The Starbucks on M Street and 34th abruptly closed on Sept. 27. Employees and managers were given two days’ notice that they would no longer work at the location.
Some employees were offered an opportunity to transfer to another Starbucks location, and some were laid off immediately and offered severance pay, said W. A. (CAS ’28), a Georgetown student and former M Street Starbucks employee who requested anonymity and the use of their initials, citing concerns for future employment.
The location’s closing is part of Starbucks’ nation-wide corporate layoffs. Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol released a statement on Sept. 25 addressing the corporation’s changes following a review of the company in light of its Back to Starbucks plan. According to Newsweek, an estimated 180 stores in North America are expected to close this year.
“During the review, we identified coffeehouses where we’re unable to create the physical environment our customers and partners expect, or where we don’t see a path to financial performance, and these locations will be closed,” Niccol wrote.
W. A. said their manager texted to inform them of Starbucks’ closing on Thursday morning after he found out a few hours prior that the store was closing. They told W. A. that Starbucks would inform them on Sunday of whether they would receive severance pay or be transferred to another location.
“On Sunday, I get an email after work hours around 6 p.m. that basically told me that I was given an option to transfer,” W. A. said. “But the transfer that they were giving me was all the way in Chevy Chase.
W. A. works twenty hours a week on campus, the maximum number of hours students are permitted to work during the academic year. They said the Chevy Chase Starbucks location would require a two-hour commute a day, a commitment that would affect their academics.
Starbucks notified W. A. that they were ineligible for severance pay because they were offered a transfer opportunity. W. A. said this loss of income will impact their finances, as they send money home to support their family.
“Hearing this so late and then being told that I wasn’t receiving severance either was very impactful because I’m not gonna find a job in the next week or so,” W. A. said. “It’s been very stressful to say the least.”
Since the store’s closing, W. A. has applied to multiple jobs off-campus but has struggled to find one while balancing their role as a student.
“Because I’ve been spending so much time looking for jobs, I haven’t necessarily been able to focus as much time on studying,” W.A. said.
The coffee shop’s closing affected other employees, W. A. said. Some of their coworkers successfully transferred, but could only do so because they had a car to access the new store location. Other coworkers were laid off and have decided to take time off from work.
“A few people told me that, if they did end up getting transfer offers, that they were gonna quit because they just felt super disposable,” W.A. said.
Photo by Chih-Rong Kuo
The closures have not affected all Starbucks locations the same way. Starbucks Workers United (SBWU), a worker-led union for many Starbucks employees, released a statement on Sept. 30 that 59 union stores have closed but that the union has secured certain “victories” through bargaining efforts. The statement writes that union partners can still get severance pay even if they turn down a transfer offer.
The M Street location is not a unionized store.
For W.A., the hardest part of the store’s closing is the timing, which has impacted their chances of finding a job in the near future.
“It was just so out of nowhere. If they told me two weeks before, I definitely would not have been as angry. I would’ve already started looking for a job,” W.A. said. “But if you tell me two days before, I don’t even have time to look for a job.”
W.A. says the store’s closing is an example of the bureaucracy of Starbucks’ upper-management system, but is not representative of the positive work environment they experienced.
“I really love the people that I work with,” W said. “I just usually don’t have a very good experience with the whole bureaucratic scenario there.”
