This is June

This is June, we worked at her home. She wanted some plants planted in front of her house and a tree to be planted in the front yard.

This is me and Dylan. I think he is from Iowa. He and I worked together to dig holes and plant the plants for June. He was very funny. I guess he writes for our company paper The Siren's Tale. He was asking June all sorts of questions!

This is how the little planter turned out! Pretty nice huh? I hope they are still alive! You know how I am with plants!

The Beacon Of Hope Resource Center

These women are volunteers for the Beacon of Hope Resource Center. They organized the volunteers who would be working the Gentilly neighborhood on Wednesday. The woman on the left is expressing her gratitude for our help. She had me in tears.

This is the group I was in on Wednesday. We walked down the street and the organizers would yell out how many volunteers were needed on each site or at each home. The home owners would direct us from there.

The home owners were contacted prior to our arrival in New Orleans. They were asked if they wanted to have help with their homes. Those who accepted received money to purchase plants, trees, paint, tools, whatever was needed to do improvements on their homes. Then we showed up to do the work!

Monday's schedule was packed with activities. I hardly took any pictures at all. Here is one of the convention center where we were waiting to enter the customer gallery. There were so many people!

The customer gallery was amazing. It was at times emotional. Inside there were walls with customer letters - good and bad - for us to read and relate to. There was an enormous wall of cups and 'cup phones' for us to listen in on actual customer calls to the customer care line.

Then of course the video about 'Bob' and 'not-Bob'. The conversations we all have to have about the difference in the way we treat our regular customers and the customers who don't come in everyday. It makes me feel bad to know that I haven't treated everyone with the same level of care and enthusiasm. That's what these conferences are for!

The partner gallery was inspiring. It provided new ideas for engaging and inspiring our partners. There are activities to do when back in our stores to help build a strong team which in turn creates a better experience for our customers. I look forward to meeting with each of my partners individually.

I participated in an executive round table with Troy Alstead, our senior vice president of finance. As a table we talked about the effect on Starbucks of the economy and what is happening on Wall Street these days. We also talked about store budgets, store manager bonuses and how new programs/promotions get thrown at us so frequently making smooth execution challenging.

An awards dinner for the South/Southwest Zone finished off the evening. The store managers of the quarter for 2008, store manager of the year and district manager of the year were announced and recognized for their work.

After dinner it was back out to Bourbon Street! Another late night, but we got to sleep in!

Bourbon Street

When we were done with the stores gallery we ate dinner and went down to Bourbon Street! Dawn, Lenora and I explored the street's various bars and souvenier shops. We then headed back to the hotel to meet up with the rest of our team who arrived at 10:30p. Luckily they were as JAZZED as we were to see what was going on, so we all went back to the party, found a cool bar called Bourbon Rocks and stayed out until 3:00a!