Starbucks' new CEO will supercommute 1k miles from California to Seattle
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
And it's not just this. Near all elites have unsustainable lifestyles that we are expected to offset by changing our daily habits.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/06/taylor-...
If you can afford a private jet, you can easily afford to make it carbon neutral.
It's not real money to these folks; I doubt he'd even notice.
Maybe there will be a point where it works out cheaper to fly to another country to fuel up though. I'm sure some tax policy folks could figure this out better than I.
Tax the ~~rich~~ ultra-wealthy, and their thoughtless damage to our environment. It's about as close to a victimless tax-rise as could ever exist.
Various attempts to work round this without rewriting the convention have been discussed, e.g. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn00... but I don't think they've got anywhere.
The US _might_ be able to tax fuel on domestic flights, but that would result in the California to Seattle flight going via Canada to avoid the tax.
And the opposite, they will skimp on fuel going inbound to there. Of course fuel qty is the captain's decision, however a lot of airlines already pressure those. As one example Ryanair had a "list of shame" of captains bringing too much safety fuel in their eyes.
Any violators will be held personally liable with a fine up to 150% of said corporation's global profits
The building of the jets, the material extraction, the maintenance, the work around growing the fuels, the processing, the transportation, most of that is not fully sustainable.
It's only "less bad" for the climate crisis, not better. Definitely not perfect.
[1] https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/dec/opinion-why-are-people-s...
http://weblibrary.apeiron-uni.eu:8080/webdokumenti/6304-ip.p...
But aside from the pun, we're talking about Starbucks. That is supposed to be a coffee/espresso business. You should be able to drink those without a straw. The fact that espresso milkshakes are so overwhelmingly popular that people require straws from Starbucks in America really isn't a straw man argument, it is entirely relevant. If people weren't buying milkshakes from an espresso stand, they wouldn't need straws. I certainly don't need a straw for any variety of normal espresso. The fact that daily caffeinated milkshakes are normalized in America is very likely linked with our obesity crisis.
They also require plastic see-through containers so that people can visually see the layers on their milkshake.
We'd be doing better if that didn't exit or was considered much more niche rather than entirely mainstream.
Straws are the answer to drinking through a lid, which is the real necessity for takeout restaurants. Costco figured this out with a self-sealing flap on the lid you can sip from.
That said, it's all window dressing. As a kid I drank from paper cups with plastic straws. An iced coffee from some restaurants is now a massive plastic cup with a paper straw.
For this demographic, paper straws are a significant issue: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/11/627773979/wh...
Also, some people drink coffee, tea, acidic, and/or sugary drinks from straws for dental cosmetic or health reasons.
Finally, disability or convenience reasons.
Maybe we all just need to start bringing a titanium folding sporf and a metal straw with us wherever we go and do away entirely with some single use plastics and their substandard, compostable imposters.
It's also much easier to drink on the go without spilling.
I didn't realise that in other countries they still have staffing where you can order. But I bet that will be changed soon too. They recently rebuilt all the restaurants here to make this change.
The good thing is that they have table service now though.
But I didn't realise I could ask at the desk to modify my order once it's placed. Thanks!
As most things CEO's do it will be a flippant display that will last about as long as a lettuce out of the fridge. However, those below will be expected to show evidence the rules are followed because there's nothing quite like cascading punishment, because that's the fun part of being a shitty boss, watching people suffer because they say so.
Look for teams that are flexible about remote work, those are the bosses you want to work for in this current day and age.
Every time I read one of these "back on site to do work" style posts, yet we'll offshore at the drop of a hat, it infuriates me as I can't see sense in the logic.
Most of starbucks already works "in the office" 5 days a week because they work in a coffeeshop which can't be remote anyway.
So are we, only that are far less important; and we're aren't paid in millions. Everything can be done from home. But, no: we must commute and "collaborate" the shit out of each other.
> Starbucks also notes that it will set up a remote office for Niccol in Newport Beach
Given that, is there a problem with using a jet in this way?
I have no reason to doubt that the new CEO deserves his compensation package but we don't deserve all those emissions in our environment. And I am sure many employees deserve a few extra dollars per hour for their hard work!
Also, you don't really get to choose what you fuel your private plane up with. Most places only provide plain Jet-A1. An airline has the regularity and scale to organise this themselves, a private operation surely doesn't.
And most jets aren't certified for 100% biofuel.
It's all a scam. A system by which rich people swap money back and forth with other rich people to absolve themselves of the climate sin they claim the rest of us are burdened with.
Edit: Nevermind the article says corporate jet. Silly me. Imagine Starbucks even paying the gas for a serf to commute to their job, much less the vehicle.
assume his salary is the $1.6 + $3.6 million, or $5.2 million (from the article), or 11% of his salary. if you made $100k/yr, that would be like spending $11k/yr on gas driving to and from work, or $900/month. which is 6x as much as $150, which is very roughly what I spend on gas commuting per month.
The higher you are on the corporate ladder, the better the perks. And if the board of Starbucks acquiesced to his demands, I don't see why everybody is up in arms about it.
I'm happy that the people that I work for pay for my gas to come to work :)
Niccols was in a position to make his own demands, and Starbucks had no choice but to comply.
