A longtime Starbucks executive has filed a lawsuit claiming she was wrongfully terminated after flagging serious safety issues with the company’s new Siren System equipment, including incidents involving maggots and a fire.
Janice Waszak, who spent nearly 20 years at Starbucks, starting as a brand manager in 2004 and rising to director of concept innovation overseeing the Tryer Innovation Center in Seattle, alleges wrongful termination and sex discrimination in the January 26 complaint.
She alleges that the coffee chain terminated her in retaliation for refusing to promote misleading information about the system’s profitability and health risks.
The Siren System, developed by the team of Senior Vice President Natarajan Venkatakrishnan around 2020 or 2021, was designed to enable baristas to prepare drinks in 40 seconds or less. Starbucks touted it to investors in 2022 as a way to boost store productivity, revenue, and profit margins.
However, testing at the Tryer Center revealed flaws in the system, according to the suit. During an October 2022 demonstration for district managers and regional directors, “maggots dropped out of the overhead milk dispenser and fell onto the counter and beverages,” the lawsuit states, per Fox 4 KDFW. It adds that “baristas flicked the maggots away to avoid attendees seeing them.”
Waszak later learned the maggots had bred in the dispenser due to improper cleaning, exacerbated by its complicated design, which staff found difficult to maintain.
“Waszak believed Siren’s complicated design, and staff’s inability to clean the milk dispenser properly, exacerbated the potential for maggots or other contaminants to grow in the equipment again, creating health and safety risks for Starbucks’s customers and staff,” the lawsuit reads.
In September 2023, a Siren milk dispenser caught fire at the Tryer Center because of a manufacturing defect with faulty wiring. At the time, similar units were already in use at test stores in the Seattle area.
Waszak, who reported to Venkatakrishnan since 2018, discussed these concerns with him. She also resisted pressure from some of his direct reports to preview and alter a Siren System Cold Beverage Report to portray test results more favorably. She declined, and the report, presented in late October 2023, concluded the system required further development.
The lawsuit states that “after further testing, Waszak learned Siren had several defects that created health and safety risks,” and Waszak “realized that Siren might never be profitable and could lead to deep financial losses for the company,” Fox 4 reported.
Despite this, Starbucks planned to roll out the dispensers to additional stores in early 2024 without fixes, the suit claims. On December 7, 2023, Waszak submitted an ethics complaint via the company’s helpline, alleging Venkatakrishnan was manipulating test results and that she feared retaliation. The complaint notes that Venkatakrishnan prompted the termination of executives who opposed him.
Four days later, on December 11, 2023, Venkatakrishnan decided to terminate Waszak following a complaint alleging that she criticized an employee’s performance, gave “unclear and vague” instructions, and was “raising her voice and talking over” the employee. Although a company ethics officer recommended a written warning, she was terminated.
The lawsuit further alleges sex discrimination, stating Starbucks “discriminated against Waszak based on her sex when it allegedly terminated her for inter-personal behaviors for which it has not discharged male employees.”
The lawsuit adds, “Upon information and belief, Starbucks has not terminated male employees who have been accused of engaging in similar or worse conduct under Starbucks’s policies.”
A press release from her attorneys at Frank Freed Subit & Thomas describes the firing as punishment for refusing to spread misinformation about the equipment’s risks.
Starbucks rejected the allegations.
“Safety is a top priority for Starbucks, and these claims are entirely without merit,” the company said in a statement, PEOPLE magazine reported.
The company said it looked forward to “presenting our evidence in court.”
