Dutch Bros™ review: Discrimination

I am writing this correspondence on June 23rd 2024. I am reaching out to you in regards to my daughter Kallista Knox, a former employee of your Dallas Oregon location. She was hired in the beginning of April in a mass hiring for a new location.

My daughter is 16 and is at the age where she is wanting to get a “real” job. Until now, she has done all of her work through neighboring farms and for friends and family. I was very apprehensive about her applying for jobs in the Dallas area, as she has had to deal with some extreme racism in this town. However, I have always respected Dutch Bros as a company. The mission statement of your company “Dutch Bros is taking meaningful and measurable actions in philanthropy; sustainability; and diversity, equity and inclusion….” Has always meant a lot to me. I highly encouraged her to apply to your business.

As I’m sure you are aware, a first job is a very pivotal time for a developing teenager. It is teaching them how to be an employee and navigate the workforce in general. Knowing its importance and the newness of the situation, I was highly involved in her employment. I checked in often and we had a lot of conversations about work.

Kallista was doing a wonderful job as an employee. I’m basing this not just on our conversations but also on the amount of hours she was given. Kallista was given a lot of hours and was working quite regularly. She stayed positive and had only one verbal warning for being late and was never late again.

In the beginning of June, she called me crying after a shift and explained to me how a couple coworkers that she works with were consistently being rude to her. She said they just completely ignored her and would not respond when she speaks to them. She said the coworkers made it obvious that they were talking about her and that they regularly would glare at her or roll their eyes when she was talking to others. She did not participate in this drama or feed into it in any way other than talking to me about it. I reminded her that she is there to work and spread positivity to her customers. I told her that her quality of work and interactions with her customers and management are her number one priority. I assured her that as long as she continued doing her job well and staying positive her management would have her back.

Kallista took my advice and continued going in and working and just trying to rise above the drama. I only share this example to help paint a better picture of the dedication she had to this job and to also point out how not following proper evidence based procedures when dealing with complaints could effect Kallista negatively.

On Tuesday June 17th, Kallista went in to work her scheduled shift. Something about the drive through window wasn’t working properly and she was asked to try and fix it. In the process of troubleshooting the window, she received a severe electric shock. She told her coworkers and eventually asked to go home because of the pain in her arm and her anxiety over the situation. In general she was really upset about the incident. She was hurt physically (while trying to help her team) and she felt no one had cared or reacted to her injury. I reassured her that sometimes in those situations people don’t know how to react. This helped her emotionally and we moved on.

The next day, June 18th she received a text message from one of her supervisors (Lucas) asking for a meeting. She texted me about it and I told her it was probably just to do an incident report because of the electrical shock she received. In my mind and hers it couldn’t have been anything else. Proper termination usually involves some kind of negative warning, write up, or at least a discussion with a supervisor and she had received none of these. Kallista went to the meeting happy because she felt like they were going to at least acknowledge what had happened to her and she planned on expressing her feelings about the incident. Instead she showed up to this meeting and was fired for “stealing tips”.

She was hired on with around 20 other people. No one else was fired or called in or talked to about this missing money. She remains adamant that she didn’t steal this money and she even requested they look through the camera footage so they could clear her name and she could keep her job. There are cameras everywhere in the building. When asked if she could see the video or if they could look through it they said no. When she asked if she could see the evidence they said no. Up until this point she has had zero write ups, zero reductions in hours, zero negative write ups or counselings and she was still being called in consistently to cover. The supervisor (Lucas) said she had also had a dress code infraction that no one had spoken to her about. When asked what infraction they said she was wearing the wrong footwear one day at work. I had spoken to her about not wearing slides to work and she assured me that everyone else wore them so it was fine in her eyes.

I spoke to her about having to be above reproach as a person of color in the work force and that she has to be more careful than other employees. She didn’t wear them again. It is not best practice to have the supervisor speaking to my daughter about this infraction also be one of the coworkers who is breaking the same rule himself and not disciplining anyone else for the same infraction. Not modeling the behavior you expect from your subordinates is not a good business practice. When she apologized and explained why she thought it was ok she was then told people had also complained she was ‘twerking’ at work. Not only was she not ‘twerking’ at work but a spurious accusation of something as ridiculous and stereotypical as ‘twerking’ is incredibly racist and offensive. Policy for dealing with tips was changed a couple days before this meeting making it so only shift leads can handle tips.

As a black child, my daughter unfortunately is always going to have to deal with racists and is going to be the first to be blamed when things arise. I don’t expect you as a company to protect her from racism. I have always told her that there will always be people who don’t like you or who treat you differently because you are black, and there are checks and balances in place that businesses use to prevent racism in the workplace. What I expect from you as a company is to follow these best practices to prevent discrimination. These checks and balances were not implemented at this location. Part of teaching my daughter to be a good employee is also teaching her how to advocate for herself. This is what that looks like. I want her to know that we have these checks and balances in place to protect her.

From the outside, this looks like either wrongful fire because of discrimination or wrongful fire because of her getting hurt at work. Either scenario is not becoming of your mission statement or policy. I wanted to reach out to you first because I am sure that you are unaware of the situation and if you were made aware, you would do everything you could to make the situation right.

I will be waiting patiently to hear the outcome of your investigation into this incident.