The Shift Lead Mocked the New Barista's Homemade Apron — Then the Franchise Audit Letter Named Her Store
"We don't do farmhands here," Bethany said, and yanked Wren's apron strap so hard the whole bar laughed.
Wren Okafor has three shifts behind her at Kettle & Co. #412, and by Friday Bethany plans to have her gone — pulled off the schedule, two days a week cut to none, a call already in to the district manager.
Milo Rendon, forty-one and hanging onto the only job he can get, knows the rule: keep your mouth shut and steam. He tells Wren that much on her fourth shift.
"You don't touch the drawer," he says. "She does cash-out alone."
Wren asks which days the district manager visits. An odd question for a barista four shifts in.
Bethany catches her homemade apron by the strap at the drive-thru window. "Nobody wears that here, farmhand." A laugh rolls the bar between orders.
The apron has a crooked pocket seam — Wren's sister sewed it. Wren blinks once and smooths the strap back down. Then she asks Bethany, level, one question at a time: "You say this is your store?"
"Of course," Bethany says, pointing her order pad at the register like it's a finger. "Whose else would it be?"
Every shift, Wren photographs the order rail — the void tickets taped up there in a neat row. All of them run $47 to $53. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays. Six months of Fridays.
"Funny math," she tells Milo at the pastry case.
He doesn't ask what she means. He's counting his one day of hours.
Thursday, Bethany pulls Wren off the schedule entirely and docks Milo to a single shift, then calls the district manager to come handle both of them in person.
Friday, 8:10 a.m. Wren walks in with her olive tote on her shoulder like always, and the counter phone lies face-up on the pastry case, recording.
The drive-thru door swings. Dawn Whitfield, the district manager, is already reading as she walks — a Kettle & Co. letterhead letter naming Store #412, a signed field-rep ID clipped to the corner.
Bethany's order pad stops mid-air.
Then the phone plays it back. Bethany's own voice, hissing under the espresso steam: "Fifty a shift out the register, nobody counts the voids, nobody looks."
She turns toward Wren to ask who she thinks she is.
Wren sets the letter flat on the drive-thru ledge, beside the phone, still recording, and says four words.
Everything after that is in the first comment: the audit result, what happens to Bethany's job, and what Milo does with his first full paycheck.
Advertisement