The Starbucks Seating Dilemma:Role-Playing Real-World Problems

9 minutes ago

4 min read

At the Young Writers’ Club, our sessions go far beyond written expression. We regularly dive into invigorating group discussions on everything from visual art analysis to problem-solving inspired by real-world issues. Along the way, the writers catch up on important news that might not make the front pages. This collaborative process brings the group together, encouraging them to explore diverse perspectives, debate potential solutions, and walk away with a deeper awareness of the world as it is.

The Basic Premise for Discussion

Starbucks in China has been currently facing—non paying customers occupying tables thus not allowing for space for those who pay. This has been affecting the revenues. Hence Starbucks in China has declared that those who don’t buy anything, don’t get a seat. But, why would someone hangout in Starbucks if they don’t want to buy anything?

Hypothetical Situation Created for Role Play and Analysis of Different Perspectives

Problems in the real world typically tend to involve different perspectives. Arriving at a good solution often involves considering all perspectives.

Keeping this in mind the following roles were created. The writers picked the roles that they wanted to play.

A teenager who is hanging out with friends. This teenager does not want to eat or drink anything but is around to give his friends company. Hence qualifies as a non-paying customer. (The writer who volunteered to be the teenager however chose to be a paying customer and instead stepped up to help the store manager, thus leading the discussion to remote workers alone.)
Remote worker who bought a cup of coffee hours ago and is still working: A very common trend thanks to the free wifi.
Store manager who needs to ensure space is available at all times for paying customers to sit: This person is responsible to make sure that revenues are steady if not rising all the time. Hence, non paying customers make this person’s job difficult.
Sociologist: This person to argue for equality in public spaces and oppose any kind of discrimination. In this context, asking a non paying customer to leave is considered discriminatory.
A disgruntled customer who has had a long day and cannot find a place to sit.

The young writers did an amazing job of playing different roles and thinking about the problem from different perspectives.

We had two remote workers. The store manager declared that up to four hours, it was ok to let them sit if they had bought something. Once the time limit crossed both remote workers were gently reminded that they will have to buy something if they want to continue using the cafe’s free Wi-Fi. One said that he was busy with work and was about to finish something very important that had to be sent in a short while. He asked not to be disturbed for a short while and that he would be out soon. The other said that she was in a very difficult situation that had to be resolved right away and not to be bothered.

As time went by, more customers started to pour in and available seating spaces started to diminish until there wasn’t a single seat available.

That’s when, a customer who had had a very long and tiring day walked in and bought herself a coffee. She looked around for a seat to sit and relax with her coffee but there was no space. Needless to say she was very upset that having bought a coffee there was no space to sit. As is she had a very bad day and Starbucks just made it even worse!

The store manager swooped in trying to help. He offered her a takeaway that she could have in her car. This enraged her even further.

She said, “I don’t have a car. I came by cab. Do you expect me to buy a car just so that I can have a coffee from Starbucks that cannot provide space for a customer who buys but allows people with no orders to sit around!”

This outburst made all the writers step out of their roles and actively discuss the problem just after the sociologist criticized the remote workers for a lack of sense of civic responsibility.

Identifying the Valuable Customer

The remote worker could be a regular and hence is an important customer who cannot be enraged for spending more time at the cafe. At the same time the disgruntled customer could become a regular provided her first experience at the cafe was pleasant. Is there a way to salvage this situation and make sure that she becomes a potentially regular customer?

How about giving her a discount on her next visit to the cafe? The disgruntled customer came back into play and complained, “What can you do for me now? I don’t care about my next visit!”

Giving away a complimentary coffee did not seem like a good solution as Starbucks could have multiple such situations.

“How about setting an automated password change at regular time intervals? The customer must buy something to access the new password.”

“There should be a warning before this happens otherwise we would have people suing Starbucks saying that their work got ruined due to the automatic password change.”

The group concluded that using technology to solve this problem was the best step forward.

Every week at the Young Writers’ Club program, teen writers gather to write in a free space that offers room for experimentation in creative expression. As an added bonus we also have a short group discussion about subjects varying between the news to exploratory activities such as this one. More details about the program on Talking Circles.