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Interesting the level of hostility from some people toward a coffe shop.

I'm not overly shocked by the loss of some of the stores. I and the local area and district managers discussed the number of openings on several occasions and generally agreed that there were maybe a few too many.
Currently, they're opening a new store about three miles from the location where I work. Between us, there's another Starbucks. None of them will be affected by the closings to the best of my knowledge.

Neat things about it though; Starbucks will do their best to make sure that every employee who wants to stay with the company will get the opportunity to relocate. If they can't move to another store (Because, yes, sometimes there's only the one store in an area) then every employee will get a severance package. I don't know how big a severance package, but they'll get something. (That's worlds better than the last two companies I worked for, who went belly up and either locked the doors without any warning or let us keep our vacation pay if we were willing to work all the way through the liquidation process.)

Sort of like the insurance package that they offer all employees working 20 hours a week or more. The insurance package where SB pays 75% of the cost of the insurance.

Still, they must be complete bastards. They charge 2 dollars for a large (vente in Starbucksese) coffee! Of course, you have your choices of Splenda, Sweet & Low, Equal, raw sugar and proicessed sugar and honey to add in and you can also throw in skim milk, soy milk, 2% milk, whole milk, heavy cream or even whipping cream at no extra charge. (on the lattes there a charge for the soy milk, in the coffee, no.)
Oh, and they have at least two different blends of coffee in the mornings, you know, strong (burnt) or mild (not so burnt) to try to accomodate different tastes. On an average day (I work the morning shift) I'll get at least a dozen customers who want a medium sized coffee in a large cup to make sure they can add substantial milk and sugars. Never a problem. It's part of the company mind set.
There are also quite a few people who come in to drink teas. You know the medium and large teas cost the same amount. Seems they use the same number of tea bags and Starbucks felt there was no reason to charge extra on their teas.

Still they're hideous bastards!

Why, when Tazo tea, an independant tea production house that Starbucks purchased from was in financial ruin, they bought the company and then had the nerve to tell the guys who'd founded the place to go ahead as they had before. Madness. As if they couldn't have found somebody with no knowledge of teas to run the business. Madness, I say.

And how about when they stopped production of one of their coffees, a rather popular one, because the farmers involved kept failing to meet the minumum standards that they set forth for maintaining the land and avoiding the use of pesticides. Outrageous! What about the people who still wanted that particular coffee? Fiends, I say!

And back when Hurricane Katrina came along and wiped out several coffee stores and the lives of the people working in them. Those selfish bastards had the audacity to drop emergency funds into the accounts of each employee with direct deposit, matching the funds set up in advance for just such emergencies with what should have been pure company profit.

Weird. They did the exact same thing in China recently, and they sent out reports to let anyone in the company who was interested know the progress on locating partners who had been in the area.

20 hours a week and the employees are offered: insurance including medical, dental vision disability and the ever popular accidental deatha nd dismemberment through Aetna. Stopck options. Stock purchase discounts, a 401K savings plan with the company matching each employees investments, merchandise discounts (30%), assistance in relocating if an employee opts to move but would like to stay with the company, oh, and free stock as well, based on how many hours you worked through the course of the year and fully vested within four years.

Beats the crap out of what my last job offered me.

So, feel free to hate away.

I'll just sit back and be grateful that I work for a company that treats me like a human being, where I can actually talk to the area and district managers and have them give a damn what I have to say. Where, when I have to ask for unusual hours because of the health of certain family members they do their best to accomodate the odd requests. Where they acknowledge that I'm a full time writer without bitching and moaning about me not having enough time to accomodate the store's needs and where I get free drinks all through my work shift. (well, not free, really. I mean, I have to actually tell somebody what I have so they can mark them out for inventory purposes, those fiends! Now they know what I drink!)

Oh and for those who feel the coffee is burnt, go for the mild roast, instead. Probably take care fo that problem in a heartbeat.