Defending Starbucks
Starbucks announced this week that 600 underperforming stores would be closed. There’s a story on Yahoo! news here that describes the schadenfreude (read: happiness about others misfortunes) that many feel about thousands of people losing their jobs in a time of declining home prices, a bear market, and skyrocketing food and fuel costs.
Seriously folks, how messed up do you have to be to be happy over someone losing their job in this economic environment? Do you really hate Starbucks that much? Look, it’s safe to say that Starbucks is probably the most expensive coffee in town. I personally funded the 401k’s of I don’t know how many baristas. So yeah, I know it’s expensive. I can only wonder how your precious quirky/funky/eclectic/community/whatever coffee shop couldn’t compete with Starbucks when they were probably selling coffee a whole lot cheaper. It’s a free market folks. That’s how it goes. If a competitor beats you with higher prices, you’re probably doing something wrong. Someone will come along and displace Starbucks someday, just like some other company will displace Wal-Mart and Best Buy and McDonalds.
Say, did you know that Starbucks was one of the first companies to offer health benefits to their part time employees? Does your funky/quirky/eclectic coffeehouse do that? Didn’t think so.
Long story short, people losing their job is nothing to celebrate. Here’s hoping Starbucks makes a comeback, but like the Yahoo! story says, it’s just coffee. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to bleed black and green.
August 13th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I read similar article also named Defending Starbucks, and it was completely different. Personally, I agree with you more, because this article makes a little bit more sense for me