Content warning: This story mentions sexual harassment and racism.
As Mackenzie Ridenour and their coworkers wiped down counters, washed dishes and chatted about New Year’s Eve plans during the closing shift on Dec. 29, a coworker approached Ridenour, the shift leader.
The coworker felt the store manager, Ridenour’s superior, treated her unfairly. He blamed her for minor mistakes at work — even ones that weren’t hers, Ridenour recalled. The coworker said the manager also complained behind her back that she never took closing shifts but didn’t assign her any, Ridenour said.
Ridenour helped their coworker file a complaint against the manager through Colectivo’s routine incident reporting system as the rest of the workers finished closing.
The workers were scheduled to finish by 7 p.m. but clocked out at 7:27 that night. A week later, Colectivo fired Ridenour after two years at the Evanston cafe.
“Because I helped someone with an incident report, I’m getting fired,” Ridenour said. “Not a write-up, not a tsk-tsk. Nothing. Immediately fired.”
According to an initial termination report obtained by The Daily, the reasons for Ridenour’s firing included time theft — spending work hours on non-work activities — falsification of complaints and violation of harassment complaint policy.
The incident was the latest of a string of issues workers said they’ve had with the current store manager since he joined the Evanston cafe in late 2023, as well as the cafe chain’s upper management. Colectivo operates 21 cafes, six of which are in the Chicago area.
Interviews with seven current and former employees and internal communications obtained by The Daily reveal that the chain has faced a host of mismanagement allegations, including “inappropriate” behavior from the Evanston store manager, a “toxic” workplace culture and a lack of support from upper management.
Colectivo did not answer The Daily’s questions about the workers’ allegations.
These allegations contrast with the chain’s public image — Colectivo leaders have called their company “a deeply progressive organization,” and its members have been represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union since 2021.
“(Colectivo) say what they need to say and do certain things on the public scale that look good, that look like they are very pro-workers’ rights,” Ridenour said. “They want to look like a collective for Colectivo, and it’s not at all how they actually run their stores.”
Tensions brew with management
After the current store manager started at the Evanston cafe in late 2023, complaints from workers soon followed. The manager scheduled shorter shifts for workers, former employees told The Daily. They also recalled his favoritism toward certain workers and other poor management decisions.
Diana, a former Colectivo employee who requested to go by a pseudonym in fear of retaliation from management, said the current manager immediately began cutting workers’ shifts and was inconsiderate of workers’ schedules and concerns.
Along with the reduced hours, Diana recalled a “very strict workplace” when the current manager took over. Several people were fired in the weeks that followed for seemingly minor infractions, Diana said.
“I felt like people were getting, I don’t know what’s the word for it, hazed? Almost like a hazing from the new manager,” Diana said. “He was just very strict, and he was very profit-centered.”
Ridenour also remembered similar incidents, which led them to suspect that employees who were vocal about workplace issues were being targeted by Colectivo’s upper management. After they brought several issues to the Colectivo union’s attention, a union representative told them to be careful and avoid putting their employment at risk.
IBEW Local 1220, the union that represents Colectivo workers, did not respond to emails and a phone call asking for comment.
Former employees also described an aura of favoritism permeating the shop, spilling into “inappropriate” workplace behaviors. They said the manager would act more personable and friendly to certain employees, inject himself into their conversations and inquire about their personal lives, which they called unprofessional.
Diana and another female former Colectivo employee, who spoke to The Daily on the condition of anonymity in fear of retaliation, said the manager would send them non-work related messages on the messaging platform for Colectivo employees. Several former employees also recalled the manager bringing gifts to some workers and inserting himself into personal conversations between workers.
“It was very strange to have him commenting on your personal life, especially from the standpoint of a manager that’s cutting your hours and that you’re not really close with or even liking very much,” Diana said.
The store manager did not respond to multiple emails asking for comment.
Issues with the current manager came to a head in spring of 2024. When a customer made a slew of sexualizing comments to the cashier, she brought the issue to the manager’s attention. He dismissed her complaint, saying the customer was a store regular, Ridenour recalled the coworker telling them.
After that customer returned in June and made similar comments to the same worker, the actions caught the attention of Ridenour. When Ridenour spoke to their coworker about the comments, she said she had already reported the issue to the store manager to no effect.
