The "Starbucks" Workers at the First Avenue Hy-Vee Don't Work for Starbucks

It's fun to stop by Starbucks at the First Avenue Hy-Vee in Iowa City once or twice a week to order coffee. I thought the workers, dressed in Starbucks hats and aprons, really worked for Starbucks, a company with good pay and benefits. Instead, they work for Hy-Vee, which has lower pay and fewer benefits. I feel betrayed.

For one, Hy-Vee contributes heavily to each and every one of Gov.-for-Life Terry Branstad's election and reelection campaigns. I don't even want to know how much. I just know that to me, given Branstad's record, including the firing of Larry Hedlund, a law officer who reported Branstad's vehicle driver for speeding and fired the former nursing home inspector chief for doing his job, Hy-Vee's financial support for Branstad is an obscenely large amount of money.

Yes, I have been tipping the "Starbucks" employees, which I now know are Hy-Vee employees, every time I come in. I drop a dollar in their tip jar.

Even though I plan to travel to Steve King country in western Iowa this summer, I'm going to wash the bumper of my Chevy HHR Limited and stick on one of my latest new bumper stickers:

"WANT DEMOCRACY?
"End Corporate Rule"

I'm thinking of Hy-Vee, AIG, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Verizon, Comcast, and any number of corporate entities I regard as on the wrong side of what's good for America. My "end corporate rule" bumper sticker will go right next to my bumper sticker that says,

"I belong to the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party."

Wall Street corporations are so scared of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) that CEOs and their lobbyists spent over $6 million trying to defeat her when she ran for the U.S. Senate. They lost.  Here's hoping we can find a few more honest men and women to advance a more populist, worker-friendly environment for America.

Low wages and lousy benefits are not the answer, and I'm shocked that Starbucks would allow Hy-Vee employees to don Starbucks uniforms and pose as Starbucks workers.