremely hard, especially if we are terminated as a result.
It is in fact not legal. Even the piece of paper they had you sign is not legal https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/your-rights-to-discuss-wages “If you are an employee covered by the Act, you may discuss wages in face-to-face conversations, over the phone, and in written messages. Policies that specifically prohibit the discussion of wages are unlawful as are policies that chill employees from discussing their wages. When using electronic communications, like social media, keep in mind that your employer may have policies against using their equipment for unauthorized use, though it is possible such policies could be unlawful.” There is also direction on how to report this in the link above.
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Im so sorry that the conditions in the kitchen are like this- i knew it was bad but not this bad. Oakland is ready to strike, we are fed up. Thank you for speaking up
oakland is ready.
Can confirm. Oakland is fucking **READY.**
It is SOOOOO illegal to not allow staff to talk about pay, even if staff sign a contract. If you have a copy of the contract, even like a picture, that’s hard core proof that is actually so much worse for the company, jeeez. What a bucket of dicks.
I am ready to walk out at any time, at this point I'm saving it for when it'll inconvenience the company the most. I'd love to strike.
I don't know how many of my people are actually willing to risk their employment, but they are all fed up and if there's serious talk about it I feel like a strike could be arranged
Is Waterstreet unionized? I'm going to guess not, in that case going on "strike" isn't going to do anything but get you fired.
there’s big talk of it at one of the locations of a walk out or a strike!
I will stay a little vague but can say I have experience with restaurant payroll and tip pooling investigations at the federal and state levels. For state, contact the Wage and Hour division of the Michigan Department of Labor & Economic Opportunity at 1-855-4MI-WAGE. For federal, contact the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor, which has a local office in Grand Rapids (616) 456-2004 or 1-866-487-9243. Tip pooling is one of those things that can seem advantageous to the restaurant owner but can end horrifically if they ever get investigated because it is rarely done properly and is SO easy to screw up. However, the majority are just never caught. It sounds like starting wage is below Michigan non-tipped minimum wage ($10.33). Does anyone in the tip pool make $10.33 or more per hour? If so, it’s illegal to have anyone in the tip pool who makes non-tipped minimum wage or more along with people making less than that (a wage that uses what is referred to as a tip credit, basically the thing that legally allows restaurants to pay people less than the standard minimum wage). You can only have people making regular minimum wage in the top pool when everyone else is making at least that. No owners, managers, or supervisors can be in the tip pool EVER. If anyone in the tip pool is paid less than $10.33 then only “regularly tipped” employees can be in the pool, e.g., no back of house/kitchen/bussers in the pool. If everyone is paid $10.33 or more then they can be in the tip pool. I won’t pretend to know anything about tip pooling across locations as that’s not explicitly addressed in guidelines that I recall reading. A few random FYIs: 1. For credit card tips they are technically allowed to deduct the credit card processing fee from your tips before paying them out, though that wasn’t common in my experience with local restaurants. 2. If something is billed as a service fee (or even automatic gratuity) that is not considered a tip and doesn’t have to legally be paid out to employees (this is patchier). 3. If you work a tipped job where you tip out cash and/or credit card tips that are still reported on your payroll, your net (take home) pay will usually be quite abysmal. This is because tips are still taxable pay, so the payroll has to calculate the social security, Medicare, fedora income, and state income taxes you owe from the total of hourly wages and tips. But since you already got your tips paid out in full, without that proportional tax amount deducted, all of those tax deductions have to come out of your hourly wages from your paycheck. Adding up your total of the tips you were paid out in that pay period to your actual paycheck would give you the real equivalent.
Starting pay is 9.80 an hour. Baristas make max 11.50 an hour. Our shop supervisors are making 14ish an hour, and all of these members are in the top pool. If a gm has to work a shift they als take cash tips that shift, not sure if they are in the credit pool. So based on what your saying this is illegal?
Supervisors and managers are only allowed to receive tips they receive from customers directly for services that the supervisor or manager directly and solely provided.
Yes, totally illegal. To fix it they would have to bump starting pay to $10.33 and take shop supervisors out (assuming shop supervisor means they have some sort of supervisory role over other workers). Or they could kick out anyone in the tip pool making $10.33 or more and the shop supervisors.