“He just walked away,” Ridenour recalled their coworker saying about the interaction with the manager. “He didn’t even give it a full conversation. He just dismissed it so quickly.”
That day, the cafe hosted representatives from Colectivo’s human resources department. Ridenour decided to report the issue to them directly. They recall the representatives’ initial response as helpful, agreeing to ban the customer and asking if Ridenour wanted to have the police involved.
Ridenour didn’t expect what happened next. The store manager later tried to walk back the decision to ban the customer, Ridenour said. An HR representative also said HR never authorized the banning, which led Ridenour to suspect that management was siding with the store manager rather than the workers.
Exhausted by what Ridenour said were repeated dismissal of workplace concerns, Ridenour decided to lodge a complaint against the store manager.
Grounds for complaints
In January 2024, Colectivo implemented a new anonymous incident reporting system for employees to report ethics violations. In an email to staff, Colectivo’s Vice President of People said the system aims to provide “a work environment where employees feel safe.”
On June 15, Ridenour submitted an incident report. It alleged the manager’s handling of the customer’s sexual harassment the previous day made workers at the store feel “unsafe,” “uncomfortable” and hesitant about reporting similar issues in the future.
The incident and how their coworkers reacted also led Ridenour to suspect that other workers had similar interactions with the manager. Conversations with their coworkers confirmed the suspicions, Ridenour said.
Of the 20-odd workers at the store, about five told Ridenour about specific negative experiences with the manager, Ridenour said. The incidents included issues with scheduling and time off, unprofessional behavior and the appearance of special treatment. Several others also mentioned that the manager’s conduct made them feel uncomfortable.
In a June meeting with Colectivo’s management, Ridenour brought up issues they heard from their coworkers, they said. For months after, issues with the store manager persisted, and Colectivo did little to address workers’ concerns, Ridenour said.
In a second incident report in August, Ridenour alleged a “hostile work environment,” where workers were afraid of speaking up in fear of being “ignored” or “bullied” by the manager.
The August report landed Ridenour in a meeting with the area manager and HR.
Since early 2024, area managers for Colectivo’s three districts — Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison — have been acting as their district’s de facto HR representatives. As a result, they have been weighing in on personnel-related issues alongside a downsized HR team, according to Ridenour.
The area managers, however, are supposed to “support” the store managers, according to Ridenour, which they said creates a conflict of interest.
At the meeting, management and HR “coached” Ridenour on respecting managerial decisions and “avoiding emotionally charged interpretations,” according to their termination report. During the meeting, Ridenour recalled being asked why they were so “angry” with the store manager and told that they reported issues at the cafe “too many times” and should simply “stop caring.”
“I basically started sobbing, just because I was like ‘Wow, they’re not going to do anything,’” Ridenour said. “They think I’m the problem, and none of the rest of it is an issue.”
Ridenour’s experience with the reporting system is not unique. Feeling uncomfortable because of the same manager’s language and behavior toward her, Diana also filed a complaint against him. But she said HR did little to address her concerns since the report didn’t include specific incidents for what she said was an “everyday occurrence.”
For some other workers, the lack of results from the incident reports and fear that the manager would identify the complainant was enough to dissuade them from filing a report in the first place, they said.
“We’re trying to go through the routes they want us to use, and every single time we’ve done this, they just go up to these women, and they’re just like ‘No, I don’t think you really understood what happened,’” Ridenour said. “‘You just didn’t get the joke.’”
Boiling over
After being told during the August meeting that they needed to stop filing incident reports on other employees’ behalf, Ridenour said they tried to step back and encourage coworkers to utilize the reporting system.
Two days after their coworker filed a report on Dec. 29 alleging the manager treated her unfairly, Ridenour said the area manager came to the store to meet with their coworker.
The area manager conducted the meeting on the shop floor, surrounded by guests, according to the coworker’s recounting of the conversation to Ridenour. He dismissed her concerns by saying that the manager doesn’t have a reputation of complaining and she must have misunderstood, Ridenour said.
The response to the complaint frustrated Ridenour, they said. They took the issue to the cafe’s assistant store manager, who contacted the area manager to follow up on the incident.
When Ridenour came to work on Jan. 6 and saw the area manager, they said they immediately knew what might be coming.
