Does he have a degrees in gender studies?
Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
201–210 of 353 posts
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
People need performance and narrative. Spending one day a month so you can say to fellow executives "I actually went and touched the problem, we need to fix it" and so employees can say to each other "he actually came and touched the problem, he must be working on fixing it" has real value. Actually learning about the problem and coming up with a solution is best done by listening to the people like you said, but the…
You're describing an incredibly toxic environment. Executives blowing each other off, employees not trusting executives, executives not considering a problem real until they've seen it themselves. All of this is a crutch in place of actual trust. Yes, I realize this toxic environment is present in 95% of all companies in the U.S. That makes it worse, not better.
I don't know if toxic is the word for it. No human has infinite capacity for logic or empathy.
Being conscientious takes effort almost by definition. All of us need reminders to put that effort in.
That's why people talk about "getting a seat at the table." If you are physically in a room with someone and they hear your voice and see your face you become more real to them.
We face a choice of either denying the messy parts of human nature (and seeing how that goes) or adapting our processes to account for them.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#203Earlier 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…
Can you elaborate a bit on how the dishwasher role gets the restaurant out of jams?
A line cook can't stop what they are doing for even 5 minutes during a 4 hour period of time. There might be a lull for 15 minutes between seatings to run to the bathroom, but sometimes not. It is brutal work. Because of the thin margins in restaurants, they tend to be under staffed. When something needs to be fixed during service, maybe a plumbing problem, the ice machine broke, or a purveyor didn't deliver the correct items so someone needs to run to the supermarket, it is usually the dishwasher who fixes the problem. The pay is awful for a dishwasher. Likely, especially in California, the dishwasher in the restaurant you are eating at isn't legally allowed to be in the United States. Other times, the dishwasher will have a criminal record and can't find other work. Another dishwasher in Portland had his entire face tattooed with body modifications. They are in that position for a reason. The point is paying the dishwasher in respect if not higher wages is important to the survival of a restaurant. A chef depends on this person who is in the lowest social position to have his or her back.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#204I 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.
I think a week in warehouse might do good for them. Or as delivery driving...
Jeff Wilke (former ceo of amazon retail) used to do that during Q4 peak. It was also pretty common for engineering teams to signup to do a day in the FC so they could see what it was like.
Bezos would do one day a year operating the customer service lines.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#205Earlier 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. 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…
1) Just thinking out loud here, but some games have the most complex and information dense user interfaces you'll ever see. And sometimes they solve this problem by introducing new features in sort of a well-designed, first-class tutorial over the course of a few missions in a single-player campaign. Maybe Apps can try the same approach?
2) I can't help but think that many UI problems would be solved by Apps replacing meaningless icons with actual text labels. I can't remember what half the random symbols on software I use daily for hours means. If something is a sharing icon or a saving icon, I have no clue half the time. But simply having text labels on buttons and links everywhere would make all software a lot more explorable and understandable.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
First line: Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan told employees Thursday that he’ll work a half day every month at one of the coffee giant’s locations. Something tells me it'll be something like 1-5pm; not the 7am rush.
>Something tells me it'll be something like 1-5pm; not the 7am rush. 11am-6pm seem to be peak hours for cafes near me - and google data confirms this. Why would 7am be peak time there?
I believe Google’s data would reflect number of people hanging out inside more than number of customers passing through, since a customer that stays 10x as long has 10x the impact on average number of people inside the building. 11-6 sounds right for times the seating area is most full, but I’d imagine the biggest rush of in-and-out customers is just before work hours. Fortunately, there’s a Starbucks near me that I happen to know has had its lobby closed for a year or two due to a high crime rate, and Google’s data for it does indeed show a strong peak from 7 to 10.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've mixed feelings. Many probably wouldn't want the semi-dead weight of big executive screwing up the morning rush.
I haven't worked retail, I know its unpleasant but is there really that much skill to it?
I have never worked as a barista, but I have worked as a line cook. It's not hard to cook one thing. It takes some time and practice to cook many things at once at a speed that keeps up with a good lunch rush. You can also easily compound the situation by trying to go too fast anyway, resulting in orders being sent back.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
It should be a shift swap. He works as a barista for barista pay and the person he takes the shift from should be CEO for a day for CEO pay. Business Insider says[1] the new CEO's compensation is something like $28 million, so the barista should get around $115k for the day's work. Maybe then both parties will come to realize whether or not the 3 orders of magnitude difference in pay is warranted. [1]: https://www.bu…
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I'm saying if the CEO wants to work as a barista then they should find a barista that wants to see what the CEO job is like and swap jobs and pay for a day. I doubt either party will be particularly good at the other person's job, but that's not really the point of the exercise. Both would get a glimpse of the other person's working life.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#209The only way things like this really work is by not giving any heads up to the store or the store management. Otherwise store management spends a huge amount of time trying to tidy up before “corporate” comes by. At least that was my experience when things like this happened at the fruit stand.
If he and executive come in on a regular basis at the same stores, it won't be a such a big deal after a while. They'll get to know the staff at the store, they'll know the routine. Like if Tom Cruise was your neighbour, it'll just be "Hi Tom".
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#210Earlier 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.
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…
There are a whole class of problems that fall into the "seems like a good idea/measure at some management level, based on the data and worldview they have, but fail in reality, due to some detail at the ground level" category.
Or, consequences of lossy compression as information gets summarized before being transmitted up the management ladder.
And it isn't always a bad management call! Sometimes they're making the right call on the data they have, but they're missing critical data.
E.g. Not realizing that 1/5 a store needs to be used for ad hoc inventory because too much product was flooded during holidays, ergo it cannibalizes display space, ergo the sales rates of various SKUs are all out of whack (to come up with a contrived example)