281–290 of 353 posts
Ah yes, the CEO is slumming it. I would be more impressed if he accepted cafe pay for one month instead.
The CEO is probably independently wealthy, so shutting off his pay for one month does nothing. I think this is a great opportunity to get to know what it's like to work at this level, the type of people, etc. If this person has a heart, it should enable good changes in the company based on bottom-up feedback.
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…
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.
I have a dumb question related to this. The new Starbucks CEO is Laxman Narasimhan. Google says he's worth about $20m. The previous Starbucks CEO was Howard Schultz. He's worth about $3.7b Can somebody who is worth between $20m and $3.7b really just... hang out broad daylight behind a counter at a Starbucks from a security perspective? Obviously I get the gap between $20m (he's just starting out, I'm sure his net wor…
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.
I would believe that's the case if Narasimhan were working a full shift, but he's only working half a shift once a month. At that point why bother? What are you going to learn in 4 hours a month where all the employees are on their best behavior and the store is made immaculate prior to your arrival?
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…
WestJet, Canada's second largest airline, used to do this a lot. I remember handing my coffee cup and trash to Clive Beddoe, one of the original founders, with a double take. They were largely employee-owned and it showed. Then they went public, grew on the backs of shareholders and were taken private again by PE. Now they're worse than Air Canada, the former poster child for terrible airlines. When a company is youn…
After a lot of bouncing around the US it's a treat to fly. I feel like hating on them is something of a Canadian pastime.
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In the bay area, where "oh god, corporate is in the building" is a way of life and common thing you bet they would. Outside the bay area, eh, 50/50, you're right.
100% chance that the regional corporate staff gets notice this is happening and goes on a panicked 48-hour cleanup drill to make sure the store is spotless for the incoming exec and make sure the grumpier members of staff are given the weekend off.
In the bay area though, that was just Thursday. No warning, could and did happen any time.
The difference was incredibly stark. I wonder if that's true for Starbucks in Seattle.
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I like your last paragraph a lot, one reason in my experience as to why a problem didn't get reported/fixed is that employees are unfortunately rarely rewarded for fixing processes in large structures (or just once, when the fix itself improves the productivity in a lasting manner). So a real blocker in my opinion is that there is no clear incentive structure to even think or care about a fix in the first place. The…
There can also be a lot of what I'll call "political inertia" involved. In my experience, the existing process has a way of appearing invisible such that any change will feel like more work, even when it isn't. It's hard to improve things when your coworkers perceive you as trying to give them more work.
The lack of compensation always baffled me. If an employee comes up with a change that saves the company $x, why don't they get bonused Make it subject to approval or somesuch, to prevent gaming and weed out edge cases, but every employee should be incentivized to find a way to do their job better.
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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?
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There can also be a lot of what I'll call "political inertia" involved. In my experience, the existing process has a way of appearing invisible such that any change will feel like more work, even when it isn't. It's hard to improve things when your coworkers perceive you as trying to give them more work.
Agreed. The ideal scheme would be anonymous reporting + objective third party prioritization + financial compensation if benefits realized. The lack of compensation always baffled me. If an employee comes up with a change that saves the company $x, why don't they get bonused Make it subject to approval or somesuch, to prevent gaming and weed out edge cases, but every employee should be incentivized to find a way to d…
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>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'm not necessarily endorsing this perspective, and it depends on the specifics, but there are cases where this makes business sense. If you take a task that requires an expensive expert and make it something that an unskilled worker can do then you you can lower overall labor costs even if each user is less efficient in the new system.