I met Jaymie Lao three years ago in Los Angeles. She was employee #1 at Go Get Em Tiger, which is an offshoot of a well-known coffee shop in LA called G&B. G&B was started by Charles Babinski and Kyle Glanville—I mention them here since they’ll show up a lot in this conversation. Charles and Kyle are two former baristas who worked for Intelligentsia Coffee, one of the country’s leading and most innovative coffee roasters at the time. One of the things that made G&B and Go Get Em Tiger unique was that it was a coffee business started by actual baristas, people who had worked on the floor and interacted with coffee and customers daily.
Jaymie worked for Go Get Em Tiger for almost nine years. She served as their director of café experiences, which meant it was her job to make sure the stores ran consistently, but also to check in with employees and hear their ideas and aspirations. A lot of what informed Jaymie’s day-to-day work was her years of experience working as a barista and knowing first-hand what baristas face. I imagine this is a common hurdle in any industry—you can tell when a restaurant is run by cooks and chefs versus rich entrepreneurs who simply wanted to own a business, for example.
Jaymie’s approach to her job involved a lot of kindness, care, and a simple wish to be her employees’ biggest cheerleaders. And I want to say, before we get into this episode, that I’ve never had anyone recount such specific conversations with their bosses and leaders. Throughout this episode, Jaymie recounts, in almost shocking detail, conversations she had with both Charles and Kyle that reflect how powerful kind words and unabashed praise can be. It’s kind of wild the words we never forget. Here’s Jaymie.
Ashley: Jaymie, I was wondering if you could start by introducing yourself.
Jaymie: Yes, hello. My name is Jaymie Lao. My pronouns are she/her. I live in Los Angeles, California. I previously worked for Go Get Em Tiger for the past eight and a half years.
Ashley: What was your job at Go Get Em Tiger?
Jaymie: My job at Go Get Em Tiger was Director of Cafe Experience. I mean—an unheard of title, which just meant I did a lot of things.
Ashley: So let's talk about your coffee background. I would love to know how you got into coffee, but usually, I start these interviews with people's childhood experiences with coffee. So I was wondering if you grew with coffee in your house at all.
Jaymie: Yes, absolutely grew up with coffee in my house. It was a smell that filled every morning that I try to stay in bed and not go to school. My mom would make Folgers, auto drip. That was pretty much it.
Ashley: I love the association with the fact that you were in bed, trying not to go to school. Like maybe if I just sit really still, no one will notice I'm here.
Jaymie: Yes. I was a pain in my mom's ass for sure for never getting out of bed on time. I would sometimes sleep on top of my uniform so that it was warm, uh, for when I did actually get out of bed. It wouldn't like, shock my body because it was so cold.
Ashley: When I was in middle school, I would—this makes no sense, so just go with it.
I would set my alarm for really, really early in the morning and then put my clothes on for school and then get back in bed and then fall asleep for like an hour. Then right before I had to get into like the car for my mom to drive me to school, I would wake up like five minutes before that.
And for some reason, I would trick myself into thinking that was extra sleep. I don't know, but that's what I would do.
Jaymie: That's a good move. Maybe I've done that too. And even though I—well, even though I smelled the coffee in the morning, I never was curious about what it tasted like, because it was never offered to me. I never liked thought to like sneak sips of it until I was like a little bit older, so
Ashley: Do you remember when you really first started enjoying drinking coffee or enjoying that experience?
Jaymie: Enjoying drinking coffee? Hmm…
Yeah, I would say when I was in college, I began to enjoy it because a really good friend of mine who I met in college named Tog was really into coffee. He loved his French press. He loved his stovetop espresso maker, and, even though he was a grad student and I was an undergrad. Um, you know, he invite all his friends over to partake in his coffee ritual, and it was just nothing I'd ever experienced before.
Obviously, it was very different from the auto-drip that my mom would make at home. It felt very…adult.
Ashley: Tell me about how you started working for—I feel like we might interchangeably use these, or maybe I will and you're better about it. But I often associate G&B, which is a coffee shop in the LA market…what is that place called? Where it is?