Niccols even became chairman of the Starbucks board (it's very rare for a CEO to also be the chairman of the board at this size of a company).
Already he's paying off by jumping SBUX stock from $75 to $94 just based on the announcement alone.
If you're truly indispensable and critical to the operation of a company, they will let you work however you want.
Niccols also has to deliver, otherwise he'll be ousted like Laks was after barely a year.
Yep. Went from $200 to a height of $3000 under Niccols before they initiated a stock split.
That's the job of a CEO at this size of an organization.
Starbucks and most other restaurant companies are majority owned by larger funds, and Elliot Investment Management is one of the major shareholders in SBUX now.
I agree with you about the degradation of Chipotle's burritos, but for companies like this, the share is the product that matters, not the burrito or coffee.
Most people go to fast food for convenience, not the experience, and the margins are so low that it's difficult to be cash-flow positive, making investor relations extremely critical.
I understand why you cannot just pick a random person to be a CEO. But in theory, there are probably many people who have the leadership skills and industry insight to be really good CEOs of Starbucks, and probably for a much cheaper compensation package. It's just the bureaucracy of having to somehow justify the selection of a CEO to the board, forces the company to select from a tiny pool of CEOs many of them with a checkered record. One of the many ridiculous things that we do as a society.
Revamping their Digital Marketing: https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/case-studies/chipotle-digi...
Hard to find third party sources on how he revamped logistics after the Salmonella and E Coli scandals
The thing with CEOs is that you don't really buy performance. A lot of them are actually not very good at their job. But you buy their old boys network.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Chipotle/comments/10w0dyg/comment/j...
Yeah right....
I just looked up the aftermath, and it turns he stopped flying his commute in 2014, and switched to the train in response to the criticism. It's interesting that a poorly judged action could do quite a lot of long term reputational damage, caused in part — I suspect — by initially defending that choice.
Greenpeace specifically has little sympathies - they often fulfill the definition of eco-terrorists. Its like those idiots spraying beautiful old masters paintings worth tens of millions to 'send strong ecological message so people wake up'. Well, network protocol failed on that sending, you just painted yourself as arrogant aggressive a-holes I want to have absolutely nothing with, harming the cause significantly.
Especially after the revelations of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lambert_(undercover_police...
That said, I've seen the inside of the American Green Party, and what I saw had vibes of someone deliberately following the CIA guide to organisational sabotage — though even then, also a lot of amateurs with no idea how small and irrelevant they are and thus obliviously attempting to directly change the whole world rather than focus on what they actually have the power to influence, and I suspect that was where the majority of their mistakes came from.
(Also a few genuine experts who were busy trying to sort out the internal issues, but "busy" tends to also mean "quiet").
Greenpeace did untold damage to the climate by campaigning against nuclear (and, implicitly, for fossil fuels, as there weren't other economically competitive eco-friendly choices back then).
There was also a lot of campaigning against the practice of dumping nuclear waste at sea. I think we're long enough past Chernobyl to have forgotten the impact of that on Europe, but perhaps if a stray shell hits the Zaporizhzhia or Kursk nuclear reactor we'll be reminded of that again.
We don't use graphene reactors anymore, so at worst we will experience a Fukushima-level event. And by that I mean what was expected from Fukushima in the worst-case scenario which did not happen (still, people in the exclusion zone were forcibly moved out of their houses)
And yes the same reactors as in Chernobyl are still in operation today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK#List_of_RBMK_reactors . Including in Kursk where fighting between Russia and Ukraine is currently going on. This isn't an imaginary situation.
They were mitigated to avoid this particular issue but I wouldn't consider them 'safe' without a containment building etc.
And it's not graphene, it's graphite. Graphene is a nanomaterial that didn't exist for production during the envisioning of RBMK reactors. It was only theoretical and produced from 2004 onwards.
Meanwhile, just over the border, traveling between various mid-size German cities by ICE train is very quick, and roughly 2x as fast as driving. Even between Brussels and Amsterdam is reasonably quick (~2h on Eurostar), so I guess the problem is just Luxembourg?
If that guy needed to go to work in Amsterdam, the proper solution would have been to move.
It doesn't come down to whether the CEO train timetable is slightly out of whack. Its literally everything. Some humans exist and grew on a plane of existence so different to the reality of the greater majority, that its often too hard for them to even comprehend it.
I'm not bitter really, I retired young. But I could never bring myself to be that CEO, even now that I have money.
This isn't a humble brag I'm just explaining how alien some peoples lives are, including most of you, with your 6 figure salaries compared to the "norm". Just a friendly reminder. /rant
But from what I have heard there was a direct high-speed connection until a few years ago. Allegedly this was suppressed because they could not reach an agreement with the Belgian SNCB who demanded the high-speed train did some extra stops.
Also, in my area, it’s better than a lot of coffee shops. Definitely not the best, but better than probably 90% of them
Just like people working for FAANG (for example) commute one hour each way because where they live there are no jobs that they can take.
Your rationale is that for example people living in NJ should not work in the city…
Can't way for him to present the ESG section on the quarterly earnings call. It would be better than most comedy specials on Netflix.