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Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

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Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#181

Post by yuters »

bandofthehawk wrote: post #129
yuters wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw this happen too. Lots of people doing overtime to tidy up the store for when the regional manager came by. I had my hand in a cast at the time in a work related incident, so I only did some menial tasks. The regional manager focused on me for a time, and was extremely frustrated with how slow I was. He proceeded to show me how much quicker he could do those menial tasks with just one hand. It was weird. I feel…

Was his demonstration helpful? Or do you mean that he was only able to do the tasks faster because he was rushing them, or that fast completion of these tasks was not really meaningful to the overall performance of the store?

No there was no useful tips or anything new to his demonstration, only speed. If the completion of these tasks was meaningful to the performance of the store, it was only in his opinion. The store was already in the best shape it had ever been because of our hard work between the announcement and the day of his visit.

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#182

Post by screwturner68 »

rchowe wrote: post #78
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC McDonalds still does this for some subset of its corporate workforce.

Apparently this is why some of the McDonalds restaurants in the Oak Brook / Chicago area are very good (or at least perfectly to spec)... they are owned by corporate and used for executive training.

That is the most expensive McDonalds I've ever been too.

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#183

Post by missedthecue »

logicalmonster wrote: post #77
whack wrote: post #13

I 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…

Doordash devs went ballistic when they were asked to do a few PAID deliveries every month.

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#184

Post by chankstein38 »

Ah cool. One day a month where everyone has to be on their best behavior and everything has to work perfectly to impress the CEO who will, inevitably, not gain anything from the experience except the ability to pass judgement on employees that have to deal with the struggles of this job every day for like 1/100th of his pay.

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#185

Post by screwturner68 »

kotaKat wrote: post #73
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC McDonalds still does this for some subset of its corporate workforce.

And depending on the franchise owner, could also be the franchise. My first McJob was at an owner-operated McDonalds where the owner would roll in at lunch on a Saturday in his BMW Z4, see the lunch rush, wash his hands, throw on some gloves, and call out to turn on the other side of the grill for assembly and start packing orders himself on that side to help out the workload. Gained a lot of respect as an impression…

I don't know if it's still the case but you used to have to go to Hamburger U before you could own a McD's so you knew how to do the job. I actually see it all the time and you can always tell who the owner is, instead of some really uninterested 17 year old you get a middle aged man in a pressed (insert fast food name) polo who is super happy to take your order.

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#186

Post by logicalmonster »

JohnFen wrote: post #160
sebzim4500 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The UX people were redesigning workflow to be “easier” and less information dense and the experienced people (who worked mostly on commissions mind you) where very pissed and wanted their hot keys and their at a glance information. That doesn't necessarily mean that the UX people were wrong though. Even if their changes made the experienced people slightly slower, it could be worth it if it significantly sped up onb…

You only onboard someone once. In theory, that person will have to be using the system every day for years. Why optimize for the one-time thing at the expense of the everyday use?

I suppose that the Devil's Advocate sort of counterargument is that for many startups or businesses on the bubble of survival, their most important task is for paying customers to understand the basics of their software and get hooked with a paid subscription quickly. From that perspective, it's ok if customers don't absolutely LOVE the software in a year or two, as long as they like it just enough to be paying today.

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#187

Post by toyg »

logicalmonster wrote: post #136
wincy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked for a large logistics company we’d have a few days a year where we’d go downstairs and shadow someone using our software. It was very informative. The UX people were redesigning workflow to be “easier” and less information dense and the experienced people (who worked mostly on commissions mind you) where very pissed and wanted their hot keys and their at a glance information. It was very eye opening.

> The UX people were redesigning workflow to be “easier” and less information dense and the experienced people (who worked mostly on commissions mind you) where very pissed and wanted their hot keys and their at a glance information. It was very eye opening. Just curious. Many applications have some kind of "Settings" or "Preferences" section with some kind of App UI customization being possible. Often it's just a se…

> But are there Apps out there where you can pick between say "Beginner and Expert" modes

Yes, plenty. They've never been particularly popular, because they tend to impose an "all or nothing" switch to the user: by going Expert, you're suddenly overwhelmed by loads of options you don't know and don't understand. People mostly prefer a gentler path, where you become familiar with one feature at a time when you need it particularly badly.

This, in theory, would suggest that the best approach is to morph the interface over time, making those advanced-but-useful features easier to access once discovered. But most people also hate interfaces that change, so in practice that approach doesn't work well. Maybe it will all be solved by a ML engine that looks at what you do every day and automatically serves you the features it thinks you'll want; but Microsoft kinda tried that in a bunch of places and I don't think it was particularly successful.

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#188

Post by pembrook »

ksec wrote: post #140
daedalus_j wrote: post #109

Ron 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…

Why is why the user experience of Apple Retail has gone downhill after he left and Steve Jobs passed away. From CEO of Dixon, to CEO of Burberry and finally Apple veteran, Deirdre O'Brien. The improvement she made was like many of the recent Mac changes, reverting back to old design.

Ahrendts (of Burberry) was such a weird choice, unless Apple's goal at the time was to maximize in-person watch band sales.

Seems Tim eventually realized selling luxury trench coats isn't very similar to premium computer hardware/software. Meanwhile investors had to pay nearly $200 Million in comp for the privilege of her leading this "town square" fantasy (not sure I'd ever consider a store in the mall a community fixture) while ignoring the internet exists.

Would have rather put ChatGPT in charge of the stores and spent that $200M on improving the software that a Billion Apple users spend time with every day.

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#189

Post by favaq »

daedalus_j wrote: post #109

Ron 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…

>obviously staff would recognize him

I think it's probable that they wouldn't.

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#190

Post by flappyeagle »

daedalus_j wrote: post #148
stcroixx wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Reminds me of seeing the chairman of a major fashion label do the same thing - dude was so slick, saw him sell the hell out of the place to 3 women before I left.
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