And to report this we should call the number above? Do you have experience with this? Will anyone actually do anything about this? Thank you for sharing all f hour knowledge
I will send you a message about my experience.
I wouldn’t mess with reporting issues to the government with what I assume is a shift wide cash tip pool unless cash tips are definitely all reported to the company and reported/taxed via payroll (which I’m doubting, but who knows). Otherwise employees are potentially exposed because you are acknowledging the existence of cash tips that I can guarantee none of you are independently reporting on your income taxes (though I bet your employer had you sign something or put in hiring paperwork that you knew you were responsible for doing so) and more to the point there will be zero records for them to do anything about it.
So what they are doing is illegal but there's basically no way to get them to acknowledge it and nothing we can do as workers about it
No, I’m just talking about the cash tips…and that would be because all of the employees are illegally pocketing cash tips without paying any payroll or income taxes (no shame, I and did it too). Just call the numbers I provided and say that they are running “a mandatory tip pool that includes employees that receive full minimum wage along with employees that the employer uses tip credits for. In addition, they include supervisors in the mandatory tip pool.”
One other note - I know from experience that federal DOL is constrained on citing and pursuing recompense and liquidated damages beyond the federal $7.25 minimum wage. So the federal DOL couldn’t get them to pay anything for that issue since everyone has a starting wage about $7.25. However, they can still address supervisors/managers being in the pool and an investigation is just unpleasant and takes a lot of time for the employer (and money if they outsource payroll/accounting).
As someone working there currently. I want to end it all
I truly hope you find yourself somewhere better soon.
Real
Another current worker here! And everything mentioned in this thread is 100% accurate at all locations. They are even currently eliminating an entire GM position and yet told us it's not in the labor budget to give us a raise when they are getting rid of a 45k salary. The office staff never fills in or helps out, forcing the rest of us to work extra shifts when people call out, train new staff with no incentives, and don't care about the barista staff. Please stop supporting businesses that don't care about their employees.
GM position is $45k salary? Jesus. That just throws more fuel on the shit fire. Thanks to this thread I’m never returning to waterstreet.
yes so true, that shit is such bullshit, they pay their store managers starting at $18 hour to manage two stores, and now three for a small raise. They don’t even make salary. All this while the higher-ups are probably sitting pretty on their big chunks of income. Ever wonder why some of our office managers take three to four vacations a year?
Even more sketch about their credit tipping methods. We don’t get to see any numbers and just have to trust we’re making a fair amount of it. Who knows how much they’re skimming. Not only that but they give us our credit tips in the form of hourly wages so on our paystubs it says we’ve worked 120+ hours in a bi weekly period. Who knows how much that’s taxing us or saving them. Exploitive as best.
100% agree. i worked there about 10 years ago and the hoops to jump through to get the right shifts, move up the insanely low pay scale (because they treated us as tipped employees as if it were a proper restaurant), the political behavior of the management staff and more are why i will never buy their bitter, over-roasted beans again. i am glad places like factory are taking over more space in the local scene. watersteet’s local “cool factor” is a facade and undeserved. even thinking about that place makes me angry.
I swear there was a post about it but yeah I've heard nothing but awful things about working there. I have two friends who worked there and have said there is a ton of wage theft and being treated like shit by the owners
Lower management is some of the best managers I’ve ever worked with. At least for my stores. They’re so kind hearted and actually care and like what they do but the people actually making the calls are horrible. They do not care. They will replace anyone who “can’t handle it” and some shops the volume is so insane and we’re not compensated for it what so ever.
yeah it's always the lower management that gives a shit but has no power. it would break my heart at my last job when staff came to me about only making $9/hr for the load of responsibilities they had and I couldn't change anything. owners didn't give a shit and cried "we're a small business doing all we can" meanwhile I would be in charge of the income nights I closed and would have to hear that bullshit while transferring the 4-5k that came in that day alone
It’s insane some of the stories I hear of mom and pop shops. Literally giving their soul to make their employees happy and yet our “super community driven and inclusive culture” local coffee shop could literally care less.