Jaymie: Oh, the Grand Central Market.
Ashley: So G&B is a coffee shop in Grand Central Market.
And then Go Get Em Tiger is a chain of coffee shops with multiple locations in Los Angeles, but owned by the same people. So we might use those names interchangeably. I just wanted to clarify that for people listening who maybe don't know the difference.
When I was talking about interviewing you, you mentioned that you were Go Get Em Tiger’s very first employee. How did you start working for them?
Jaymie: Ooh. Um, it feels like I've actually been working for the company longer than it existed because I was such a huge fan of both Charles [Babinski] and Kyle [Glanville] for so long, even before I was employed by Intelligentsia.
It must have been at the beginning of 2013. Their pop-up at Sqirl was beginning to wind down and they were about to set up a brick and mortar at the Grand Central Market for G&B.
And at the time I was a retail educator for the Venice location [of Intelligentsia]. I remember when those two had left, they wanted to make sure that they weren't burning any bridges, that everything was on good terms. They made sure that everyone who was a manager or educator in LA knew that they wouldn't take their baristas.
You know, there's always this word poaching—I hate that word because it makes it sound like people don't have a choice in the decisions that they make for themselves.
But they made it clear that they wanted to make sure that if anyone from any of the stores wanted to work for them, they would absolutely connect with any of us first and just, you know, not like get the okay from them but like, ‘Hey, heads up, listen: we're going to hire this person or what have you.
When—and even though Charles and I were friends, when I got the call, I thought to myself, “Holy shit. He's going to take my best barista, Marcellina.” Like, I dunno. [laughs] I was just like, “Okay, I'm getting ready for it.”
Um, and when I picked up, he was like, “How are you doing? Do you have a moment to chat?”
And I was like, “Yeah, for sure.” And he kind of went right into it.
“Yeah, I was wondering if you might want to work together again?” And I was a bit stunned because I was fully expecting him to tell me that so-and-so is going to, like, they want to hire so-and-so from the store that I was at.
He proceeded to praise me in a way that honestly, in the time that we worked together, I never really heard not because—well, I just think that all of us came up in coffee environments where like you never heard what you did a good thing. You only heard when you did a bad thing.
He said to me that when he thought of all the people that he had previously worked with, who he’d want to work with again, I was the first person he thought of. Whether that be true or not, I will let Charles answer that.
Ashley: I’m sure that’s true!
Jaymie: [laughs] I was like, “Wow, that's really nice.” And he was like, “You know, no pressure. I'll give you some time to think about it.”
I really did need time to think about it because it wasn't an immediate yes. I wasn't looking for a job at that time. I was quite happy where I was.
And so when we finally met up and he told me what the idea was, um, that it was going to be a second brand that was going to be called Go Get Em Tiger. I was like, “Are you sure about that?”
And he was like, “Yeah, it's going to be called Go Get Em Tiger.” And I was like, “Are you sure?” And he's like, “It's…it's already…”
Ashley: It’s already done!
Jaymie: “It's already set.”
I was like, “No apostrophe?”
“No apostrophe.”
I was like, “Hmm…okay…”
Ashley: I love this. I love this inside early, like, “I don't know about this.”
Jaymie: yeah. I was being kind of an ass about it. But I had to ask that question because if I'm going to go along with it and represent this brand, I want to know why.
He told me all these ideas about what Go Get Em Tiger was going to be, that it was going to be different from G&B and that G&B is a bit more of an experimental stage. It's what the specialty coffee industry is looking at when they think about who is the best in Los Angeles coffee.
Go Get Em Tiger would have essentially the same menu but would be a fully realized cafe. Go Get Em Tiger was supposed to be the brand that was going to scale, that was going to grow, um, because they wanted to have 30 stores in 2020—I don't remember if it was 20 stores 30, but he said the number and I was like, “Oh, okay…” [laughs]
I fully knew what I was getting into from day one, but I didn't know if this was going to be immediately successful, and at the time I was already a salaried employee of Intelligentsia and, you know, he was honest with me. Like this would be a step down for me in that there weren't any positions apart from ones in the cafe, for now, [and] that were hourly and that I would be taking a pay cut. So I had to think about it for a bit.
