Back in 2006, when I was researching ways to begin writing this blog, I came across several sites I still visit to this day. One of them is called STARBUCKSGOSSIP.COM, and it’s a website hosted by a former barista who posts relevant news flashes along with the comments of Starbucks partners and customers. With the subheading ‘Monitoring America’s Favorite Drug Dealer’, it’s not sanctioned or controlled by the corporation, and is essentially a sounding board for those who work for or patronize the coffee giant, and walk away with either a paycheck or a venti latte and something to say.
The substance of the readers’ comments has changed over the past two years in accordance with the company’s much-publicized decline in sales and brand loyalty. Where partners’ remarks (the company tags its employees partners) posted in earlier days had a general upbeat, appreciative, support-the-team ring to them, this last year’s comments have hovered somewhere between disillusion and outright vitriol. As the wind blows, so do the trees.
There is never a single reason formerly darling companies fall out of favor, but common causes are missteps in management, changes in the economy, new competition, and that ever-fickle entity known as the public. In my work history, I have witnessed both sides of this scenario.
My father was an entrepreneur who founded a company in the 1970’s that succeeded in beginning an industry where none had existed before. But 25 years later, advances in technology outdated his product. He considered his employees family and he struggled to find new avenues for his company to survive without layoffs of longtime staff. He managed to keep his company afloat, but his search for a new vision was not fulfilled before his death.
I also worked several years for a niche company that should have gone on forever had the owners not ignored market demands while bleeding its resources dry. I remember the sick feeling in my stomach as I peeled a fax off the main office fax machine pertaining to the owner’s renovation of his multi-million dollar mansion. It was a bill for master bathroom Italian marble that exceeded my yearly salary. This while the company missed shipping windows resulting in enormous vendor fines. I jumped ship before the death knell sounded.
Companies fall on hard times and so do their workers. That’s the tarnish on the brass ring of capitalism. Some failing businesses have owners who work late into the night at great personal sacrifice, and some have bosses who leave early to play golf. So I continue to read the Starbucks Gossip comments with interest in both management and staff; the upstairs and downstairs.
Recently, the site has exploded with news of a stolen corporate laptop containing the personal data for 97,000 partners. The company is taking measures to help those affected guard against identity theft. But the rumblings of disgruntled partners who are watching the empire around them flounder are even louder for having bubbled beneath the surface for so long.
Amid all the lashing out, a customer posted a comment saying that if things are so miserable, maybe the baristas should find another position requiring minimal training for maximum hourly wage and benefits somewhere else, suggesting that in a country where a working-class kid from the Brooklyn projects can become a billionaire selling coffee, there must be a better future for them than whining on a website.
When morale sinks, though, every landscape looks bleak. In a comment further along was a one-line statement from a partner responding to the corporate clumsiness that could result in the possibe theft of his identity. He sounded distinctly doubtful. “Who would want to be me?” he asked.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos depict The Outer Edge
foggy in the penthouse
unlikely
a little privacy, please
after the show