I’ll Take a Cup of Good News With My Latte, Please
One recent afternoon, I stopped by Starbucks for a latte. In days gone by, this was something I did maybe twice a day. Now, maybe two or three times a month.
As I waited for my drink, I noticed that two of the four people behind the counter were what once was the barista stereotype: early 20s, hipster type guys. The other two? Women in their early 40s who you could tell probably not so long ago held positions that had much more responsibility than steaming milk.
“How are you doing after making drinks for eight hours straight?” one of the young guys asked one of the women.
“Oh, fine,” she replied. “The activity makes the day go by fast.”
“Y’know, today, working the register was like working the barista counter. We’ve been so busy non stop,” he said.
“Yes, and that’s what we want,” she said. “It needs to stay that way, because we want to stay open.”
It was a sobering exchange, and yet another reminder that these days everyone just wants to keep working. That very morning, a neighbor made a “back to the salt mines” joke as he got into his car.
At least, I reminded him, we still have salt mines to go to every day.
In the marketing sector, everyone has been hit. If you’re sick of reading about yet more layoffs, losses and cutbacks, imagine how sick we are of writing about them.
In that spirit, I pose this question to our readers: What is going right at your place of business these days? Any victories you’d like to share? And what are you doing to keep morale up among your staff in these troubled times?
