Subject: Brewing Change Together: A message from the heart of your dear CEO
Dear Starbucks Partners (and soon to be “former partners” — semantics, really),
I hope this message finds you well, or at least six blonde shots deep to even care about what is happening. As you may have heard, we will be closing a select number of stores and parting ways with approximately 900 partners across Canada and the United States.
I would like to personally reassure all of you that this decision was made with deep compassion, rigorous analytics, and an Excel spreadsheet that analyzed your stations’ key performance indicators. Such indicators definitely do not weigh unionized stores any differently! This is just for the benefit of everyone. Really, we are doing this for you, our valued partners. Trust me!
To those affected by these changes, we want to say: thank you. Thank you for not calling in sick when you actually were, and thank you for showing up with your own shovel when our stores were knee-deep in snow. Your tireless service is rewarded with freedom — from work.
We will be offering a severance package consisting of an array of absolutely necessary heartfelt thoughts, a reusable cup to promote our efforts of sustainability, and one free drink voucher for your last working shift (which is already offered to all of our partners as a perk).
For those who remain, congratulations! You have been promoted from “partner” to “leftover.” Included in your new benefits are added shoulder tension from the newly implemented mandatory speed checks. The new system of work monitors will proceed as follows: your floor leader will ensure you are caught up with the four streams of orders (drive-thru, cafe, mobile, and delivery orders) by asking you if you are preparing the drinks — while standing over your shoulder. If you find yourself concerned over who is monitoring their monitoring, do not fret. Our executive team pulled an all-nighter to solve this dilemma. The solution is that store managers will be standing over their shoulder, while floor leaders will be standing over yours. Senior managers will be standing over the shoulders of store managers, while an AI-generated hologram of me will be watching over their shoulders.
I can further anticipate your concern regarding the efficiency of this monitoring system. Do not worry, my team has gone on a month-long retreat to Las Vegas to rectify this problem. The solution is as follows: we will have our newly installed AI inventory system perform the job that humans have been doing since forever. Does the AI always count correctly? Um, not really. But who cares? We are cool. We are hip. And we are hip–hopping all over the place. Just do not ask why we are doing this. Focus on the progress we are making by relying on AI. And do not fret, when that system makes errors, we will find a human to blame!
As a last note — I would like to repeat — this has nothing to do with unionization!
Warm regards (as warm as a forgotten mobile ordered Venti Americano),
Brian Niccol, CEO of Starbucks Inc.
