Earlier this year, I went to a Starbucks event where Cliff Burrows, President of Starbucks Americas, gave a short and informal presentation.  He talked for several minutes, and for about one minute of his presentation, he reminisced back to the time when he was going through the Starbucks partner immersion experience.  As many may know, Starbucks requires a store-level immersion experience for all new executives.  There’s an article from CIO.com here about Stephen Gillett’s immersion.  (Stephen Gillett is the EVP CIO at Starbucks.)  This has been a tradition at Starbucks for at least a decade, if not more.

Cliff Burrows  did his immersion stint at the Queen Anne neighborhood Starbucks.  (I’m not actually sure how long the immersion lasts.)  Here is the audio of him talking about that, and  I’m sorry the quality of the audio isn’t too fabulous.  At times there’s a bit of laughter from the audience nearly drowning Cliff out! 

It’s less than one minute long, and it is very clear that Cliff is having some fun with the audience, and he is showing his sense of humor, but even so, I think it’s a gem of a minute of Cliff talking:

 Cliff_Burows_Queen_Anne_Clip

Enjoy!