What Brian Brown will NEVER understand

Allow me to step into the wayback machine and return to my W.E. Deming days. Starbucks is a successful organization primarily because it is committed to a quality culture. There are many components to a quality culture. However, at its core is the determination of the work force to be a quality organization that engenders the corporate culture.


Starbucks is well aware of certain things:

• Roughly 7% of their workforce     at all levels     is gay.
• Roughly half of their workforce have a close family member who is gay.
• To compete for the best available talent, Starbucks must be capable of attracting and retaining gay people and their allies.
• In a retail business, turnover is an enormous cost. It costs roughly double a manager's annual salary to recruit, train and assimilate a replacement.

Today, after Maggie Brown and friend were publicly humiliated at a Starbucks annual shareholders meeting, Brian Brown issued a fatwa:  The National Organization for Marriage Announces International "Dump Starbucks" Protest Campaign.

Brian: Starbucks doesn't care!

For starters, fairness to LGBT people probably attracts more customers than the few wingnuts that they lose. Even were that not the case, their quality-driven corporate culture not only lowers costs but improves customer service which translates into revenues. That is worth hundreds of times what some lost revenues     for doing the right thing     could ever amount to.

NOM is nothing but a proxy for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Those guys need to update their clocks and calendars. Even in the George W. Bush era, openly gay people worked at, and were invited to, the White House. Bush's SecDef was responsible for ending DADT.

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• NOM Announces Starbucks Boycott After Being Smacked Down at Shareholders Meeting: AUDIO (towleroad.com)