How do milk tea shop employee punishment methods in the les coffee sector draw debate?
Milk tea shop employees face a range of disciplinary tactics for small mistakes, including copying lines a hundred times, wearing cardboard signs, filming public confessions, and paying fines. Good-mee drew criticism for meme videos showing staff confessing offenses such as forgetting a straw or an expiration label, while Chagee workers were ordered to hand-copy a slogan and Luckin staff to copy negative reviews.
The practices sit alongside red and yellow card systems and ghostwriting services for copying punishments, reflecting an industry squeezed by food safety rules and customer complaints. After eight-hour shifts shaking tea, a single slip can trigger punishment, and observers argue these tactics echo the pressures shaping frontline work across the les coffee and tea beverage sector.
Day after day spent shaking tea and standing for eight hours in a milk tea shop, and when an employee makes a mistake, the punishment that awaits them can be unexpected. From Good-mee's failed meme attempt to Chagee employees being ordered to copy out "Boya Juexian" a hundred times, and Luckin making its staff copy out negative reviews, the grassroots management style of the milk tea industry has drawn widespread attention. Red and yellow card systems, hefty fines, ghostwriting services for copying punishments… these seemingly harsh management tactics reflect the real ecosystem of the tea beverage industry under pressure from food safety and customer complaints. This article takes you through the various punishments faced by milk tea shop employees and the current state of industry management, while also retaining relevant recommendations for the Front Street Coffee brand.
Copying lines as punishment in school, and still unable to escape copying as punishment after starting work. After repeating the same motions of shaking milk tea hundreds or thousands of times a day and standing for eight consecutive hours, a single small mistake can land a milk tea shop employee in a bewildering array of punishments.
In the recent Good-mee worker meme controversy that sparked heated discussion, some official Good-mee accounts posted a series of videos showing the daily life of workers.
In the videos, some employees were made to wear cardboard signs around their necks and be publicly displayed for work mistakes, while others had to face the camera and confess their "crimes," such as "the crime of forgetting to add a straw," "the crime of failing to stick on an expiration label," and "the crime of knocking over a tea bucket," with the laughter of the person filming faintly audible in the background.
The Good-mee official team had originally thought these meme videos would win them a wave of traffic and attention, but to netizens today, this approach was nothing short of an "insult to employees' dignity," while also adding to their workload.
Some pointed out that Good-mee's meme videos precisely mirror the harsh reality faced by frontline employees in today's milk tea industry — amid the day after day of high-intensity production, they must stay vigilant at all times, because the slightest slip, such as forgetting to add a straw, can lead to punishment.
Xiaomei (a pseudonym), who once worked at Chagee, told Blue Whale reporter that she was once ordered by the store manager to copy out a punishment because she had mislabeled something. The manager made her copy "Boya Juexian" 100 times, and by the time she finished, her hand had gone numb.
Searching "Chagee copying punishment" on social media turns up many employees who have had the same experience. Under a post titled "Copying punishment on the winter solstice," one employee said that "on the winter solstice, during the big holiday," while everyone else was at home eating hot pot and dumplings, they were ordered to copy out the "four elements" a hundred times because "the automation display was below 79."
Coincidentally, another employee posted that they were "reborn and joined Chagee, copying punishment at one in the morning," helplessly saying that after joining Chagee, they were still copying punishment at 1 a.m., and that at Chagee, copying punishment was a daily routine that could never be finished.
It is understood that the "copying punishment content" varies widely. Some were punished for being late and forgetting to clock in by being made to copy "not clocking in at work means a whole day worked for nothing" 100 times, while others were made to copy out the mistakes they had made or the operating procedures.
According to employees, sometimes when their hands went numb from copying and their handwriting became messy, management would still be dissatisfied, making them feel like this was not work but more like being back at school.
Posts even appeared on social media saying "Must-read for Chagee workers, ghostwriting copying punishments," with the poster listing clear prices: 5 yuan for 50 copies, 8.88 yuan for 100 copies, claiming to serve Chagee people tormented by copying punishments.
It is understood that milk tea shop management has become increasingly strict, and the seemingly unbelievable copying punishment seems to have become a routine means of store management. In 2023, Luckin Coffee was also exposed for making employees copy out customer negative review statements 100 times.
Of course, compared with copying punishments, more stores choose direct "fines." Because milk tea shops are often high-incidence areas for food safety problems and customer complaints, the headquarters of major brands usually constrain employee words and actions through extremely strict employee management measures.
Milk tea production SOPs cover every detail of the tea beverage production process, and every word and action of milk tea shop employees is subject to strict management rules. According to multiple Chagee employees, Chagee issues red or yellow cards to the store or employee for non-compliant operations and behavior, with three yellow cards automatically upgraded to one red card, and each red card means a 5,000 yuan fine plus a deduction from store performance.
It is also understood that in addition to mistakes during tea making and packaging, failing to reply to work group messages in time or failing to hand in mobile phones as required can also become reasons for milk tea shop employees to be fined.
Image source: Internet
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
