Sometimes being ahead of the game is not a good thing. What Starbucks is trying to do here is exactly what my manager and I were lobbying for when we worked at the Broadway store on Capitol Hill 7 years ago. In a neighborhood a cookie-cutter store will never survive and a store claiming a “third place” atmosphere can’t sport automated espresso machines and McDonalds atmostphere. But alas, the company “knew better” and booted the manager out of her position cause she was making her voice heard and didn’t show ambiguity. That’s what Starbucks called it.
Kirsten, I am sorry that your vision was ahead of your time and that we worked for a company with middle managment that was more interested in “gold standard check-lists” than feeling and shaping the pulse of the neighborhood and its customers.
Too little too late!