When he returned to the helm of Starbucks, Howard Schultz decried the frat boy mentality that had run the company into the ground. How closely has he checked the P & L’s and Balance Sheets for the stores on the shortlist?,

No wonder they are having trouble.

I suspect a lot of other retail chains will experience similar troubles. On a recent visit to fast-growing Tractor Supply, I counted 5 employees in the store, but only ONE actually helping customers and checking them out.

Ditto for Autozone. These retail chains need better middle management (better, not MORE) to crack down on employees who are always “on break” and can’t help sell product.

How many times have you been to Starbucks, seen an army of people behind the counter, and yet waited 20 minutes for your latte?

In a boom economy, any retailer can afford such inefficiencies. In this economy, only the efficient will survive.

A coffee shop should require one or two employees at most. 5 or 10 is ludicrous. 20 is obscene.

The Mom & Pop shops will survive this downturn, ironically, as they have few or no employees to pay.

But around 1999 or so, the expansion of stores really took off. I would agree that Starbucks did indeed grow too quickly. But to grow that quickly and still maintain profits, it required abandoning core competencies. I saw many, many long term managers that were VERY good at their job (I’m in IT now, but my Starbucks manager often makes these people look like amateurs) leave Starbucks over their disgust of the culture change.

It is that culture change which is the true cause. I would also add that the farther away you get from Seattle (having attending management training), the more apparent this is.

Health insurance anyone? Starbucks offers FULL medical, dental, AND mental health insurance to all workers who work 20 HOURS/week or more. Mental health was particularly important to Schultz because he understood that store employees are the front-line of the company and take particular abuse from whiny, ignorant American consumers (many of them posting here with glee about making a better cup of coffee with Folgers). Name me an ungreedy American company that does that.

How about the coffee farmer? By charging more, SBUX is able to pay the farmer better. Farmers and cooperatives working with SBUX have had improvements in quality of life because of that $12LB of coffee beans.

I too feel they over-expanded but I blame Wall Street and the American way of doing business that requires constant growth at all costs so that big shareholders can sit back and collect hard earned profits of workers. We employees were happy with even the most modest growth of our stock options because we were investing for the future, not next quarter.

Finally, what was the dagger to my heart was the replacement of machines that required you to “pull” the shot for the customer with push-button gizmos. That art was taught to me by a company that went to Italy to learn how it should be done and the rich history that goes along with it. Mechanization of an art form will almost always kill the art.

Still I will always support Starbucks over McDonalds. McD coffee never can compare until they devote their souls to coffee the way SBUX does. And I always support companies that give good benefits even to the part-timer (that’s why I never set foot in Walmart). Long live Starbucks and socially-just companies like them!

But I find it sad that they have to close stores, not because they’re closing them, but because 12k people will be losing their jobs. Yes, Starbucks oversaturated the market with mediocre coffee. But the one thing I ALWAYS found when I just needed the caffeine and not flavor is that Starbucks employees have always given excellent customer service. That’s rare in these days.

I may not be a fan of their coffee, but their customer service is exceptional. I hold no animosity toward the company and hope to see them bounce back.