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I haven’t spoken out about my time at Bikini Beans because of the contracts I signed, but I think its the right thing to do
Bikini Beans Coffee made me sign multiple contracts, one of them being that I would never speak out against them. Why? What were they hiding and why can’t we speak about them and their malpractice, harassment, and verbal abuse ?
The bikini baristas make less than the state minimum wage, and we would regularly get our tips taken away as a form of “punishment”
Other employees train each other, and the owners take the last paycheck of anyone who doesn’t stay for one year for “training costs.“ $1200 for training at a coffee shop?? I worked for 3 years, and my last paycheck was still taken.
I managed a store and had to be on call from 4am to 11pm on the days I worked and the days I was off, on no extra pay, and I would get harassed by Ben Lyles if I wasn’t available to pull over and answer his call fast enough. He told me Bikini Beans was above my life
He would constantly degrade us. Ben told me that he liked hiring younger girls because he could “mold their mind.” He told a couple of girls that all they were worth was being a stripper, as if that was an insult to us
In December, the heater went out, and the girls were working in 30 degrees. A customer dropped off a portable heater, and Ben yelled at the whole staff for accepting it. Refused to fix the heater.
He felt that because I was a manager I should be the last to leave his staff outings.. he yelled at me for leaving his house at 1 am.
He wanted me to find and fix a leak, he was so cheap he would never hire a mechanic or plumber for the coffee shop, I had to figure it out or I couldn’t go home, and he would not let me clock in
We were forced to park in a parking lot off of the premise. The day I got my window smashed in he didn’t let me call police, he didn’t want to cause a scene he said, until an hour later, I found out that there were no security cameras where we parked. No care for our safety
He harassed another manager who also quit, because she told the staff to not let Ben treat them this way
Who was he to tell us what we can and can’t post on our own social media, embrace our bodies and feel empowered in them? Maybe he shouldn’t be running THIS BUSINESS (Btw they were happy and it was his personal choice to not have social media.. & not Ben’s business??)
He would get drunk and text his employees asking “where the parties were at.” This is a company ran by husband and wife, but his wife is just as much to blame for encouraging his actions.
NO MAN should ever run an all female employee business and boast about “empowerment” in public and on his social media, while he degrades them in private.
This is my experience working and managing at Bikini Beans for 3 years. This is just a small glimpse of the harassment that occurred here. Please stop supporting this business.
