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Talk about a wake-up call!

By Ed Goldman

While you’re pondering life’s great mysteries one rainy night—snifter of brandy in one hand, pipe filled with aromatic Ashton Artisan’s blend of tobacco in the other, a roaring fire warming both your den and very soul—these three conundrums may present themselves:

1. Why am I in this setting when I neither drink nor smoke and I have neither a den nor fireplace?
2. Where does my lap go when I stand up?
3. Why does the CEO of Starbucks earn 6,666 times the salary of a part-time barista, per a recent Wall Street Journal story?

Let’s leave aside the first two ponderables for the moment to see if we can make semi-educated guesses about the third one. 

How come CEO Brian Niccol has already made $96 million from the coffee shop kingdom since starting the job only last September while that part-time barista’s pay will be $14,674 for the entire year?

– My first conclusion is really a no-brainer: Niccol works full time, not part-time. You’d naturally expect his salary to be higher. I mean, come on.

– On the other hand, Niccol has a nifty hybrid arrangement with the caffeine commonwealth, which allows him to work from home (Southern California) as well as Starbucks’ Seattle-based HQ. 

According to the WSJ article, the company accommodates this peripatetic work style by flying Niccol back and forth by private jet. The initial cost of doing so was reported at more than $72,000. You can also toss in another $143,000+ for his temp housing when he’s in Seattle. 

– But let’s not rush to judgment. It’s always costly to on-board a new employee, right? As an aside, perhaps you remember when we used to call it “orienting,” not “on-boarding,” that new employee. But the gods of HR declared that since not all new employees are from the so-called Orient, this might be an offensive term. I’d opt for calling the process “globalizing” new employees but fear that this, too, may be resented, especially by sensitive space travelers.

Anyway, for all we know, the on-boarding of that part-time barista might have taken a solid week, during which he or she needed to learn a plethora of new skills, including but not limited to: (a) spraying  toxic cleaning fluid on the windows next to customers trying to fill their nostrils with the serene aroma of the 100 percent arabica beans in their cups; (b) misspelling customers’ names using heavily scented Sharpies on those cups (a Starbucks  tradition); and (c) spending an interminable amount of time explaining the agricultural and dating history of the particular coffee you’re considering, especially if the 18 people lined up behind that customer simply want a cup of black coffee.