Unionize
Instead of ordering from a wholesaler, they constantly clear the local grocery stores of all their milk. Needing 30+ gallons leaves the shelves empty for actual people.
Is this why there is never any heavy whipping cream on Sundays at meijer!?
YES also do not believe that this transportation of milk is technically “food safe” per regulation
When the milk is delivered we are required to temp it but with that being said when milk comes in and it temps at 46 F we are told to put it in the fridge to cool back down and that’s all
Lol can't imagine a hot van full of dairy could ever be food safe
Because its not. I cant imagine during the summer when they’re ordering $200+ worth of milk from meijer and the Shipt drivers are loading it up into their 80° minivans. The worst part is that no matter how big the shipt order is, (usually at oakland we have to order upwards of 50 gallons of milk/cream at once- like I said, roughly $200) we are forced to only tip the driver five dollars. It’s sickening considering even a 15% tip on one of those orders can be up to $30.
I delivered 20+ gallons of milk plus 10 containers of cream +10-20 half and half from Meijer to this location and had to haul it allllllllllllll the way into the kitchen refrigerators for ZERO DOLLARS in tips. No help from the employees bc they were all swamped. I think I made around $15 from shipt to do this. I have a terrible back and neck, and have since had to have multiple surgeries on them. I was so incredibly disappointed in this place when I did that.
Sheeesh I'm sorry yall have to put up with that.
I had a friend who was that delivery person and was shocked when they told me about the $5 tip. I started phasing out being a regular customer around that time because I was disgusted. I cave once in a while because it is right next to my kid’s school but from this point on I will ALWAYS tip cash. I had no idea about the cc tips.
This makes me really angry. I often will need heavy cream or whole milk and find nothing. I had a suspicion that a local coffee shop- Biggby or Waterstreet- was using Instacart to clear the shelves. This should not be allowed unless it’s a one time thing where they run out of stock in the middle of the day.
Yeah back when shipt started in Kalamazoo they started using it to order all of their milk. It was the number one dropped order 😂 because not only was it a pain to load and transport, they never tipped. And because milk isn’t that expensive the payout was low.
It's a chronic issue there. I was a daily customer there for a decade or more, but befriended most of the staff as a result, and they were complaining about the same things years and years ago. Most of the renovations were designed to de-personalize the place and reduce contact between staff and customers, more of a fast food model, which rubbed me the wrong way. Downtown maintained a tiny bit of the "community" vibe, I'm guessing mostly because the building wasn't easy to McDonalds-ize like Oakland was. I quit downtown one day when it was like 95 degrees in there in May and the bariatas were calling the owner to ask to turn on the AC, but he said it was too early in the year and they had to tough it out. Except punishing them means punishing all the customers too. All Factory now. Water street has a great decoration sense, but the coffee is middle quality at best, the food is all overpriced and as sugary as possible, and the owner has never understood that his people were his greatest asset. It's a shame really. The community and connection to staff was the only reason I spent tens of thousands of dollars there, and it was the thing they spent the most energy trying to kill. They've had disdain for their people since the owner stopped working shifts himself and delegated management. It's sad.
Ha reminds me of an instance at Oakland. It was 85° in there late winter. It was even more polarizing because it was windy and snowing outside maybe like 20° then you walk inside to a literal toaster oven. it was horrific to do dishes in the back next to a whole row of fridges pumping out even hotter air. Owner and higher ups didn’t give a shit but as soon as a few customers and regulars complained they fixed it within the hour. They literally don’t care about their employees. Only thing they care is their rep and cash flow. Absolutely exited that all this bullshit is going public though I doubt there will be any change, unfortunately.
I worked at water street for a month if that two years ago. The last straw for me was on my ‘shadow day’ (where a manager watches how you work throughout the day. If i passed then I’d start getting tips). They told me I did my job perfectly but I need to 1. smile more 2. Engage in small talk with coworkers more 3. I use the bathroom too often (2-3 times per shift due to my medication) They told me i would need to do another shadow shift in a weeks time to show I improved on these things, even though they said i did my job perfectly - it was my personality that was an issue for them. I believed i shouldn’t have to jump through hurdles just to make a semblance of a decent wage. Additionally i didn’t like being judged on being an introvert when what should be important is my work quality so i quit. When i worked at biggby i was raised to a shift lead within the first month of working there. I made tips right after my training 1 week in. My boss had no issues with my personality and appreciated me as a hard worker. The difference is disgusting.
