Would it Kill Starbucks to Make Their Chairs a Little Easier on the Ears?
Mr. BRIAN Niccol
CEO
Starbucks Corporation
P.O. Box 35126
Seattle, WA 98124-5126
Mr. BRIAN!
First, let me congratulate you for not staging some TikTokkery where you awkwardly NIBBLE one of your own hamburgers and the internet goes VIRAL. No one wants to see a kerjillionaire PRETEND to eat EVERYDAY food in their corner office, or on their PJ (short for private jet), as though they’re an EVERYDAY human. Plus, Starbucks doesn’t even SELL hamburgers.
BUT! I’ve already digressed.
BRIAN, the GRATING CHAIRS at Starbucks make me want to shave my head with a cheese GRATER!
I frequent a certain Starbucks that I won’t name because I don’t want to get any PARDNERS (aka STAFF, BARISTAS, PARTNERS) in HOT water. I bet you have a corporate “write up” system where folks get written UP, in writing. Getting written UP is even worse than getting dressed DOWN because it goes in your FILE. Not that it’s ever happened to me (yes, it HAS).
One time I got written UP for breaking a rule I should’ve known existed even though it didn’t (yet). True story. During that same meeting I got demoted from a position I didn’t KNOW I’d been promoted to. That’s right, I got promoted and demoted at the same time. Ergo, I got a promotion. Still, not saying getting written UP is good.
Back to the CHAIRS.
OK, it’s the Starbucks in the Presidio of San Francisco. It’s the “World’s Greatest Starbucks” because it is practically on TOP of the Golden Gate Bridge on-ramp, with a view of the Palace of Fine Arts, in the middle of Star Wars INTERGALACTIC HQ. BRIAN, are you KIDDING me?!
The PARDNERS there are great, it’s not their fault corporate doesn’t know chairs for BEANS. Or that there are mangy coyotes wandering around who will eat your small and fancy DOG—a different issue.
This location is chock-a-block with chatty Pacific Heights nannies who let their tiny charges run AMOK, and VC/PE bro tech nerds who talk about their Rivians and preferred shares in Round G and storing DATA in DNA and suchnot. I can’t follow exactly, but I think you can maybe upload all your videos into your ELBOW or hair follicle or wherever you have DNA. Stay TUNED.
Here comes the POINT! The problem at this otherwise splendid Starbucks is one I’ve witnessed at multiple locations around our NATION. And it is more broadly a problem with the WORLD.
I speak, when I can stay on topic, of GRATING CHAIRS.
I’m talking about the screechy RAKING sound of wooden legs scraping hideously across commercial-grade slate tile—on the regular. On the CONSTANT, really.
Ever notice how trains don’t make quite so much noise braking into stations as they used to? That’s because the robber barons all got together and said “let’s stop making our trains sound as bad as GRATING CHAIRS!”
Maybe it’s hyperbole to say GRATING CHAIRS is the problem with the world.
There are far WORSE problems.
As viscerally distressing as it is, GRATING CHAIRS at a Starbucks is what you would call a “FIRST WORLD” problem in a “THIRD PLACE”. A problem of people blessed with the LUXURY to sip coffee and write DAFT letters. And yet every time it happens, i am reminded of all that is WRONG with just about everything everywhere all at ONCE.
It requires a certain kind of obliviousness to IMPLEMENT. And another kind to ACTIVATE each time. And then still another kind to IGNORE it for years on end. So that at some point you wonder “is anyone EVER going to say something about the HIDEOUS GRATING CHAIRS?!”
Well, here I AM!
The peculiar lunacy is the amount of fastidious attention that went into other DETAILS at Starbucks. Like, say, the tiny PICTORIALS that help you sort used STIR STICKS and other refuse into the right CHUTES. Or the precise allocations of square inches of counter space. Or the multiple iterations over the years of the 16th Century Norse woodcut of a twin-tailed SIREN from Greek mythology in your logo, intended to lure the un-caffeinated to your shops, a la The Odyssey.
All that got due FOCUS, BRIAN. I don’t KNOW, maybe everyone got so worn out they had barely enough left in the TANK to back a truck up and sling the CHAIRS through the door as though haphazardly lobbing hunks of meat to starving OCELOTS. And ever since, the place is a fingernail-on-chalkboard SYMPHONY.
Admittedly, I can be WOUND a little tight. Especially after a VENTI Triplespressalatte (I still don’t know how to order at Starbucks, I just mumble Italian things and your great PARDNERS guide me through a decision tree of “which has MORE caffeine?”).
But I don’t think I’m ALONE. Any cursory 23andMe PROFILE is likely to give you a DNA correlation between caffeine sensitivity and chair-grating SENSITIVITY. Maybe it will explain how my DNA now stores all my videos, too.
Once, i saw a cabal of three NANNIES talking about how much they hated taking rich kids to museums whilst ignoring their toe-headed TODDLER (AKA, their ONE JOB) as she raked 2 chairs back and forth across the LENGTH of your store with Sisyphean determination. Let me tell you, Sony does not MAKE noise cancellation ROBUST enough. Here’s how that sounds (repeat 7 times for 12 seconds each):
SCREEEOOOOOOEEEEOOOOOEEEEEOOOOEEEEOOOOOOOEEECHOOOEEE!
