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Comment by JohnFen | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I see the point of this, unless it's just for PR.

Working a half day per month will tell you very little of importance in any workplace. And, if you're the CEO of the company and all of the other employees (and especially management) knows you're the CEO, working that half day will tell you exactly nothing.

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I think you'd be surprised what even a little manufactured exposure can do. It doesn't need to be undercover. At almost every company I've worked at that asks for feedback I recommend some version of this. Some things I think you could learn in only a few hours at a Starbucks:

  * "Wow that machine is a pain in the ass to use"
  * "3 customers got angry at me because ____"
  * "Making ___ the way Jane showed me was much easier than the training"
  * "I hate it when customers pay using ____"

Sure, there are a few things. That's why I qualified my statement. But they're necessarily going to be minor things, not the larger persistent problems that only become clear once you've spent some real time working.

I find as a customer just sitting in a restaurant/Starbucks setting for an hour or so I can point out a handful of issues. And they’re typically not even “issues” to employees, because it’s what they’re used to. It’s just operational changes that could improve the situation for them or the customer. There might be a few things behind the counter I don’t notice as well but I think the reason I notice them is because I’m under the radar. If they knew I was an exec watching things I’d be seeing something differently (in many cases).

none of those things listed are minor things, those things are the entire job.

no, a CEO isn't going to know what a clopen is like, but if they're responsible for people who are designing a process / choosing a set of tools / setting expectations for employees, being willing to step into the workers' shoes is a worthwile move.

As long as the customers don't know, I can imagine it might help.

Yeah, I guess I imagined he was looking for a whole-picture understanding, not just the customer interactions. But I suppose I was mistaken.

A customer is going to get banned from all starbucks on his very first shift for being rude.

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