the 23-year-old Emmely Kobbernagel knew there was something wrong when she broke down in the middle of the Espresso House under a guard.
“I completely broke down in tears in front of all the guests. I had neither eaten, drunk or slept, because I had worked so much,” said Emmely, who had worked nine days in a row.
It was far from the only one who got baristaen to crack the day in the Espresso House.
“It is a workplace where you are being broken down mentally. We were constantly understaffed, and either were told a lie that it would change, or that it was needless,” says Emmely Kobbernagel.
When she was a barista at Espresso House, she did everything to be a good employee – also the day, her manager asked her to meet at work, even though she was sick with the flu:
“I was promised that I could keep the breaks, but there was a queue out to the road in seven hours. I didn’t break, the water or the time to get to the toilet the day,” says Emmely.
“One day I said no to a guard, because I had to celebrate with my family, to my mother’s cell had not evolved. Thereto replied my leader, though I could not take one for the team.”
Emmely Kobbernagel asked to get a meeting with her chief executive in the coffee shop. Here pointed out Emmely to the head, that she meant that the manager manipulated people to take out the guards, even if they could not.
“As I said, I think it was poor that they got people to help the guards by giving them a bad conscience, I got to know that it was something they did on purpose, otherwise people would simply not help with the guards.”
Emmely Kobbernagel is far from alone in his criticism of the working conditions of the nordic region’s largest kaffekæde.
Earlier in the autumn described the Aftonbladet bad working conditions at Espresso House in Sweden. Now it turns out that the same relation apparently also reigns in the chain’s Danish coffee shops.
B. T. has talked with 24 former and current Espresso House-servants, which paints Casinomaxi a picture of a workplace that treats young baristas bad.
They tell us that they find that it is common for baristas to collapse, when they are at work. Others report that they have experienced, that it was not possible to call in sick, because there was not staff to cover the guard.
A former leader in the Espresso House, says that she has not had a social life, while she was hired because she always had to be available for work and had a meeting at work in time and early.
Other reports on the anxiety attacks at work, slandering of leaders, and breach of contract.
Emmely Kobbernagel explains that Espresso House does not comply with the agreement they have signed with the 3F. Here it says black on white that the baristas have requirements in addition, if they work, but:
“If you stayed and worked over, in order to reach to close the bar down properly to the colleague who was to open the day after, you were not overarbejdstillæg. If you chose not to work, got an earful for not being and have ordered the things that need to be reached,” she says.
Emmely Kobbernagel do not recommend strongly others to seek work at Espresso House:
“No one deserves to be treated in the way that Espresso House treat their employees. They neither appreciate or take care of their employees.”
B. T. has this week continuously tried to get an interview with the Espresso Houses director, Claus Forester, but Espresso House will only express themselves in writing through a spokesperson.
‘I’m really sorry to hear about the experiences of some of our former colleagues have told you about. The experiences you describe, sounds like we are in the cases in question have not done it well enough.’
It writes the spokesperson Sinne Fiil Fredslund in an email, adding that the B. T.’s inquiry gives ‘rise to, that we need to look inward and reflect on how we can make it better.’
Espresso House refers to an employee survey, which, according to them, shows ‘a high and rising level of employee satisfaction’ but when B. T. is asking to see it, it may not be possible.
