I work in the belly of the beast, you might say, just a pre-cancerous polyp in the enormous digestive tract of the Starbuck's Imperial Beast. I take the cash, bundle it up, and send it on to Seattle. I also clean the toilets four nights a week. Yep, it ain't glamorous work, but I must say it gives me time to think. A lot. about how the world works. And how this corporation, Starbucks, is gradually (and not-so-gradually) adopting a lot of the employment practices of other major fast-food corporations. This is because the monthly bottom line is more important than the annual, and the weekly report is more important than the monthly. A lack of long-term planning, if you will. They are a billion dollar company, but the pay is still shit and the benefits are okay but are expensive.
I think they USED to have a better handle on the long-term growth plan they had, and how developing employees is ESSENTIAL to growing a company from nothing to 20,000 stores in 30 years. You can't rely on external hires - you NEED employees to STAY and DEVELOP and remain LOYAL to the company - but there are very sharp upper management types that can slice big chunks for themselves by keeping pay low.
So this results in high turnover. Starbuck's is a house of cards - relying on cheap transitory labor to supply needs that can only be met by a highly trained and motivated labor force. And that got me thinking about my dub experience. Any religion that boasts of growth as being its sign of Divine approval, or a company that treats monthly reports as it's income projection - in logical forms it SHOULD help its members stay, grow, and develop and form careers within its bowels, if you will. But we all KNOW that the turnover rate within dubbland is so high as to be laughable. It makes McDonald's look like a long-term lifestyle choice.
Maybe the upper management types think "We are in a period of turnover" as old "employees" get tired of cashing in on Paradise. They are relying on transitory religious labor to meet the needs of an organization whose stated goal is to "fill the earth".
Now the question is: Can it sustain itself? I think that Starbucks is going to have some big financial problems in the future - as it tosses money down the the labor toilet, hiring people who can't do the job and quit after a month as the good people leave and find jobs that DON'T screw them over daily.
More similarities between Starbucks and the WT's labor policies:
1.) The pay is shit. WT's pay is non-existent.
2.) High turnover.
3.) Mounting demands from upper management.
4.) Conflicting strategies from on high to boost sales, etc.
5.) Use of propaganda to create illusion of gainful employment.
6.) Attachment to outmoded strategies. Door-to-door (WT) and lack of Internet sales (sbux).
7.) Rising attrition, falling re-enlistment.
8.) No maintenance, resulting in a deferred repair bill (sbux) and lack of adapting doctrines on blood and the U.N. (WT) could be comparable in the sense that there will be hell to pay someday.
9.) Firing / dfing is a symptom of a local power trip, rather than adherence to actual standards of morality or ethics.
Am I on the right track here? Or just hung over from the Steelers stopping the Pats winning streak COLD last night?
CZAR