Starbucks Corp. Baristas has new job requirements.
In addition to remembering to make a latte without foam, in addition to making your cortado with oat milk, they need to write a little mission in your cup. This is an order that comes directly from CEO Brian Nicole, who says that handwritten notes will feed “moments of connection.” He promotes part of a strategy to bring more customers into the store, turning the upset coffee giant around.
In a note he detailed his plans in January, he had some ideas for people who didn’t know what to say. They were able to scribbles assertions (“You are amazing”), take wishes often (“Get the day”), write the names of customers, draw smiles.
The underlying message for employees is: It’s not enough to just manufacture products for customers. They also need to manufacture emotions. And if Niccol is not motivated by the workers to do so organically, he declares it by dict.
It’s not just Starbucks. Most companies aren’t as advanced as Japanese supermarket chains, which use AI systems to evaluate and standardize employee smiles, but the trend is clear. Those who end their remote work policy want to put their butt back into their seats. At Alphabet Inc., returning Google reminded us that Office Time should be “not only productive, but also fun.” Tiffany & Co. In, executives requested that staff be engaged by posting “Tiffany Joy,” an internal app designed to boost morale. It’s no wonder employees laugh at the new nickname: forced joy in the app.
It can be as easy as the fame of the era we are in. In an age of forced pleasure, employers need positivity and passion, as workers don’t produce much on their own. In fact, they don’t like their work at all. A recent Gallup poll found employee involvement at its lowest level in 10 years. Starting from 47% in 2020, only 39% feel that someone cares about them as a person in their company.
As Gallup called it, “Big Separation” left the ranks and files looking for new jobs at the best rate since 2015. Now, in power in the hands of their employers, there are fewer bosses, more persuasive, negotiable, more demanding. It has been translated into executives who are thinking of sending notes claiming more engagement, asserting solutions to the liberated workforce.
To be fair, part of the job has always been performance. Employees, especially those in the service sector, need to project certain emotions, even if they are really feeling it. This is something sociologist Early Hockchild famously created as emotional labor – “When you think you’re “loving your work,” she writes in her 1983 book, “The Managed Heart.” You might recognize that from the cult-famous “Flair of Flair” scene in 1999 film office space. Jennifer Aniston’s character has been criticized for not contributing to the “fun” atmosphere at a restaurant where she works because she doesn’t wear enough goofy pins in her uniform. Or more recently, Apple TV’s retirement has forced the Macrodata refinery team to awkwardly stretch the grooves during “Music Dance Experience.” The most basic, emotional labor is its classic classic.
When Hochschild’s book came out about 40 years ago, she estimated that about a third of all jobs needed “substantial demands for emotional labor.” But by 2013, she estimated it had grown in about half. Today it is probably even higher. “When “hard skills” are passed on to robots, emotional labor is an otherwise digitalized AI dominance, human skills in an impersonal environment,” wrote Rose Hackman, author of emotional labor: How to assert the invisible work and our power that shape our lives.
It appears that Nicole is piloting Starbucks at such a fork. That week, the company said it would take effect, cutting jobs for more than 1,000 companies and outsource some of its technology work. You cannot sign up for a connection with a customer.
But mandatory engagement doesn’t work particularly well either. What Starbucks customers and employees seem to actually have is that they enjoy Tiktok’s policy. On Reddit, customers posted that they disliked the new policy because “these messages have little meaning.” “I used to feel special, but now it’s not,” read one of the 143 comments in the reply. Read another person, “It’s very embarrassing to see us to our customers and have to write something on the cup.”
Online critics may be on something. Happy and enthusiastic employees are good for business. But it also creates an environment where workers can do their jobs effectively and find a source of joy in the workplace. Companies may discover whether to invest in the latter. The former is organically followed and there’s no need to fake it.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editorial Board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Beth Kowitt is a Bloomberg opinion columnist covering Corporate America. She was previously a senior writer and editor for Fortune Magazine.
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