Cooking Steak At Starbucks Will Get You Fired, Apparently
One of the perks of working in the hospitality industry is the employee discount on food and beverages — but spend enough time in the same place, and it's likely that you'll eventually grow weary of the menu offerings and seek out alternative means of sustenance. This can be especially true for a chain like Starbucks, where the meal options are largely limited to breakfast wraps and sandwiches. There's nothing wrong with a good grilled cheese, but after a while, your body might be asking for a freshly made soup, salad...or steak.
A Starbucks employee recently decided that he would take a break from the ordinary by cooking some steak in a convection oven at work, which he then used to make his coworkers a batch of steak tacos. On the surface, this may seem like a nice gesture that would be met with widespread approval by the majority of the staff. However, cooking steak at Starbucks will get you fired, according to a recent TikTok.
The former Starbucks employee in question goes by the handle @fugnarr and posted a video of himself cooking a steak and placing the finished taco in the location's pastry display. Abruptly, the camera pans to his car, where he appears to be holding up a termination notice. Maintaining a sense of humor about the ordeal, the worker facetiously captioned the video, "Steak so scrumptious HR investigated me for the secret recipe."
'Let him cook'
The video has so far been viewed more than half a million times and has more than 750 comments of mixed reactions — with some people standing squarely in the worker's corner. "Let him cook," demanded one contributor. In a nod to the ongoing Starbucks employees' unionization efforts, another person divulged, "I got fired for leading a strike, but I wish this was the reason instead this is so much cooler."
@fugnarr steak so scrumptious HR investigated me for the secret recipe #freesammie #starbucks
Others pointed out that the action did technically flout company policy. "Well it is a literal health code violation," stated one commenter. A Starbucks supervisor who posted to the subreddit r/starbucks explained that "per starbucks policy and food and safety procedures, we are not suppose to warm up our own personal food we bring from home in the ovens." It looks like there won't be any Taco Tuesday parties at Starbucks (at least sanctioned ones) any time soon — unless employees can make them out of the ingredients they have on hand.