One insight from the news story:
(After getting the job a Starbucks) He enters a world in which employees are called “partners,” customers are “guests” and, most impressive to Mr. Gill, everyone seems to be treated with respect, even homeless people who need to use the bathroom. It is also a world where everything, even cleaning grubby tiles, is given a positive spin.Kinda turns the world's ideas of what brings happiness on its head, huh?
“We have a grout problem,” the manager said one day. “Or maybe I should say we have a grout opportunity.”
When the manager showed him how to clean the toilet, he was “surprised by how little revulsion I felt for a job I would have previously thought beneath me.” He had fallen, he writes, into a job “where people could be nicer and the work environment better than I had ever believed possible.” To his astonishment, he realized he was happier than he had ever been.
3 comments:
It is sad to say, but the now happy executive would not be employed unless there were people like he used to be willing to pay the extraordinary, "non-simple life" price for Starbuck's coffee.
chuck
I love your post and the book sounds great, but chuck definitely made a noteworthy point there. I'm reading another great book you would probably like: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Oh, Animal Vegetable Miracle is definitely already on my Christmas list! I'm really looking forward to getting a hold of it- I've heard such great things.
And, I'm not a fan of the "Starbucks culture" (or prices!) but the idea of someone simplifying their life in such an extreme way-and the perspective that provides- is interesting.
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