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Honestly a lot of the “low skill jobs” actually have a high skill threshold but we just arbitrarily decide to suppress them. Take somewhere like Starbucks. The
by MagicMoonlight 3y ago
Honestly a lot of the “low skill jobs” actually have a high skill threshold but we just arbitrarily decide to suppress them.
Take somewhere like Starbucks. They pay them minimum wage, churn em constantly so they’re never trained and make them work arbitrary shifts like 4 hour -> 2 hour unpaid break -> additional 4 hours.
Those staff end up “low skilled” but in reality someone who was treated fairly and respected would get very good at running the shop. They’d be able to turn out twice as many drinks and they would actually care about running costs and cleanliness. You wouldn’t get the constant underlying corruption by mistreatment where they can’t be bothered to check stock levels and throw away a grand of material a week on inefficiency.
- j7ake 3y agoThose skilled baristas are welcome to open up their own shop to compete though (which probably many do , successfully). Problem is VCs don’t fund coffee shops, otherwise Starbucks would be “disrupted” overnight.
- larrykubin 3y agoWas reading about Blank Street Coffee raising money recently to compete: https://www.fastcompany.com/90867251/blank-street-coffee-raises-20-million-from-general-catalyst-and-tiger-global https://www.fastcompany.com/90867251/blank-street-coffee-rai...
- xyzelement 3y agoThis feels like a tortured argument to me. Starbucks seems to do fine using existing strategic so seems like they are “right” about the appropriate level of skill and investment. Maybe someone else could have a strategy more like yours but it’s clearly not required. An airline on the flip side cannot “try” this with their pilots.
- dividefuel 3y agoMy view is that many jobs in major chains (e.g. Starbucks, fast food, retail, etc) become low skill because any of the real thinking skills are pulled into separate corporate offices with totally different roles. Decisions like how much to advertise, what to stock, sourcing inventory etc. are totally removed from the workers who run the store. This puts a ceiling on the skill level needed for the job. Sure you can operate the machines and make a good drink, but what good is that if you have minimal influence over the menu?