What Does the Tea Brand Overtime Story Mean for Specialty Coffee?

A post from a chain tea brand about store employees working until 3 a.m. has sparked a heated debate over overtime culture and spoken-word promotion. The article, meant to show workers' daily lives, drew former employees and part-timers who confirmed that staying until the early hours after closing is already the norm. The controversy matters because it highlights how brands present labor conditions as marketing material.

The brand's official account routinely publishes new product news and limited-time events, a standard practice in the specialty coffee and tea beverage industry. The post's warm tone clashed with mentions of finishing at 3 a.m., and regular customers also complained about endless looping spoken promotions in stores. As a coffee press release, it shows the line between employee storytelling and promotional content.

It is usually a heartwarming thing for a chain brand to show employees' daily lives through its official account, but Tea Beauty recently found itself in a public opinion storm over exactly that. A post introducing the work and lives of store employees drew questions after mentioning that staff were busy late into the night and did not finish until 3 a.m. Several netizens claiming to be former employees and part-timers came forward to confirm that staying until the early hours after closing was already the norm; regular customers, meanwhile, had plenty of complaints about the endless looping spoken promotions in stores. When workers' helpless daily overtime is used as promotional material, has the warmth the brand wants to convey lost its meaning? This article walks you through the ins and outs of the controversy.

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Today, it is standard industry practice for chain brands to run official accounts and push marketing content such as new product news and limited-time events. Some companies also occasionally post workers' daily lives so users can see the real working conditions of store staff, using that to close the distance between employees and consumers.

That is exactly the path Tea Beauty has taken. This Friday, the brand published an article on its official account titled "You Don't Know Me, But You May Have Seen Me," focusing on the daily work of its store employees. The warmth between the lines moved many readers, and in the comments section people eagerly shared their own beautiful moments and reflections from life.

However, while reading the post closely, some readers noticed several telling expressions, such as "before I knew it, midnight had passed" and "it was already 3 a.m." when they finished tidying up and were ready to go home. In their view, it was already inappropriate for the brand to have store employees working until the early hours, and writing such situations into a post for public release made onlookers even more uncomfortable, so some turned to third-party platforms to speak out and raise differing opinions.

After the post was published, it quickly attracted a large crowd of netizens to watch and discuss. Some users claiming to be Tea Beauty employees spoke up, saying that the "working until the early hours" mentioned in the article was indeed a true portrayal of many people's lives, and that late-night overtime after closing had long been commonplace.

Some lamented that "it has always been like this," saying the latest they had ever gotten home was 5 a.m.; on ordinary days they usually left around 2 a.m. after the evening shift, and when there was deep cleaning it dragged on past 3 a.m., while they still had to report on time at 8 a.m. the next morning. Others recalled wiping tears while cleaning in the store at two or three in the morning. One netizen with part-time experience revealed that employees started cleaning after 11 p.m. and had to work until nearly 2 a.m. before they could go home. Another said that by the time inventory counting ended it was already 3:30 a.m., and by the time they actually lay down in bed, it was almost 5 a.m.

In addition, regular customers also raised another annoyance: every time they went to a store to buy drinks, they had to listen to employees mechanically introduce the products and lead chants like reciting scriptures, a scene that made people rather awkward. For the employees, meanwhile, besides making drinks every day, they also had to repeatedly recite the brand's unified promotional script; after a whole busy day, they were not only exhausted but might even shout themselves hoarse.

Therefore, whether customers or employees, most hoped Tea Beauty would listen to this feedback and remove this unwelcome signature service, so that customers would no longer be irritated by the spoken promotions and employees would have one less task. But some netizens also noticed that when the brand discussed employees' spoken promotions in the post, it used phrases such as "this little burden on the mouth is nothing much," which seemed to beautify the spoken promotions. They joked, "Knowing full well it is a burden, yet insisting on making both body and mouth suffer."

To be fair, practices such as working overtime until the early hours and looping spoken promotions have long been nothing new in milk tea shops. But readers felt it was inappropriate to write such content into an official post. Some asked, "Writing it out so blatantly for publicity, what exactly is the point?" Others criticized it as whitewashing unreasonable mandatory rules into activities that employees supposedly enjoy.

Things are sometimes just that delicate: when a brand talks about employees' work, it always tends to present the beautiful side, but when everyday life written all over with workers' helplessness, such as staying up until the early hours, is turned into promotional material and written into a post, in readers' eyes it may instead produce an impression completely opposite to the original intention.

Image source: Internet

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