For the most part, it’s just the everyday PATRONS who can’t be bothered to lift their chair a millimeter above grade to scoot a chair IN or OUT. Pulling OUT a chair to have a seat? SCROOEECH! Need to scoot it IN once seated? SCREEOOCH! Oops, need another sugar packet? SCREEOOCHIE! Back again? SCROOCHIEDOOPEEDOO! On and on.
Guess what two things do NOT go together like peas in a pod? Caffeine and GRATING CHAIRS.
Get everyone all HOPPED UP on caffeinated beverages, synapses FIRING, BRIAN, hyper-attuned to their surroundings and maybe they need to use the LOO! Then, just as this collision of neurotransmitters and electrical impulses is all systems GO what you do is dial up THE SHRIEK OF THE SEATS.
Perhaps I have gone far enough in establishing my sentiment that the raking of GRATING CHAIRS across a floor is not pleasant, at least for those who have active NERVE ENDINGS.
But now I must acknowledge I’m not entirely SURE whether there was INTENTION behind the grating chairs or not. America THRIVES on conspiracy theories, and I am just like AMERICA.
So from here my feedback must diverge into two distinct DIRECTIONS.
Importantly, both depend upon the STOPPING of the GRATING of CHAIRS.
Direction One: Ways to Make the Heinous Grating of Chairs at Starbucks STOP
Those little rubber or felt thingies
Non-grating floor substances
A dang sign that says “don’t grate yer dang chair” or a dang sign that says “chair rakers will be roundly scorned” (unlikely to work)
I’ve seen small cafes where retrofitted tennis balls do the trick
Wheels
Direction Two: Ways to Get People to Leave Starbucks Without the Use of the Heinous Sound of Grating Chairs
It occurs to me, maybe you’re using this awful noise as a TURNOVER tactic. You want people dillying. But, not fully dilly-DALLYing. Long enough to order TWO mochalattacinofrappalos, but not to nurse them all DAY.
SO. What you did was you invented an annoying furnishing-flooring DUO, the better to get caffeinated patrons up outta the joint just as they reach a point of diminishing RETURNS.
There may even be a NUMBER. A time or spend LIMIT. $19.52. Possibly $16.27. A beverage, snack, a refill. Three hours on a laptop. The battery on their noise canceling headsets dwindles…SCREEEOOOCH! Magically, the seat opens UP.
GENIUS.
Problem is, some PATRONS have about a 7-minute CHAIR GRATING tolerance. These folks are GOOD for, say, $5.19. Your per visit metrics are POOR on people with frayed NERVE endings! We can FIX THIS!
I’d argue that either WAY, you should start by elimating the SCOURGE of the CHAIR GRATING (see Direction One). And if you really want to get folks out of your Third Place (that mythical neither work nor home setting where people come to linger but not LINGER), find other WAYS and MEANS to get people OUT OF YOUR STORES after they’ve exhausted their SPEND and/or TIME limit.
So, here are a DOZEN alternative ideas to get you started. ALL OF THEM are better than the auditory VIOLATION of your chairs today. You’re WELCOME!
Excuse me, your table is due for an upgrade (PARDNER replaces with one the size of postage stamp) UPDATE: I HEAR THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING!
Always staff a mime, they’ll know what to do
PARDNER gets whole store to do The Wave or sing “Sweet Caroline”
PARDNER asks “can I grab that chair for someone?” and gestures at the one you're seated on
Hang creepy portrait of store manager that MonaLisas's you specifically, no matter where you sit
Free wifi interjects screen that says “continue sharing browser history?”
Some kind of win-win arrangement with Jehovah’s Witnesses
Start setting up elaborate presentation titled “Your Dream Timeshare Is Here!”
A single Roomba, dressed as tiny security guard, slowly circles lingerers table
PARDNER stages "surprise fire drill" suspiciously specific to one section only
The store adopts a "no laptops after 2pm" policy enforced via passive-aggressive sticky notes
Release the hounds (somewhere deep within, every CEO wants to be able to say “release the hounds” at least once in their lifetime, admit it)
The ideas are ENDLESS! But I will END there anyway.
BRIAN! All I am saying is that there is no reason for GRATING CHAIRS, just as there is no reason for those tables where you have to jam a SPOON or a wadded up NAPKIN under one leg of a LOPSIDED table to keep it from ROCKING (don’t get me started)!
When a chair RAKES across the floor, nothing else MATTERS. Every problem with the world is distilled to the prolonged friction of metal, wood, tile, and concrete. Solving this problem is the last piece of the puzzle that solves the formula of the missing link in the Starbucks special sauce to making the world a BETTER place. One THIRD PLACE at a time!
Until then, I got a pocket full of FELT PADS because I am determined to not be part of the problem.
Call me the ChairMan,
Phineas Bling
PO Box Withheld
2055 LOMBARD ST.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123-9991
