Coffee Jitters: Starbucks May Slash More Jobs

(MoneyWatch)  A lot of employees will be listening closely tomorrow when Starbucks presents its quarterly earnings report.

Rumors have been swirling around Seattle -- and indeed all around the coffee universe -- that a 1,000-person job cut is in the offing this week. According to a report by a Seattle-based stock analyst, there won't be cuts at the store level. Instead, most would come from the ranks of the 3,500 people who work at Starbucks' corporate headquarters, with the remainder coming from district managers.

But if you go online to StarbucksGossip.com, you'll get a slightly different story. Disgruntled Starbucks partners report they suspect the company is also eliminating assistant store managers, with one of them reporting he was warned to take a demotion back to a barista post or see his job eliminated. Several report that baristas have had their hours cut.

Amidst all this, investors are losing confidence too.

Needless to say, this was not what anyone had in mind last January, when once-revered Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz ousted former CEO Jim McDonald and moved back into the big chair. Schultz vowed to return his company to its glory days: "We know that we can improve our performance by getting back to the essence of what drove Starbucks' past success -- our passion for the business and a complete focus on the customer and our relationship with our people."

But that relationship with Starbucks' own people may need some work. Starbucks still is considered a good company to work for, but it's slipped in the most-recent Fortune rankings. A decision to take delivery on a new $45 million corporate jet last year, even as the company closed 616 stores and cut 401(k) contributions, doesn't seem to have helped morale, especially after it was reported that Schultz used the jet to fly his family to Hawaii for the holidays. (Corporate policy requires Schultz to reimburse the cost of personal trips.)

Over the weekend, the Seattle Times reported the comments of one angry and anonymous employee, who said "I am sick and tired of being blamed for not meeting my budget when the economy is in a recession. I used to be proud of my company ... now I am embarrassed and feel physically ill every time I have to go to work."