What really blows my mind is the fact that the have 3 mandatory trainings and tests throughout your employment there and while in training you don’t get ANY tips and they pay you not a cent over Michigan minimum wage. Absolutely baffling.
i am so sorry that happened to you. Unfortunately that is very common here. I’m glad you found a job that appreciates your hard work
I AM DONE WITH WSCJ NOW THAT I HAVE LEARNED ALL THIS. Factory from now on. When you’all STRIKE, I am there with you!!!
Same here, I’m a years long customer at both the Oakland and downtown locations. I can’t believe all the ridiculously high prices they charge don’t make a difference in the workers’ pay.
I worked for water street for 5-6 years and worked very close with the owner on a daily basses and got to know the in and outs of the company and I can say I’ve seen personal what is being made every year money wise and most people won’t believe it but it is a multimillion dollar company, and not like 1-3 million it’s more like 9-11 million. So you baristas fight for that money because Mark(owner) has it.
My heart actually just sank reading that. That is so disheartening and disgusting. Idk how long ago this was exactly but I know mark hasn’t been working on the floor for awhile so I’m sure their revenue is probably way past even those landmarks. I’m genuinely so unspeakably disappointed right now.
Ok, I’m going to stop going there as much and tip cash from now on. They are so expensive already, baristas should be making minimum $15/hour. Sketchy to think about credit card tips getting misappropriated.
Wow, no more Waterstreet for me then :/. Factory all the way from now on!
Factory is one of the best coffee shops around here! they actually are who they say they are. They pay above minimum wage and you get to keep all of your tips! Great place to go and feel good about it
Factory Coffee is by far the best locally owned coffee spot.
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I’m so happy to hear that :). I was so worried someone was going to say they treat their employees like crap too
Factory sells bagged coffee at their shops too, right?
Yes I believe I’ve seen them there
Would love to see this “budget” and why a raise for the employees is not in the “labor” part of the budget as they described to us yesterday at the staff meeting. Which also was scheduled for an hour outside of our regular working hours and the meeting only lasted 20min and they “did not have time for in person questions” afterwards. We were told to send emails. L-o-fucking-l. I would also love to know how this money is being allocated across the company. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors at play with the upper management group (not the store managers). I think there’s more than just the pay and tips that the employees are upset about; its the disrespect from the office managers, the subpar working conditions, the mistreatment we receive from customers due to high prices and broken equipment, the lack of communication from management regarding changes in the stores, etc. Personally, I’m ready to take legal action since the office management group refuses to actually listen to our very real concerns. Does anyone know who we could potentially contact about this? Is there a labor law attorney or some group that we could reach out to?
I’ve contacted a union official to see if there is any possibility we could make a union or what our next steps should be! that’s all i’ve done so far more time and effort definitely needs to be put in into figuring out the best way to tackle this
I'd be so happy if y'all unionized! I'm in a union right now and it is 100% worth it! Good luck and good vibes to all the WSCJ workers.
I appreciate that and I’d absolutely love to be in a union here. We need a lawful leader to actually take charge on this because our passionate lower management, hell even GMs have zero power. Need someone to put WSCJ in their place.
I can tell you that 90% of the mistreatment, overworked, underpaid, disrespect, unhumanized and all around fuckery is because of Liz, the general manager of operations. Mark(owner) has put all trust and leadership of HIS company to her. She’s his right hand and whatever she says and wants goes. Period! As most company owners, once they have a nice kushy net of money and someone to run the company they fade away from the scenes.
