Rebel barista with a cause challenges employee policies at Starbucks

Taipei Times

Daniel Gross and a band of disgruntled New York Starbucks java-servers who feel that the company should be held to the standards it preaches have, to the company's dismay, formed a single-shop union

NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , New York
Sunday, Jun 13, 2004, Page 12

In the cozy corporate lingo of Starbucks, the java-servers in company baseball caps and green aprons are so far evolved from folks who, in quainter, less caffeinated and less linguistically sensitive times, were dubbed soda jerks, that the coffee chain graces them with a special name: baristas. The moniker conveys a Euro-cachet, implies a certain skill set and is the entry-level niche at a US$15 billion behemoth with a hot -- in more ways than one -- product and a rung on the Fortune 100 best-places-to-work list.

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