Pay Costa Coffee workers what we are worth

I have worked for Costa for almost 9 months now, and it's certainly been a mixed bag. When I started I knew the job was going to be difficult, but what encouraged me to join was the promise of great benefits and a great wage. This was true, at the beginning. To put it bluntly, costa employees are NOT fairly paid for their work.

The job is hard. Constantly on your feet for hours, jumping from station to station to meet ridiculous targets while ensuring you always meet a "brand standard" regardless of how exhausted, understaffed or overworked you are. You won't just be just making coffee, you'll be cleaning absolutely everything constantly, cooking food, serving customers, learning the process to correctly make new drinks that change frequently, carrying heavy trays, using dangerous equipment, and the list goes on.

Staff are forced to work to a ridiculous standard while on shift, but when at home, you also have a lot of extra training (homework) that needs to be done before you can get your first pay rise. It's absolutely ludicrous. Staff are skilled and trained to achieve these goals, but we are never compensated for all the hard work we are expected to put in.

Shifts will never end when they are scheduled to, meaning a 9-hour shift can quickly become a 10-hour shift if not more, which would be fine if we had longer than a measly 30 minutes to recharge.

I was taking all of this on the chin though, as were my colleagues until something came to light. The store I work at is located in a retail park, with tens of others shops located around. It turns out that every single other business is paying their staff MORE than what we get paid at costa. I don't mean to compare, but one of these stores is a very simple basic retail store, where I know from first-hand experience the responsibility and expectations are MUCH lower. They are making over £10 an hour meanwhile costa employees remain on even less than £10 per hour.

This is unacceptable.

The cost of living is rising continuously. Essentials are more expensive, bills, rent, tax, food, water, everything is going up continuously. We are tired of living on the crust of the breadline while dedicating so much of our time and effort to maintaining the standards Costa hopes to achieve.

We are tired.

We demand better treatment, and this starts with paying us what we are worth.

The working class are continually exploited by the system we are placed in. We spend our lives working our lives away while being told we should be grateful to make enough to survive. This isn't enough. Time is the most valuable asset we all have, and we cannot and will not be expected to throw it away to companies that do not care about anything other than their profit margins.

The only reason these companies have profits is because we are dedicating our lives to making them money. Enough is enough. Collectively we are ALL worth SO much more than what we get, but I cannot speak for the entirety of the working class. I can only speak from my experience and the company I work for. If you work for Costa Coffee, or you sympathise with fellow workers who are making barely enough to get by, please share a hand (or a signature) to help us through. It really means a lot.

We are strong together. We don't need to accept this anymore.