In the cafe’s basement — which doubles as the break room and storage — Ridenour found out they were being fired. In addition to other accusations, their initial termination report said Ridenour “coached” their coworker in filing the Dec. 29 incident report against the manager, “influencing its content.” A later termination report struck the time theft and harassment complaint policy violation charges from Ridenour’s record.
“I definitely … after seeing a 19-year-old cry on the floor two times, lost my resolve a bit to just stay out of it,” Ridenour said.
Stained track record
Issues with Colectivo’s management extend beyond the current Evanston location manager. Evanston workers alleged a previous manager, who now supervises a different Chicago area location, was inconsistent and acted in ways they said were “aggressive” and “racist.” Workers at the cafe’s Andersonville location said their location experienced a similar slew of management mishaps.
Macy, a former Colectivo employee who asked to go by a pseudonym due to fear of retaliation from Colectivo, began working at the Evanston cafe in February 2022. She and several other former Colectivo employees recalled the former manager having a “laid back” and “nonchalant” attitude toward management, causing workers to feel confused and unsupported.
Ridenour, who was also working at the cafe at the time, recalled instances where the manager, who is white, would speak and act differently toward a Black employee, using “slangs” and “cadences” he didn’t use with other workers.
“When he was speaking with her, he would use very different language, and it was obvious enough that her and the people around her were uncomfortable by it,” Ridenour said.
The former manager’s inappropriate conduct also extended toward customers, several former employees said. Macy said the former manager would resort to physical force when dealing with “difficult customers,” and she had witnessed him pinning a customer to the ground. Ridenour also recalled the former manager telling a group of non-white customers to leave the store as they were waiting for their orders.
Employees reported these incidents to Colectivo’s HR department, but it did little to address the circumstances, Ridenour said. They said the Black employee was abruptly promoted to shift leader as she was considering reporting the manager. Other employees’ complaints also went nowhere, Ridenour added.
The former store manager did not respond to emails asking for comment.
“I think (Colectivo’s management) like to say that they are there for employees and coworkers to come to. But ultimately, my experience with that in Evanston was that you voice your complaint or concerns, and it’s a total waste and nothing happens,” said the former Colectivo Evanston employee who spoke to The Daily anonymously. “I believe the same thing happened with the incidences of racism.”
Near the end of 2023, Colectivo transferred the former manager to another Chicago area location. 
But some employees viewed the transfer — rather than a more severe form of discipline — as consistent with Colectivo’s tendency to sweep management issues under the rug.
“The way the (area) manager made it sound was that, ‘Well, (the former manager)’s never going to be able to get better here because everyone just doesn’t like him,’” Ridenour said. “So they’re trying to say that we were the problem — the coworkers were the problem.”
At Colectivo’s Andersonville location, management problems were also simmering. The store manager’s management style was inconsistent and often mood-driven, a former employee at the location told The Daily on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation from management. The manager was also unwilling to address workers by their current name and pronouns and overall displayed a lack of compassion, he added.
When a coworker requested a family bereavement leave, the manager responded by asking the coworker to find cover for his shifts, the worker said.
“I basically messaged (the manager) like, ‘Hey, he’s not really able to be at the phone. He’s dealing with the obvious family stuff. I will take care of his shifts,’” the worker recalled. “And she kind of was just like, ‘Okay, great, sounds good.’”
He said the coworker eventually quit because of the episode.
The store manager for the Andersonville cafe did not respond to emails asking for comment.
Another Colectivo employee, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation from management, said the former employee’s experience was not uncommon.
But the worker said they saw many of the issues at their cafe as coming from Colectivo’s upper management rather than the store manager.
In one incident in October 2024, the worker said the cafe was not allowed to close when its espresso machine broke. She said upper management told the store manager to keep the cafe open despite it not being able to serve many drinks on the menu, which she said made the workers feel unheard and unsupported by management.
The incident reflects a larger trend at the cafe chain, the worker said. They added that executives are becoming increasingly focused on pursuing expansions and profits, which has come at workers’ expense in the form of unrealistic expectations and benefit cuts.
Bitter negotiations
In 2021, Colectivo workers made headlines for unionizing. About 400 workers joined IBEW. The union, however, formed only after a contentious battle between workers and Colectivo management. Along with the ensuing contract negotiation, it reflects the disconnect between the company’s progressive image and anti-worker behaviors, Colectivo workers told The Daily.
