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Definitely a PR move. But I figure it's about implying that the work isn't that hard and that the reasons for unionization are overblown. In other words, the work is easy so they don't need a raise. Some BS like that.
Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
141–150 of 353 posts
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#142All of the execs should have to do this. Creating a vested interest in better working conditions and a better customer experience is good for everybody.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#143Ron Johnson used to do this when he headed Apple retail. Would just go into a store totally undercover to the customers (obviously staff would recognize him) and work for a bit. Occasionally fairly major changes, both to the staff side and to the customer experience, were made based on his visits. I don't recall ever seeing a press announcement about it. Saying you're doing it to win brownie points sure makes it seem…
I wonder if he did the same thing at JC Penny when he was running it into the ground.
In his defense shoppers wanting stuff to appear to be on sale is pretty dumb.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#144Ron Johnson used to do this when he headed Apple retail. Would just go into a store totally undercover to the customers (obviously staff would recognize him) and work for a bit. Occasionally fairly major changes, both to the staff side and to the customer experience, were made based on his visits. I don't recall ever seeing a press announcement about it. Saying you're doing it to win brownie points sure makes it seem…
> Occasionally fairly major changes like what? I'm curious. There's nothing that shows the flaws of a process like running it yourself.
pricing stuff, metrics stuff, customer flow changes. Real day-to-day stuff.
One of the ones I personally witnessed related to the services that salespeople were expected to sell along with the computers. There was some kerfuffle going on about stores not meeting the expected "attach rates". He spent a whole day selling computers, and could not meet the expected attach rates himself. Couple weeks after that changes to pricing and program benefits were announced. I later learned that the need for changes had become a very high priority the same day as his visit.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
My first career was a chef. When I asked a friend of the family who owned a restaurant when I was teenager what steps I should take to become a chef, the advice he gave was "Get a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant because the most important thing you need to know is to respect your dishwasher because anytime everything goes wrong and you are in a jam, it is your dishwasher who will save you." Unknown to me the rest…
Reminds me of something that my father told me: "Always be nice to nurses and janitors. Nurses run hospitals. Janitors run buildings. Secretaries run offices."
It is basically the bottom half of the triangle that runs everything, anything else are mostly management.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was not expecting this Reddit level of comments on HN. Really hoping you are sarcastic.
Nope. The role of executives at large companies is to most effectively move resources away from labor and towards the owners of capital. They decide where to open the next branch to crush competitors who treat their workers and customers better; they negotiate deals with suppliers so those suppliers and their workers have fewer resources; they coordinate with other large competitors to hamper workers' attempts at imp…
That sounds like a lot of work to me. Whether it is good for society is an entirely separate question.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
The marketing department will not allow that to happen.
Any CEO doing this for the right reasons - I.e., to help ensure the product is good - would whip the marketing department right into shape and tell them to keep a lid on it.
In this case, the marketing department was not involved, at least publicly. CNBC is reporting this from an internal email they got their hands on.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Occasionally fairly major changes like what? I'm curious. There's nothing that shows the flaws of a process like running it yourself.
Probably better to just listen to the people that do it all day than to think you pop in as an outsider and have some special insight.
Possibly so, but the man was one of the best salespeople I've ever met. Ice-to-eskimos level, all while being completely genuine. He had a genuine interest in and deep understanding of the customer experience and was easily the equal of any full-time sales staff.
When it came to the areas he wasn't as comfortable in, say the genius bar, he still deeply understood the customer experience, but never tried to do the job if he wasn't able.
Boy, I'm coming off like a fanboy here... It was just a truly impressive and inspiring thing to see as one of the regular employees. If I worked at Starbucks it's what I'd want to see, not some propped-up press tour.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#149[flagged]
Yuuuuuup, this dude is clearly terrified of unionization.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#150I recall Amazon used to do something similar. Executives would sometimes take customer service shifts. The goal isn't PR or worker morale - most people see through stunts like that. The real goal is to help leaders better understand their product, its problems, and customer frustrations.
> Executives would sometimes take customer service shifts. This won't happen among most companies, but I'd love to see that become a common practice with at least some high-level developers. There's so many pain points in many customer service organizations that are easily solvable if a developer understood the frustration and waste with many customer service tasks. Nothing motivates more than having to do some annoy…
100% agree, especially if it is industry specific specialty software. Seen so many applications that have processes that only make sense to the people that developed it and are at best tolerated by the users that have no other choice than to use it.