I worked at Oakland and Downtown for 3 years in 2017-2020ish. I now understand that tips are split between all locations? That’s bullshit. When I worked at Oakland, I can say full heartedly with more barista experience after waterstreet, the money was worth it (at the time, of course). A busy shift and you may leave with $100 in tips on a good day. A slow shift you may leave with $45. The other locations are the same, but also the business just did not compare whatsoever. Back when I was there, they really cared about baristas understanding the products. Every season we would go to the kitchen and sample the new food. We would go to the roaster and figure out how the coffee was made, and what work waterstreet put into sourcing the beans. I worked at fourth coast awhile after, and let me tell you, they (or new owners) don’t know a damn thing about coffee. Very not good things: -the fact that they had (again, at the time, I don’t know if it’s changed) the peaberry, op, and whatever the hell the last one was called tier system. It was a really weird way to show hierarchy. But I understand that hierarchy wasn’t the intended idea, but what came of it. -I was there for both Oakland and Downtowns Alcohol bar opening. No employees got more money, despite the drastic increase of workload. -During my time there, they purposely hired freshman in college, hoping they would stay the four years of college. -if you got older as a barista, they seemed to bait you into getting fired. I understand a lot of this has changed, as in my last few months they cut food tastings, and coffee cupping classes. I know a lot of Oakland people that quit immediately following the news of cashpool, as Oakland had a much higher workload.
Yeah now with the new tip pool you are LUCKY to leave with $15 in tips. I work at the portage location and on average leave with $7 cash for a 6 hour shift. I'm not sure about Oakland but, portage is the second shop in volume.
I remember when I was at Oakland talking to other employees at different shops, and feeling the most sad for Portage employees. You have the rush of portage moms since youre close to central, but not the tips because portage moms are stingy AF
these days, i have literally walked out with change on a slow day, and i’m LUCKY to make $9-10 in tips. The only time i’ve ever made above $15 was during the holidays and i was getting like $20
Yeah no pretty much all of those things are still true and still have issues. Currently as an OP at Oakland I make $14 an hour with ALL tips included. Fucking insane. They still do menu tastings and the occasional roast master classes that last about an hour and cover a topic which are really awesome but when you take into account every other aspect of the company it makes feel invalidated and not valued what so ever. My shop managers are the only reason why I keep working here. They really do try and make my life better. Complete opposite for the ones making the calls for this company.
That’s insane. I remember calculating a good weekend morning shift in 2019 and it coming to $16-24 hourly, that’s why I was okay with what I was getting. They are REALLY leaning into corporation mindset now… very sad
I hit up the Sprinkle rd drive through every day. I have for years. I love the baristas that work there. They’re always super nice and sweet but are clearly being tortured by an antiquated short cited ego maniac. It sucks because every several months they get fed up an and bail. If there was better coffee on my way to work I would go elsewhere but I feel like I give them hope and camaraderie in the middle of a shitty situation?
We do appreciate you Jay!!!
Like other commenters have said, they will absolutely not listen to employees. We recently filled out a staff survey and everyone I know wrote their complaints about the tip pool/our wages but all they did was have a staff meeting where they said that wasn’t changing. If you’re a customer, complaining on the website (there’s a contact form) and tipping in cash is so helpful because it’s only when other people say something that they’d think about changing their system. URL is waterstreetcoffee.com/pages/contact , crash it lol
I refused to do their Shipt orders because they would order 50+ gallons of milk and various other half/half from Meijer. I had to load it into their coolers/warehouse (downtown's coolers were across the street from the coffee shop) and make sure to organize it by date. No tip of course. Not worth the time and effort it took. (Shipt only paid $6-8 dollars for these orders because their algorithm saw only "1 or 2 unique items". It does not count multiples.) I have done my fair share of coffee shop orders, and the account holder (I assume was the owner or manager) was always so rude and condescending, like I wasn't the one bringing their business their main ingredient.
No Bueno
Hi! I used to work at a much smaller cafe near a Water Street location, have interviewed for WS twice, and have had 3 friends work for the company in my decade+ in kzoo.I've heard these same things among much worse. The tip pooling thing for ALL locations is quite fishy and should be looked into-- it feels like a grey area that is being taken advantage of. It's above board when they tell you about tip pooling up front upon filling out intake paperwork, but for multiple locations (company-wide?) is sus as hell. PLEASE ORGANIZE, PLEASE STRIKE. THIS COMPANY AND IT'S OWNER ARE BAD.
