Saturday...

Ahhhhh...

Saturday.

I slept in till 11 this morning. Something I haven't done in a very long time.
I did have good reason to... Our friend Erina Kamata from Tokyo came over to the US for 3 days. Yes... you read right... 3 days. She flew the 14 plane ride here to spend 3 days with her friends and then get on the plane to take the 15 hour plane ride back. But after seeing her face last night, you could tell it was well worth the investment in time and money.

We arranged to hang out with Erina and our Canadian friend Laurie on Thursday night. It ended up being a little later than we expected, and we stayed up real late. They left about 1 am, and we got to sleep about 1:30. I had to be up to go to work Friday morning, and since I needed to get there earlier than normal (I'll explain in a minute) I had to wake up at 3:45. Ouch.

Friday morning, I opened as the shift manager at the Starbucks I work at for the first time. It was "my" shift, and I really wanted it to go well. Things did go well. I was splendid. My store manager, who opened with me to make sure everything went well, did not do a good job. He was slow, and inefficient, and even though, we arrived 15 minutes early, he didn't have 1/2 of the stuff he was supposed to have done, done by the time we opened. He didn't even have it finished by the time our next employee came in at 6:30. It was sad. I even did some of his work for him... while doing mine. Aside from the frustration with him, I had a really good shift. Everybody got their breaks on time, one of my baristas wanted to go home early, and I was able to help her out. The best part of the day, however, was at the end of my shift when we got the mail.

(Background of the story)
As a company, Starbucks keeps tabs on their employees by sending out "Fake customers" for "snapshots" of how each store is running. Our most recent snapshots have been abismal. In the past year, we haven't had a snapshot above 90% quality. Our past three were 62%, 75% and 69% with very low scores in overall friendliness. I've felt that they have caught us at really bad moments, and I've never been there when they snap-shotted us.

ANYWAY...

I got my first snapshot with me on duty, and we got a 96% rating with four out of five stars for service!!!

I am so excited about that! It really reflects well on our store, and on me, so I'm pleased.
God has blessed me so much in regards to this job.

Well, I really need to go to work soon.
I'll write more later.

Jim