Some thoughts on the incident of Manner employees throwing coffee powder

Yesterday, I believe everyone has heard about the incident of Manner employees throwing coffee powder. The author shared some of his views on this matter. Let's take a look.

I am a regular customer of Manner because there is a Manner coffee shop near my home. The decoration is quite unique, with a decorative "coffee bus" (although it is not a place to sell coffee), and the overall environment is no less than Starbucks. Moreover, the quality of Manner's coffee is unmatched at the same price. Several of my heavy caffeine lovers love it very much. When they meet me, they often make an appointment at "the Manner closest to a certain place", and "first come, first served".

Whether Manner can be considered "affordable coffee" is quite controversial. The average price of 20 yuan is definitely expensive compared to Luckin Coffee, McCafé and convenience store coffee; but compared to Starbucks, where the average customer spending is 35 yuan, it is still much cheaper. It should be pointed out that unlike most other "automated coffee shops", Manner is a "semi-automatic coffee shop" and most of its drinks need to be hand-brewed, so the requirements for employees are higher and the waiting time for orders is also longer. Most of Manner's loyal customers (such as my friends) go for "affordable hand-brewed coffee", and Luckin Coffee or Kudi is not an alternative in this regard.

Therefore, the sudden news yesterday that "Manner employees threw coffee powder on customers" was unexpected, but reasonable: Manner has higher requirements for employees, far higher than other coffee shops that only need to press the coffee machine; the characteristics of hand-brewed drinks determine that Manner baristas have a high work pressure; but the salary Manner pays to employees is not particularly high in this industry. If the media reports are true, then the monthly salary of the Manner barista involved (who has been fired) is 5,000 yuan - some people may think it's not bad, but that's in Shanghai. If you work in a coffee shop in Shanghai with a total area of ​​only 10 square meters (the internal area of ​​the counter may be less than 4 square meters), you need to make 300-500 cups of hand-brewed coffee every day, but you can only get a salary of 5,000 yuan per month (note: this number is just not required to pay personal income tax), then your mental state will definitely not be very good.

What's more, you also need to deal with endless customer complaints. These days, everyone is very angry; most of the people who like to drink Manner are middle-level white-collar workers, who are under tremendous social pressure and are even more angry. The customer who threatened to complain and caused Manner employees to lose control of their emotions obviously looked like a white-collar worker. She might be on a business trip and was very concerned about whether she could get to the airport on time. She chose to go to Manner to order a cup of hand-brewed coffee (rather than buying a cup at a convenience store) because she needed high-quality caffeine to support her progress; she was angry because she found that the high-quality caffeine came too slowly, which might threaten her progress in catching the plane, and indirectly threaten her job. A worker, especially a worker who travels frequently and is driven to death by customers and leaders (such as me five years ago), should be able to understand why this customer was so out of control.

What about the Manner employee? As long as we understand his situation a little, we will have a certain sympathy for this person: at the beginning, he did nothing wrong, acted completely according to the store rules, and even slowed down his work to deal with the chattering of customers. We all know how difficult it is to keep working normally when there is someone within two meters of you complaining and threatening you. Your mind may have been a mess. Just when you are trying to maintain your decency, you hear the word "complaint" clearly issued by the other party, and you immediately think of-

Manner employees will be fired if they receive three complaints (commonly known as "opening a ticket") in total. Maybe you have been opened up twice before, maybe not, but it doesn't matter. Because under this working condition, it is only a matter of time before you receive three complaints in total. No matter how you swallow your anger and endure humiliation, you will not be able to keep your job anyway. You never planned to work in this job until old age, but you never thought that you would be fired so soon. What should I do next? A flash of lightning exploded in your mind, and you had no time to think.

Regardless, what the Manner employee did next, including throwing coffee powder at the customer and getting into a physical altercation with the customer, was definitely wrong. Even if the relevant video had not been uploaded to the Internet, he was destined to be fired. However, was he a "bad guy"? Was the customer who repeatedly urged him to make coffee faster a "bad guy"? They were all just reacting naturally in their respective scenarios.

