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Oh, the cynicism. I'm not exactly sure how this will go down for Starbucks per se, maybe it is PR-ish -- but to pull the camera back a bit, I think it would be

by jrm4 4y ago

Oh, the cynicism. I'm not exactly sure how this will go down for Starbucks per se, maybe it is PR-ish -- but to pull the camera back a bit, I think it would be tremendously helpful to normalize this idea everywhere, even if it may not always work out perfectly.

brvsft 4y ago
Yeah, I don't see the big deal. He's the new CEO and appears to be setting the tone, informing people of one of his first efforts. Stating it publicly seems uncontroversial for a business with publicly-traded stock. I also don't see it as some veiled attempt to act like he's trying to empathize with every aspect of the workers' lives. Not that a lot of people are suggesting this, but some are, and it seems like an incorrect impulse to assume that. As the new CEO, he wants to see the operating conditions of their stores, where they make most of their money. Seems like a decent idea to me, and is presumably different from what the previous CEO was doing.
comte7092 4y ago
I used to work in hospitality. One of the higher ups had worked his way up from the bottom of the totem pole. He would come and work the frontline and the employees were generally appreciative. One of his subordinates followed his lead - except he had no idea what he was doing. He was slow, got in people’s way, and did things no frontline employee would ever be allowed to do - just give stuff away constantly. At the end of the day, the CEO isn’t ever going to be under the same pressure or constraints as a normal employee. This is extremely likely to just end up being a vanity project.
jjulius 4y ago
>... I think it would be tremendously helpful to normalize this idea everywhere, even if it may not always work out perfectly. It's all dependent upon the intent of the CEO or person coming in and doing the work. Just as an anecdote, I have seen too many times where a superior comes in with the intent of doing the work to prove it can be done better, rather than to understand the realities of what employees are dealing with, and the results are negative. I frequently had a COO who would come to my warehouse, get on the front line with processing equipment (just as an aside, this was an ITAD company processing end-of-life IT equipment for data sanitization and remarketing, so it's tech-related), and take a cavalier, "SEE! I could go through ALL of that in X amount of minutes! I don't understand why people can't move fast enough blah, blah, blah." What he never realized is that he didn't do all the work. He'd capture only what he looked at in the system, never put anything away, and left a massive pile of work, and garbage, behind him that my team always had to clean up. He wouldn't take the time to do the rest of the work that the team has to do themselves day in and day out. He half-assed it and berated us at the end, and I could never get him to understand this. It's not that it "didn't always work out perfectly", it's that it made morale plummet every single time it happened. So yeah, I share your sentiment, but to a point - it's reliant upon the person diving in to keep an open mind and actually give a shit about it instead of just using it as a, "Look at me, I'm a man of the people!" opportunity.
gorbachev 4y ago
Given how unpleasant the relationship between the current CEO and their baristas have been [1], this can not start well, unless the new CEO takes some steps to make friends first. 1. under the current CEO Starbucks has racked up numerous labor violations for union busting

by jrm4 4y ago

brvsft 4y ago

Yeah, I don't see the big deal. He's the new CEO and appears to be setting the tone, informing people of one of his first efforts. Stating it publicly seems uncontroversial for a business with publicly-traded stock. I also don't see it as some veiled attempt to act like he's trying to empathize with every aspect of the workers' lives. Not that a lot of people are suggesting this, but some are, and it seems like an incorrect impulse to assume that. As the new CEO, he wants to see the operating conditions of their stores, where they make most of their money. Seems like a decent idea to me, and is presumably different from what the previous CEO was doing.

comte7092 4y ago

I used to work in hospitality. One of the higher ups had worked his way up from the bottom of the totem pole. He would come and work the frontline and the employees were generally appreciative. One of his subordinates followed his lead - except he had no idea what he was doing. He was slow, got in people’s way, and did things no frontline employee would ever be allowed to do - just give stuff away constantly. At the end of the day, the CEO isn’t ever going to be under the same pressure or constraints as a normal employee. This is extremely likely to just end up being a vanity project.

jjulius 4y ago

>... I think it would be tremendously helpful to normalize this idea everywhere, even if it may not always work out perfectly. It's all dependent upon the intent of the CEO or person coming in and doing the work. Just as an anecdote, I have seen too many times where a superior comes in with the intent of doing the work to prove it can be done better, rather than to understand the realities of what employees are dealing with, and the results are negative. I frequently had a COO who would come to my warehouse, get on the front line with processing equipment (just as an aside, this was an ITAD company processing end-of-life IT equipment for data sanitization and remarketing, so it's tech-related), and take a cavalier, "SEE! I could go through ALL of that in X amount of minutes! I don't understand why people can't move fast enough blah, blah, blah." What he never realized is that he didn't do all the work. He'd capture only what he looked at in the system, never put anything away, and left a massive pile of work, and garbage, behind him that my team always had to clean up. He wouldn't take the time to do the rest of the work that the team has to do themselves day in and day out. He half-assed it and berated us at the end, and I could never get him to understand this. It's not that it "didn't always work out perfectly", it's that it made morale plummet every single time it happened. So yeah, I share your sentiment, but to a point - it's reliant upon the person diving in to keep an open mind and actually give a shit about it instead of just using it as a, "Look at me, I'm a man of the people!" opportunity.

gorbachev 4y ago

Given how unpleasant the relationship between the current CEO and their baristas have been [1], this can not start well, unless the new CEO takes some steps to make friends first. 1. under the current CEO Starbucks has racked up numerous labor violations for union busting