An interview with Pat

Thank you for calling Green Apron Stories. How can I help you?

I have asked Pat to share a little about the last year. So, as a kick off to the next era of Green Apron Stories, we thought it would be appropriate to bring you “An interview with Pat Nerr”

GAS: Hey Pat. Thanks for the honor of owning this space and for your time.

PN: My pleasure.

GAS: So let’s go back a bit. Tell us how the idea for Green Apron Stories came about?

PN: OK… So here’s the background. From 2004-2007 I worked on some of the company’s first eLearning projects and in 2006, I came up with the idea for Pat Nerr (partner). He/She (purposefully gender ambiguous) originally, the concept was meant to be an idea that could be an enhancement to the Green Apron Book…writing blog posts to partners about things that go on in the stores. Talking about new promotions, policies, events and writing about them in an interesting way so as to encourage employee engagement. My original idea for Pat was to also be a teacher of the culture and historical things that just never get documented or passed on. Pat was also meant to publish quizzes and promote internal contests. I worked on a couple of concepts but there was no support for it. Needless to say, I saw a few things and overheard a few other things that prompted me to leave the company. Knowing that this concept would be a good learning experience and knowing that after 15 years, I would need some time to reflect… Green Apron Stories started it’s flight.

GAS: I think I started the reading it by the 2nd week. So you came up with all of the content and wrote the stories?

PN: For the first month… yes, I was the principle writer. After that, a former store manager and a current store manager helped with some of the writing. I toyed with the idea of having the other two writers contribute under different character names, but decided that Pat Nerr was to be the “every partner’… It took a fair bit of editing their ideas to make them “Pat Nerr”.

GAS: What do you mean?

PN: Well… Pat Nerr has a particular style of writing. The “…” trailing thought is one item. Of course, the use of “Good Morning. What can I get for you?”… and other subtleties.

GAS: Ahh. Gotcha. So, what was your favorite story?

PN: Oh man. That’s a tough question. I like some of the different stories for different reasons. Going off of the page hits, I’d have to say that the post on “Competition” was the most popular and commented on. I recently went back and read from beginning to end and it’s interesting to try and remember where my head and emotions were sometimes. The post on Starbucks Definitions was also popular.

GAS: But what was YOUR favorite post to write?

PN: Since I have to pick one… The December 31^st post on what Starbucks needs to do to turn their situation around. I wrote them as predictions because at that point, I had heard that Uncle Howie himself was reading regularly. Of course, if you go back to it it nearly reads like a prophecy… I’ll always wonder if the ideas were considered.

GAS: You are kidding right? The man at the top was reading?

PN: No joke. Not many people know this, but there were some alarms going off when I started writing. P&AP spent some time doing their “research”. There was a concern at one point that I was threatening Howard himself. Of course, we all know that this isn’t true. Then there was a concern that I was trying to rally the stores to unionize… It all seems funny to me. There was also an immediate effort to identify every partner in the SSC who I knew and monitor their e-mail.

GAS: Did Howard or any of the leadership ever call you or e-mail you to let you know they were concerned?

PN: Well… Nope. I never got anything from Howie. Chet e-mailed me a few times. Initially just to offer up some stories about his predecessor and then to chit chat. Funny part is… If Howie had called me or e-mailed me to ask me to tone it down or stop… I would have. I did send him a note at one point… no reply of course.

GAS: Whoa! The EVP of HR e-mailed you. Can you share what the e-mail said?

PN: Maybe some other time. I think the purpose was to try and smoke out the people around me so they could fire them. As we know now, the plan was to lay off people so I can only assume that it was a good excuse to get rid of folks without having to pay severance. I can’t imagine why someone at that level would be e-mailing me offering up dirt on one of their colleagues. Let’s move on…

GAS: Ok, ok. So tell me about the readership of Green Apron Stories. What was the daily readership like?

PN: I was surprised to see how quickly the web hits grew in the first 2 months. I’d say that 35% of the readers were from Starbucks own corporate networks. At least two people from the Pentagon were regular readers. All of the major news networks. After the post about Tully’s there was a blow up from their corporate network which didn’t surprise me. At the peak, I was seeing 9,000 to 10,000 hits on average. I was mildly surprised at the number of hits from the Starbucks networks and the amount of time they spent reading… regularly hitting 3+ pages while they were there.

GAS: That doesn’t surprise me. I was a regular reader while I was there and we frequently laughed about the content. Which brings me to my next question. What was up with the videos?

PN: The videos? Most of the ideas for the videos were just embellishments on reality or an attempt to entertain SSC folks. Most of the concepts were “inside jokes”. Here’s a funny story on the “Papal” video… One of my old store partners, who still works as a barista mind you, and I were having beers and came up with the idea. The idea that Jim Donald was the Pope and Howie as a Cardinal… needless to say over the course of two more beers, we had the script. Since I had my laptop with me, we started making the artwork and by the time we left it was nearly done… So that video was made at the “Wingdome”… The videos on iTunes were fun too. Mostly… the videos were for fun.

GAS: Time to get serious on you. What disappoints you most about what’s been going down at the company?

PN: I think the way people have been treated. I heard Howard talk about there being a “poison” in the well… and most found it easy to assume that somebody like me would be a “poison”… I think the poison has been trickling down from the top. If you look at some of the departed execs of recent days… you can see a trend. People like Greg Johnson… Weldon Spangler… Christine Day… Jim Alling. Those folks were decent and caring. It’s obvious that there is no place for them in the current Starbucks. They were legendary in their leadership. I think it also disappointing when the actions of a few can destroy so much for so many in such a short amount of time…

GAS: Do you still frequent Starbucks as a customer?

PN: Naw… My boy likes Caffe Ladro. We do our espresso/hot cocoa outings there. It’s quirky and comfortable and the people there work like baristas should… crafting espresso by hand.

GAS: Your thoughts on the idea that the economy has created Starbucks issues?

PN: I think that’s hilarious! First off, Starbucks has always thought of themselves as “recession proof”… and I think that they were for the most part… under most circumstances… but you pair what’s happening with people’s homes, and the cost of gas aggravating everything else… and you have a serious situation with the average American being tapped out on their spending power. American debt is max’d out. They can’t put their Starbucks on their credit cards any longer. They’d rather spend that 4-5 bucks on a Happy Hour drink. Then you look at how Starbucks has spent their money internally… there’s quite a bit of waste. Instead of blowing money on things that never were attached to any business drivers, they should have been investing in infrastructure and preparing for the lean times. Howard always says “we’re in the early chapters…” Well, this must be the tragic chapters and I only hope it’s a happy ending.

GAS: OK. Last question for now. What do you think the fate of Starbucks will be?

PN: Funny that you would ask ME that. I used to think they would just sell out and Howard would take his money and run. Now… I think they really believe they can turn it around and create what it used to be… I find this sad. So I guess my answer would be that they’ll just meander around trying to guess what the next trend is and struggle as Tully’s has done for so long.

GAS: Thanks for your time Pat.