Interestingly, after watching the video of the whole process, my friends (most of whom work in the Internet and financial industries) generally support the employee. Some people even made an emoticon package of the coffee splashing process, claiming that they would send it to their bosses or customers, although they actually dare not do so. Manner barista lost his job and may even lose the opportunity to work in the service industry in Shanghai forever, but he has become the spokesperson for countless workers who have been driven to a state of nervous breakdown by their bosses or customers. More than one person clearly told me that if they didn't have elderly parents and young children to take care of, and the cost of mortgages and children's schooling was too high, they would have done something similar a long time ago.

I asked him a question in return: "Have you ever urged the Manner staff to make you coffee faster?"

No one answered directly. No need to answer. Maybe there is, maybe not, anyway, I don't remember. In the minds of senior white-collar workers, service industry practitioners are not considered human beings, at least not people of the same level as themselves. The concept of "caste" not only exists in ancient India, but also in the minds of many people today. After the Xinhai Revolution, Gu Hongming once said to his students: "It is easy to cut off the braid behind my head, but it is difficult to cut off the braid in your heart." The problem is, what if the students don't want to cut off their braids at all? Gu Hongming still overestimated human nature. What people say is often not the same as what they think in their hearts.

When I was in middle school, the Chinese textbook included an excerpt from The True Story of Ah Q. Ah Q dreamed of joining the revolutionary party and returning home in glory, and "the first one to die is Xiao D." But when he thought about moving things from the rich man's house, he decided to "make Xiao D move quickly, or he will be beaten if he doesn't move well." The Chinese teacher asked us, "Xiao D was clearly killed by him, so why did he still expect Xiao D to move things for him?"

The simplest answer is: Ah Q is dreaming, and dreams are illogical. However, today, I think the more profound answer is: Ah Q did not treat Xiao D as a human being. Since the other party is not a human being, he should still be working after his death. In fact, Ah Q never treated anyone as a human being, and how could others treat him as a human being? The so-called "only those who endure the most hardships can become the best" - enduring the most hardships means not treating oneself as a human being; only those who are the best can become the best people, which means not treating others as human beings. In summary, by not treating oneself as a human being, the goal of not treating others as human beings can be achieved.

Don't get me wrong, from a business perspective, Manner is a very good company. It is a leader among a group of new offline consumer forces that emerged from 2018 to 2021, leading the craze for domestic boutique coffee shops. Along with the above craze, there are also new tea drinks, Chinese dim sum, taverns, etc., many of which have set a myth of a single store valuation of more than 100 million yuan. Now that the trend has passed, most of the "new offline consumer forces" have died down, but Manner is still standing, which shows that a large part of its core competitiveness comes from strength rather than capital speculation. Unfortunately, Manner's glory cannot be directly transformed into the glory of its employees, just as the glory of the Roman Empire at its peak could not shine on the heads of non-citizens in the corners of remote provinces.

In the offline consumer industry and even the entire service industry, user experience is of paramount importance. There are two completely different ideas on how to improve user experience: the first is "take good care of our employees and let them take good care of our customers"; the second is "it doesn't matter whether the employees are good or not, they must take good care of the customers anyway; if they dare to act rashly, use strict rules and regulations to deal with them." The former is somewhat close to the Confucianism of the pre-Qin period, and the latter is close to the Legalist thought. We all know that the practice of successive dynasties has been "Confucianism in public and Legalism in private" - under the banner of Confucius, doing the business of Shang Yang and Han Feizi. In modern times, Shang Yang and Han Feizi's set of ideas has been written into novels and praised, and it is called "The valiant old Qin, go to the national crisis together."

As for why the "old Qin" did not "join the national crisis" when Liu Bang entered the pass to destroy Qin, but instead "feared that Pei Gong would not become the King of Qin", this question cannot be explained by those who advocate Shang Yang. At this moment, I really want to go to the nearby Manner Coffee and ask the employees in the store "what do you think about the recent events in your company". But I know that doing so will cause trouble to the employees, so I won't really do it. I also know that even if I ask and they answer positively, nothing will change.

"Where are Tian Heng's five hundred men? Could it be that all of them returned as marquises?"

I wish you all a happy weekend.

Author: Pei Pei, leader of the Phantom Thieves

Source: WeChat public account "Internet Phantom Thieves (ID: TMTphantom)"