Complaint Review: Sara Kershaw - Internet

Sara was an underperforming Store Manager at Ladera Center Starbucks.  When she was a Store Manager, a group of 8 store managers were assigned to go to her store to CLEAN IT before senior leaders from Seattle went to visit her store because she was not effective as a store manager in running her own store without the help and support of her peers.  Sara did not even thank her peers, and if it would have been me, I would have been extremely embarrassed that other members of my team would have had to come to my store to clean it.  How embarrassing!   Sara Kershaw had many problems relating to the staff and customers in the predominatley African American community, and was constantly under fire from the customers as well as the partner team because of her unprofessional demeanor and conduct. 

Sara was also an underperforming District Manager with Retail Starbucks stores in the Hawthorne, Carson, Dominguez area and the South Bay area.  Sara did not build relationships with her managers, she did not included managers that she did not like in planning meetings, she did not allow managers she did not like to support in pillar roles within our team, plan training events, and participate as members of the team.  Sara Kershaw is also very insecure and could not handle disagreement, questioning, or challenging, as well as anyone elses shared perspectives from members of her team.  Sara Kershaw micro managed every manager and subordinate on the team and did not allow managers to effectively complete their job, grow within their own posiitons, and allow for creative nurturing in their own positions.  Sara used fear, manipulation, scare tactics, has lied, and went out of her way to fire top performing Starbucks managers and partners for simply not agreeing with her positions, and for not essentially just following her direction for Starbucks, which wasn't aligned with Starbucks direction for Starbucks. 

In my case, my unemployment case was SO COMPELLING that  the California Administrative Law Judge, was clearly upset, baffled, and publicly chastised Sara Kershaw and the Starbucks unemployment rep from Sacramento that arrived to hep Sara.  On point after point, the Administrative Law Judge struck down Sara and scolded her for her unprofessional conduct in the workplace.(Please contact me for the public meeting minutes) I won my hearing with flying colors, and Sara Kershaw was made an example of during the hearing.  Sara falsly developed a performance improvement plan(Which is Starbucks way of pushing you out legally, not meant in any way shape or form to improve someone's performance) when I was THE TOP performing leader on her team in terms of sales, profitability, and metrics.  Sara manipulated, lied, mistreated, and used fear to communicate with me, and many other members of my team and our team.  Other team members were scared for their jobs, if they dare say anything, and anyone who complained was fired.

Now that Sara Kershaw has been reassigned and moved from Retail Stores to Licensed stores and no longer leading the team, the team is happy, growing, and no longer feeling a sense of fear due to her unethical, immoral, and unprofessional business practices.

Unfortunately, part of the reason that Sara is the monster that she is, is that Starbucks does not have an acceptable or even fair training program for multi unit managers, and above.  Starbucks often takes managers and places them in the multi unit supervisory role when that individual has never had multi unit experience.  In addition, many of the individuals training new multi unit managers are not qualified to hold that postion themselves.  Thus, you all see that Starbucks is CONSTANTLY and I mean DAILY recruiting District Managers and Store Managers all throughout the country.  They promote unqualified people like Sara Kershaw, just because she looked wholesome enough to Starbucks leadership.  The cost of her failed leadership is an unquantifiable amount of lost profitabilty for the Starbucks Coffee Company.  

Any future employers beware of Sara Kershaw.  She is not qualified as a multi unit leader, or even at the store level.  She needs extensive management and leadership training, and she needs extensive conflict resolution training, as well as working with others.

Employers beware!

This is her linked in profile please beware:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/sarakershaw