After workers began organizing in the summer of 2020, Colectivo’s management responded by hiring the Labor Relations Institute, an Oklahoma-based consultancy whose website offers to help employers “win a union election” and “prevent future unionization efforts,” according to Urban Milwaukee. LRI did not respond to an email asking for comment.
Management also sent emails to Colectivo employees to disapprove of the unionizing effort. In one letter from August 2020, then-CEO Dan Hurdle wrote that he and the company’s three founders “fear that a union would have a profoundly negative impact on our company Culture.”
In another email from early 2021, management discredited the union organizers by suggesting the majority of them, including one who said she was laid off due to her organizing efforts, were no longer with the company, the organizer told Defector.
Colectivo protested to the National Labor Relations Board to exclude several ballots in a March 2021 unionization vote, while the organizers pushed to have them opened and counted. In August, the NLRB ruled for union organizers and allowed Colectivo employees to join the IBEW union later that month.
Following the results, Colectivo leaders said in a statement that they were “disappointed” by the results but would bargain with the union “in good faith.” Zacary Heren, a former Colectivo employee who served on the union contract bargaining team, said that was not his experience.
“(Colectivo’s management) fought tooth and nail to have (the union vote) overturned,” Heren said. “They appealed it so many times that the NLRB forced them to stop appealing it … Even with the contract, they fought tooth and nail at every single line.”
The Colectivo union bargaining team, consisting of six Colectivo workers and several representatives from the IBEW union, began contract negotiations with Colectivo in June 2022, Heren said.
He recalled protracted meetings with Colectivo’s bargaining team that lasted about a year, as “disagreements were everywhere,” and Colectivo’s negotiators would not budge on seemingly minor items.
One particular point of contention, Heren said, was a clause to prevent discrimination from Colectivo and the union based on protected classes, including race and sexual orientation. Colectivo initially did not want to include specific classes, he said, and only relented after the union workers found similar language in the company’s employee handbook.
“It was just the most ridiculous back-and-forth,” Heren said. “It almost felt like they were trying to be as frustrating as possible.”
Ridenour, who joined Colectivo in December 2022, recalled HR representatives boasting about the union and ongoing contract negotiation when they were onboarding for the job.
But once they began working at the store, they were told not to discuss the union at work.
“It was like a radical thing when we wore buttons that said ‘vote yes’ on the union contract. It was a radical thing that we talked about the union at work,” Ridenour said. “It was very much like, ‘No, we just tell people that we have a union, and we’re proud of unions. Don’t bring that to work.’”
A fresh start
After two years at Colectivo’s Andersonville location, Heren said he ran into a string of scheduling issues, a “last straw” that made him leave the cafe in September 2023.
His experience working at the cafe and on the union contract negotiation left him disillusioned with the chain’s progressive image, he said.
“They love to present as this progressive company that sells pride merch with the rainbow on it every Pride Month,” Heren said. “But every June, I love to talk about how they didn’t want to explicitly list sexual orientation as a protected class in their union contract.”
Macy left Colectivo after almost one year. The issues with the now-former manager at the Evanston cafe persisted after workers raised concerns to upper management, which contributed to her decision to quit, she said.
Although Ridenour had been contemplating leaving Colectivo, their sudden termination still came as a shock to them and their coworkers, they said. 
“Instead of having two weeks to say bye to all of these people, I had two minutes, and it was just whoever was working there,” Ridenour said.
Still, the outpouring of support from their coworkers left Ridenour with a mixed feeling of relief, nervousness and vindication.
“This has all been really hard and tiring — standing up for them and fighting for them,” Ridenour said, choking up. “That’s exhausting. So, it was really nice hearing all these people just being like, ‘Thank you for teaching me to stand up for myself and believing in me.’ I felt a little less scared about leaving them.”
Ridenour initially applied for a job at Colectivo because of its appeal as a “pro-worker” and “ethical” company, they said.
With Colectivo in the rearview, they said they are moving on from working at large cafe chains, away from the corporate “baloney” they have been dealing with for the past two years.
“I’m definitely looking forward to working at an actual small business,” Ridenour said. “Not one that just paints itself as one.”
Email: caseyhe2026@u.northwestern.edu
Twitter: @caseeey_he
Email: shreyasrinivasan2026@u.northwestern.edu
Twitter: @shreyasrin