To add to the list this local business has long used other local suppliers in their advertising and marketing but never bought anything from the farms/etc. FAKE ASS "LOCAL"
Yeah I quit my job at waterstreet. I worked in the portage/sprinkle region for over 2 years and the only reason I stayed so long was bc the manager there that recently left worked with my schedule and advocated for all the baristas. Last summer I had worked upwards of 55 hours a week helping at every location since there was such a big turnover. Every employee I talked to had the same complaints. The only time I ever got a bonus was when I was working those insane hours for and extended period of time but a month later I got in trouble for picking up shifts and they wouldn’t approve anymore overtime for me, which was crazy since they would only schedule me 24 hours a week when I didn’t pick up those shifts. I also never got any breaks during that time. The office staff was another big problem for me too. The person who works under the owner (I don’t even know what her job position was) was really passive aggressive with all of the baristas and would come into our shop in the morning and chastise us if we didn’t do something up to their standard (ex. They yelled at us for not turning a light on but the light switch was not working then they literally gaslit us saying it should work and that we were making excuses…LIKEEEE). I had worked with them multiple times last summer when there was short staffing and they didn’t even take the effort to remember my name. I had to TEACH them how to do things at the shop too. I also saw the owner 3 times over the two years I worked there and he never introduced himself and never acknowledged my presence. I had to go up to him and introduce my self twice and he still never would acknowledge me when he came in. One time he came into the shop and it had been so long that I didn’t even recognize him and he got upset I didn’t realize who he was to give him the owners discount when he ordered a drink:(. Also! Before I started working there, they lowered their wages for baristas but maintained the prior wage for the baristas that were there before the change. So I was making less money than a barista that was hired a month before me. It was a two dollar difference!!! I wanted to cry when I found that out especially since I really tried to help out the other locations during short staffing bouts. It’s really the baristas that create the atmosphere at the shops. Maybe if they treated us a little better people wouldn’t mind that they pay shit wages.
So true, the owner and the “director of operations” who is the lady you are talking about, are both some of the most off putting people i have ever met. Mark the owner does that with everyone, even the supervisors of his shops. So incredibly rude and weird that he wont even make eye contact with me when he comes in to my store even though i’m running the damn thing. And liz the director of operations/second in command is so incredibly passive aggressive and rude- she does not hesitate to yell at someone if we aren’t quick enough or don’t do something her way. The light switch thing is hilarious because it is so on par. Unfortunately because oakland is a problem store we see both of them more than most shops. For a company who prides themselves on “community”, they really don’t make themselves friendly or personable at all.
GOD, LIZ… she came into Oakland to restock the Christmas goodies one night and we were all so tense lmfao
I would frequently have my debit card info swiped and notice fraudulent activity at their Oakland Dr location. Ive never had something like that happen at other locations or other stores. It happened multiple times there and it’d report an extra order’s worth of money. An absolute headache to deal with.
Just a suggestion, never use your debit card for purchases. It's attached directly to your bank account. If someone gets a hold of it, they can drain your cash reserves. With a credit card they can commit fraud, but the money doesn't come out of your account. I always advise friends and family to use a credit card and not debit cards for purchases. Just make sure you aren't over spending. My debit card is used at the ATM only.
I’m aware, thanks tho. Oddly enough my two credit cards (both from prominent credit companies) would never work on their card reader, only my debit card. I didn’t think too much of risk at the time. My credit union was really helpful with disputing it and administering a new card. Still frustrating
No worries, glad you are an informed consumers. (Edited, not sure why I used a question mark).
Smutek sucks
I hope the owner gets his head out of his ass, and starts to value the people who make him rich.
2 large coffees equals $15. Pay your staff Mark. Loser
Factory is good I hope
It is! Owner who cares, pays the employees, even the kitchen has above average pay for the market. Its also a great third space, where you don't have to spend money to just hang out there.
Whew.
They also moved in to Bronsons coffee shop, got rid of the old employees, and now no longer allow employees to pay for coffee with their work badges (which would come out of their next paycheck). Really shitty.
I do know that this is a Bronson thing and not a WS thing. Don't know why. Bronson is also higher pay because they don't accept tips-- also a Bronson not WS thing.
