Pros
My coworkers were cool, before they fired them all for trying to unionize. They also supposedly gave you a raise after a year, but they conveniently never gave me my yearly review so that I could get my raise because they were planning on firing me anyway. Getting free doughnuts every shift was good in theory, but bad for my health of course. Though their doughnuts were great, no complaints there. The team they had before COVID did an amazing job making them. The vibe working there was fun most of the time, and I did enjoy it but I also was used to the chaos and danger of Old Town Portland after already working in the area for years. They allowed tattoos and other body modifications, and if you were in the front you got to wear whatever fun thing you wanted which was neat. I really wanted to leave a good review for them, because a lot of the previous staff were great, but the company itself is rotten. You make good tips if you are FOH.
Cons
Man just about everything. The temperature in the Old Town location is wack, no matter the time of year. You’ll freeze to death in the winter, so cold that the POS touch screens won’t pick up your touch from your fingers. And in the summer the kitchen regularly skyrocketed above 100 on days in the 90s outside. I cannot imagine how terrible it was when we hit 115 this summer outside, someone could have died. OSHA has been called over and over but nothing ever happens. The management was apathetic to your needs, would straight up ignore requests to be trained in BOH if you were a FOH cashier who couldn’t handle it up there any longer. They timed every aspect of everything you did up front and would print out your scores and times and compare you to everyone else and pin them up in the back for everyone to see. They’d shame ‘slower’ employees while hosting up the ‘faster’ ones with zero regard for the position of the register. If you were at the one furtherest from the front of the line the majority of your shift was spent yelling at the top of your lungs trying to get the attention of the next customer in line. But of course they could never hear you over the screaming music so you’d look like a slow employee because they weren’t paying attention or took forever making their way to you. And don’t even get me started on the sanitation standards. Do not buy their buckets of doughnuts, I can almost guarantee that some apathetic manager with unwashed hands who just handled cash tossed them in there, I watched it happen countless times. The water in the metal containers that boils to keep the frosting soft is green and full of mold- they haven’t changed it in literal years. Their containers of cereal don’t close so it goes stale and isn’t sanitary, it’s real gross. And of all of that wasn’t enough, their treatment of their staff is abhorrent. We begged for years for security after employees had been harmed time and time again. An employee was straight up punched unconscious in the lobby, lost teeth, and he got in trouble for it. They were literally robbed by a man with a hatchet who jumped over the counter and menaced the employees and when we asked for a security guard at the next staff meeting that week (during which that event was never acknowledged by management) they laughed and were like ‘lol it does get a bit crazy down here sometimes, just keep calling 911 and we’ll see. You can also call me (some random corporate man) if you need anything!’. Like sure sir, let me just call you at 3am and wake up your little family in Hillsboro to tell you we’re being robbed again. The robber will definitely wait for you to get there and help us. Then of course there is the horrific union busting and lack of empathy for or value of their employees. They laid us all off with COVID, which like, yeah, it happened to just about everyone everywhere, but then when they were opening more again (they never closed for COVID, just forced all the managed to staff the shop) they illegally didn’t hire most of the staff from before because they wanted a union. And you know what’s so funny about that, most of us just wanted security so we could be safe at work. Old Town Portland is literally statically the most dangerous place in the whole state of Oregon, every other business there has security. But once they laid us all off and the managers had to work every shift and position at the Old Town location, THEN they got security now that it was their problem. Anyway, I’m sure the continual news coverage of it could tell you better all of the things they’ve done to hinder the union, so you definitely should look it up. It’s just awful, something local and fun and unique is so rotten. Not to mention the whole problem their entire brand is, but that aside, working there is a nightmare on its own, please don’t even consider it, they will never care about you, not even if you’re physically assaulted while at work. The moment it’s better for them, they will throw you away. They did it to employees who had been there for years and years, they’ll do it to you too.