True. I double checked with my manager and while she doesn’t have access to any of the records she has been told by her bosses that our area and district fares quite highly in comparison to the rest of the country. That’s pretty bad. Also the vast majority of Starbucks are corporate owned, so the corporation plays a much larger hand in how stores are managed. From what I can tell this is pretty bad. Most managers end up becoming glorified rule pushers and any change against the standardized rules is seen as bad. I’ve been 50/50 on it. Some managers I know of are way too arrogant and do much worse than following the standard rules. However, for certain issues I’ve seen managers (particularly my manager) who will do a small change from a standard rule that is actually helping and she ends up feeling guilty later when the district manager will tell her to stop doing it because it is not standard procedure. I think a lot of corporations are looking for glorified rule pushers, instead of people who manage a business.
I have a whole slew of things I could share on the bad management of Starbucks however I feel like that would go off-topic of policing big companies. I think whats been bothering me is the how low the standard is in the actual world to be considered a good manager.
Edit: I was wrong about most Starbucks being corporate owned. I’m fairly sure most stand-alone Starbucks are, but then I forgot how many licensed locations their truly are.
The company opened 816 net new stores in Q4, ending the period with 38,038 stores: 52% company-operated and 48% licensed. (source)