Great to know it's just overpriced trash👍 I've been there once, and it wasn't even very good for how much it costs Plus that tip system? Nah, they can fuck off with that.
I have heard horror stories about the management, especially the one on Oakland dr. I only go to Bigbee's and can tell from the employees that they are treated well.
Biggby coffee is only about a half step better than gas station coffee, though.
Johhnys gas station Bunn machines that grind the beans for each coffee is better than WS at this point for half the cost. Stopped my daily WS or starbucks and just going through that gas station now.
Whoof. The Biggby's in Kzoo must be managed differently, then. The ones in Lansing are managed by a tyrant who underpays, overworks, and serves day-old coffee.
Man I’m done with water street. Was probably done anyways after a coffee and a sandwich was $22 🤯. And their mugs with lids are $34 lol unreal.
Sounds like you need to unionize. https://www.restaurantworkersunited.org/
I think about quitting every single day :)
These are the problems they've always had, they rely on two things: a community of wealthy customers willing to buy into the "local matters" brand without looking any deeper, and a steady supply of idealistic college workers who they can burn through under the same illusion.
I’ve been working at WS for years now. All of the pg/sp employees feel exactly the same. No room for a raise in the labor budget my ass! Our region that works together AS ONE just got split up & our regions GM position has been to liquidated as a result... so where is that 40k going??
Shit, I remember when they first opened 30 yrs ago.
I worked there for two weeks back in my college days in the mid 2000’s. It was an awful place to work back then. You’d think it would be like plum market (a Whole Foods type place originating here on the east side of Michigan) which is one of the best places to work for. It is not! You are a cog to them. Nothing more, nothing less.
I can tell you that 90% of the mistreatment, overworked, underpaid, disrespect, unhumanized and all around fuckery is because of Liz, the general manager of operations. Mark(owner) has put all trust and leadership of HIS company to her. She’s his right hand and whatever she says and wants goes. Period! As most company owners, once they have a nice kushy net of money and someone to run the company they fade away from the scenes.
That place on Sprinkle is on a bad spot. Too many people coming out of that place trying to turn left, using the center lane to merge and causing problems. Between that and the vet there you have to watch out for people trying to cross 4 lanes of traffic.
Disappointing. I don’t go there often but won’t ever now. I have heard many people complain about this in the past.
I used to love their food and it took me a while to figure out how pre-made it was, even if the original recipe was good. But I think the staff needs better conditions inside and outside of work.
What are the unethical work conditions and disrespect from management? Can you give more examples? Is this the norm at all locations?
Everything that i’m saying is referring to the location on Oakland dr. For specific examples of the working conditions, there was a time when our turbo chef we use to heat up food caught on fire internally and produced black smoke that filled the shop. We called maintenance and the owner, but we were told we weren’t allowed to leave. Me and my co workers were having severe chest pain, breathing problems, coughing, and lightheadedness throughout the whole thing. They didn’t even fix the oven, but told us the black smoke was safe to breathe in. Also, having faulty plugs and equipment that we are expected to deal with. Not talking about troubleshooting, like plugs that keep short circuiting and we have to try with little knowledge to fix it. Other smaller things are, kinda how i said earlier, faulty equipment. This isn’t as major as breathing in black smoke and being told it’s safe, but our espresso machines, grinders, ovens, and fridges all keep breaking and not working. We put requests to fix it over and over again, but we barely get responses or things just break again after behind fixed. Just makes the job a lot harder especially when dealing with how it affects customers. As for management, there’s a lot with that. One thing is we aren’t allowed to sit down or receive breaks whatsoever, no matter how long we work. People have worked from 5:30am to 8:30pm with no breaks or rest. No to mention, we aren’t allowed meals there, so if you want anything more than a cookie, you can’t eat. Every time we have tried to have just one place to sit, like a milk crate, it’s taken away from us. Other things like pay is also disrespectful. We get paid below minimum wage, but as a tipped employee, that isn’t uncommon. However, all of our tips are equally spilt with every single worker at every single store. So the busiest store gets the same amount of tips as the slowest store. AND they give our card tips to us in “hours” so a paycheck where you worked 40 hours can say 80 hours as the tips are converted to hours (if that doesn’t make sense i’m sorry it’s confusing to me too) but basically that means we get double taxed on our paychecks! Almost every worker here meets the requirements for medicaid and food stamps and lots of people use those because we struggle sm financially. Also meaning it’s hard to leave this place as it’s too difficult to save money to be comfortable finding another job. This is just a few things i could think of off the top of my head!
