This morning at seven a.m., the two on-duty employees of the East Village's Starbucks (the one at 7th Street and 2nd Avenue, not the two at 8th Street and 3rd Avenue) were doing their lame, terrible job of providing coffee to people who were awake too early to go either to Mud Coffee across the street or Taralluci e Vino on 1st and 10th, because places that serve decent coffee open ridiculously late because New York City is the city that never doesn't sleep in. There was as usual no one manning the cappuccino machine and they were playing really bad music and somehow, despite the light customer flow, there was a line growing, because they are incompetent. Fortunately, that nightmare may be over, now that Starbucks is closing 600 of its stores—a little more than 8 percent of its number of U.S. stores. (Please let one be that one!) Not that any of the some 12,000 soon-to-be-displaced-or-offloaded "employee-owners" knew that before the CEO announced it to investors.

Starbucks has a bit more than 16,000 stores around the world; around 7,000 of those are company-owned stores in the U.S.

Seventy percent of the stores being closed were opened in the last three years (there were 4,000 or so of those)—and the closings will, naturally, decrease the company's income, to the tune of at least $300 million. Hilariously, analysts are running around recommending that people buy this stock. Fat chance. Also? Starbucks will open 500 new stores in the next three years.

This is all complete madness.

The move didn't even play that well on the exchanges. Starbucks bounced up nearly five percent in early trading—a negligible gain after the stock's descent into the trash in the last year. You know what else went into the trash? Employee confidence, which at one time was incredibly high. Welcome back to the disposable workforce, everyone!

Fortunately, Jamie Bronstein, of the history department at New Mexico State University, has some stern words for deluded Starbucks employees, left in the comments of the Starbucks Gossip website:

Why would you EVER have bought the line that you were "partners" anyway? It's like people at Sam's Club actually believing that they are "associates." Partnership implies that there is some kind of equal power on both sides of the equation or that people have equal power to contribute on both side of the equation. When your contribution is making coffee for a living at slightly more than minimum wage, you are not a "partner," you are a semi-skilled-at-best, replaceable worker.

As Ford did in the 1920s with its $5 day, Starbucks really brainwashed its workforce into thinking that the company cared about them rather than caring foremost about shareholders and the bottom line. But at least Ford's workforce was intelligent enough to ultimately unionize. Not you guys.

YEAH, YOU STUPID WORKERS! Jeez, harsh, lady.

Speaking of, the Starbucks union is planning a day of protest next week over union organizers who've been fired by Starbucks.