Jamba!

“Jamba!” “Surfs Up!” “Would you like a free boost with that?” “I’ve got an Original Strawberries Wild for Patrick!” All of these phrases create the atmosphere of your local Jamba Juice. The employees are overly and uncannily joyful, the customers or “guests” are always served with the top service, and all in the name of a smoothie.

Employees are paid minimum wage, $8.40 per hour. The effort and time they put into making Jamba Juice a great experience for its guests are worth infinitely more than that. But oftentimes, these employees are just putting on a happy face. Most struggle to make ends meet with this low wage. Local community college kids who are out on their own struggle to balance work and classes, as well as learning how to pay their own bills, and deal with the burdens of running their own lives.

Others never finished college, or even got a G.E.D. These employees struggle even more because they have no opportunity for social mobility. Because of their lack of education, the opportunity to get a higher paying job is extremely slim. This realization adds more stress to the already stressful lifestyle of living on minimum wage.

A typical day as an employee at Jamba Juice goes like this: You arrive at least 15 minutes early for your shift, and go to the back room amidst the flurry of 5 or 6 employees struggling to produce high-quality product in a timely manner. You change into your khaki pants, apron, blue Jamba shirt, non-slip tennis shoes, and your Jamba Juice visor. You get your walk-on speech from the current Manager in Charge (MIC), who tells you everything you’d need to know about your shift. What the weather will be like that day, what flavor is being sampled, what customer values are being stressed that week, what employee values are being stressed, what position in the assembly line of smoothies you are, and usually little memos about what’s going on in the store that day.

At least 2 minutes before your shift starts, you must be waiting and ready to jump into the front line. You’ve already been standing for 15 minutes, and now you are keying up to be in a state of constant forced cheerfulness, and working hard for the next hours of your shift. If you aren’t constantly doing something productive while on your shift, your co-workers will turn on you because they feel you aren’t pulling your weight. The motto, “There’s always something more you could be doing” weighs on you so that your conscience of your productivity level at all times.

There is no resting on this job, and when one finally gets done with their shift, they are usually exhausted. Believe it or not, that level of emotional and physical commitment for that long can drain a person like nothing else can. By the time one gets home, they feel like doing nothing but relaxing or sleeping, which isn’t what makes life easier for most employees. Most employees have to run their daily lives and after work do not have time to relax. This stressful way of life is just one way low-wage workers struggle, day in and day out.

(*I worked at Jamba Juice)