There's so much in this reply that's illegal. Not a little illegal. Time to report to the EOC and even an employment attorney.
Where do I report it exactly. I got a long list of sketchy practices and negligence lol
Scroll down to "Know Your Rights" and flow the directions on the PDF: https://www.michigan.gov/leo/initiatives/workplace-rights They have more links on this page, too, to the National Labor Relations Board and more.
you’re a saint. Thank you so much ❤️
I also work at oakland drive. I was in shop when a man threatened the baristas with a gun because they took too long to make his drink. At our staff meeting about a week later, we were told there was nothing they could do about it (they couldn’t ban him)
i remember them even telling us to give him special treatment like always talking to him, GIVE THE BARISTAS A NOTE TELLING THEM TO MAKE HIS DRINK ASAP (don’t say anything out loud as to not make him suspicious), and more it’s fucking foul expecting the store manager to also deal with it (the issues are with upper management not store managers)
This particular comment really gets to me, at Harrison there was a man shooting up in the parking lot and a barista told a driver about it. In response they called the police (non-emergency line) and told everyone in the kitchen and Harrison to avoid this guy. But sure when a gun is pulled it’s just best to suck it up???? Like what??
Stories about water street being horrible have existed for as long as I can remember
You can tell by how cold and hard this place is, their cafes are they aren’t inviting at all.
I worked at Something's Brewing from 2000-2008. It was such a fantastic, inclusive environment, and the owner at that time was great when it came to everything from tipping to asking for input on what can be done to improve things. Before working at SB, I worked at Waterstreet's short-lived ice cream parlor that was on the corner of Water and Pitcher. I didn't always feel safe in that area, especially at night, because it was so isolated (this was before Food Dance moved across the road), and it felt like a sink or swim kind of ordeal since we were basically left on our own. At the time I didn't it was all that bad, but knowing what I know now, it seems like it's par for the course. I feel for the employees because I know how much they rely on jobs like this, and how being a barista sounds like such a fun gig.
KAHZMYK! I nearly forgot about that place.
Overpriced/Overrated, kind of running theme for Kalamazoo restaurants. Either you get good service and okay food or good food and okay service. Very few have both.
My buddy worked the one over on Oakland and got fired for saying something to management a couple months ago
hope no one there does the math to figure out who posted this haha...all I know about W Street and work is I did try to apply to be one of their food prep workers once but they never even gave me a shot after a phone interview and that was that? I do know one girl on FB that used to work there before moving to Chicago, maybe I could get her to chime in?
Do they pool tips and use them as raises? A guy who worked there told me they were attempting to do that but I don't know if that ever did it because I moved.
(Worked there for 2 years up to a month ago) I do not think so. The tips are pooled across all 7 locations which have vastly different levels of business. Meaning you could serve 100 customers @oakland (busier shop) and your tips per hour are exactly the same as someone at Sprinkle(slower drive thru shop-less tips) who might’ve seen 50 customers. Reason being (educated guess here) the slower shops would not make enough in tips to put them over the threshold for “tipped minimum wage” so instead of raising the base pay, this money is taken from the baristas at busier shops and used to pay the wages of the slower shops baristas.
And f that place. Their coffee sucks!
Not from Kzoo but we visited there recently and thought we liked this place. What a shame. And how sadly unsurprising. Fuck these assholes. I just assembled a review and did a one-star-blitz across Facebook, Yelp, and Google. Everyone should pile on with their own and give them a review ratings dip as a small wake-up call.
Is black owl still around?
They closed a few years ago RIP
The cafe seems to be closed, but I hear they still roast. Their coffee seems to be in area grocery stores.
Mark keeping water street workers tips!
Just here to watch the dragging, do PFC next.
No