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Keep in mind that my grandfather supposedly said that ’sliced bread would never work out because it would dry out too fast,’ so it should not surprise you that I can recall thinking that $3 coffee would never make it either.

Now, twenty years later, it is like the comedian said, “I recently found a Starbucks inside a Starbucks.”

Anyway, making the news this week is Howard Schultz’s (Chairman of Starbucks) memo about how his chain has lost their way, weakened their brand, not listened to customers, etc. Evidently, a very well traveled site, Starbucksgossip.com which gets 10,000 hits per day, has been saying the same things for some time. The owner of the site feels vindicated by Howard’s acknowledgements of the chain’s problems.

The big story seems to be that Howard Schultz would even write such a memo. Are you serious? If he didn’t write a memo like this, almost weekly, I would be surprised.

If you work in HR, I think the message is that you should keep your ears and eyes peeled to local sites, like www.yourcompanyscrewedme.com and keep your own CEO up to speed on what is being said.

Other notes: In a recent taste test, McDonald’s coffee beat Starbucks. Theirs costs about a buck.

And, for those of you who actually clicked on www.yourcompanyscrewedme.com that was an example only.