The other day, I was on a break from my job at a local movie theater, when I decided to walk to the Starbucks up the block. I noticed when I went inside, at about 8 pm on a weeknight, that there was only one barista working the admittedly small store. This seemed unusual to me, as I always remembered at least two or three baristas working every previous time I had walked into Starbucks. Furthermore, he was running around taking and making all of the orders for myself and the other customers in the store at the time, which did not seem like an ideal work situation.

This small example is part of a larger recent trend at Starbucks establishments across the country. According to a recent Buzzfeed article, Starbucks managers use a computerized system with an algorithm to determine how many hours to allocate to their employees each week in order to maximize labor efficiency. Recently, due to recent drops in revenue for Starbucks, this system has been estimating fewer and fewer labor hours necessary to run each store, which has resulted in lower quality customer service, exhausted on-duty employees, and frustrated off-duty employees who aren't working enough hours to make even a decent part-time wage.

This reminds me a lot of the movie Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt as a general manager of the Oakland Athletics who uses detailed statistical analysis to decide what players he wants on his team. He focuses only on these "sabermetrics" and only takes a player's on-base percentage into account when considering who to sign. In the end of the movie, the Athletics do go on a historic 20-game winning streak, but they failed to win the World Series that year.

I see a lot of "Moneyball"-ing in these recent trends at Starbucks. The computerized labor management systems predict the "magic number" of employee hours necessary to operate a store on any given day, regardless of employees' individual circumstances or other factors of a store's daily customer traffic. Algorithms are certainly useful business tools, but they cannot perfectly predict human conditions. Just as the movie Moneyball ended without a real triumph, I don't see this trend at Starbucks continuing to a glorious conclusion where all of its employees are happy and satisfied with their hours.

I understand that working at Starbucks may not be a full-time career for many, but it is a job nonetheless, and one which was previously lauded for its reasonable pay and hours. Whatever a company's overall mission may be, it owes its workers reasonable employment. Unexpectedly slashing part-time hours from 20-29 hours a week to under 20 a week, or in extreme cases, to eight a week, puts a huge strain on the individual business and forces the on-duty employees to work twice or three times as hard.

Overworked employees leads to a lower quality customer experience, and there have been many reports over the past few months of customers complaining of extremely long wait times, rushed or incorrectly prepared drinks, and excessive trash on the floor. Businesses operate based on the relationship between the company, its employees, and its customers. If two of those parties are suffering and unhappy, I can't say that I wholly admire that business strategy.

I don't really frequent my local Starbucks, but it does irritate me to see its business quality diminishing and then contrast that with my movie theater job, at which there are always enough employees to efficiently and safely operate every shift. Granted, a movie theater will have a fundamentally different business model than a coffee shop, but even considering this, why should one operate smoothly with happy employees working enough hours and the other be operating virtually in shambles?

In my mind, there is no excuse for that. Yes, profit is crucial for a business, but if enough people, employees and customers alike, are dissatisfied with their Starbucks experience, that all-important profit will soon dry up regardless of labor cuts. On the afore-mentioned Buzzfeed article, and other related articles, nearly every single comment of the hundreds of total comments was a story from either a Starbucks employee who quit their job for the reasons I've outlined, or from a customer who is extremely disappointed in the recent decline in service. That is evidence of a wider problem than just a few Starbucks stores with fewer labor hours.

Starbucks may be attempting to streamline its financial situation by simultaneously overworking and underworking its employees, but at a major cost to its workers and clientele. Next time you make a Starbucks run, take a second to notice anything different about the number of employees working there, your transaction experience, or the overall condition of the store. If any of those three seem worse than the last time you went to Starbucks, don't be surprised.