The thing that really pushed me over the edge was I respect Charles and Kyle so much. And so much of what brought me to where I was at that time was everything that they had a hand in. And I didn't know what was keeping me there. And if I couldn't name what was keeping me there, then I should take this opportunity and see where it goes.
Ashley: Did you know, at that kind of early stage, that your career would kind of morph into helping build out like all these different locations, or were you just kind of jumping in on a leap of faith that like, “I think this is gonna grow. I think this is going to be something, and this is a risk, but like, I want to be part of this.”
Like, did you know what your career was going to look like at that point?
Jaymie: I had no idea. Absolutely no idea. It was more the latter for sure. I really just wanted to enjoy where I was, enjoy the people that worked with, and make really fantastic coffee.
Like, in the beginning, we were a multi-roaster and one of the things that I absolutely loved about being a multi-roaster was the way that we selected coffees was completely blind. All the coffees on the table were samples that different roasters across North America would send us and whatever was tasting best on the table was the coffee that we were going to buy and serve. And that was, at that time, really meaningful to me.
But I didn't think that I was like, going to grow into the person or the responsibility of replicating that.
Ashley: When did that start becoming clear that this is the role that either maybe you wanted to pursue or maybe somebody asked you, “Hey, like, this is where we see you kind of growing into?” Like, when did that role start becoming kind of apparent that like, “You're going to be the director of cafe experiences—go at it.”
Jaymie: It must have been in 2015 or maybe 2016. It was when there were only two stores still—so G&B at the Grand Central Market and then Go Get Em Tiger at Larchmont. And we had done—or we were going to do a pop-up in Silver Lake. It was very short-lived. It was in a location formerly occupied by a restaurant called Lucky Duck.
So we would call it the Lucky Duck pop-up. And at that time, the Go Get Em Tiger/Lucky Duck pop up was staffed with people who worked at G&B and not people who worked at Go Get Em Tiger. And there was like a technical reason for it, like a sort of legal reason for that.
But at that time, it struck me because there were so many people who like—and when I say so many people, there were maybe eight baristas at Larchmont at that time. But some of those baristas where people that I wanted to see grow and the people who were at the time shift leads at Larchmont, well, they weren't going anywhere.
I didn't know how to create opportunities for those people to grow into more responsibility. They never talked about leaving, but in my mind, they're doing the job of some of these shift leads.
I want them to be able to do more and to be, recognized for that and compensated for that. I remember calling Kyle just randomly while sitting in the office at Larchmont because I was so upset that these people weren't being considered for these positions. Lucky duck had already been staffed.
I immediately told Kyle, “Hey, if you haven't hired for—” oh, backtrack, some context: we knew that we were going to open up a store in Los Feliz, which is why we did the pop-up in Silver Lake—to have a presence in that general region. When I was talking with Kyle on the phone, I told him, “I don't know if you've already hired someone for the GM position—” at the time, I was the GM of Larchmont. “I don't know if you hired someone for the GM position of Los Feliz. But if you haven't, I would like to throw my name in hat, in the ring—” whatever you want to say.
At that time, I didn't really know how those decisions were made, so for me to even say that, I think he probably laughed at me for assuming that, you know, they're already hiring a GM for that store, especially if it wasn't going to open for like another year.
He was like, “Why are you asking me that?” And I told him, straight up, there are these people there, there are two people in this store that I want to see grow. And I really wish that they were considered for the Lucky Duck pop up. But I feel like the only way for people to grow is for me to leave.
As much as I absolutely enjoyed working with everyone at Larchmont, I knew that me moving was going to create paths for growth and he was like, “Got it. Well, Jaymie, if you want it it's yours.” It was like, just as easy as that.
And I was like, “Oh, um, okay.”
He's like, “But you know, there’s going to be a lot of opportunities. Like, we're going to open up a lot of stores,” and I was just worried about the timeliness of that. Like, I didn't want to like, make anyone wait for that. I had to express that because it was just bugging me and he heard me and understood what I was concerned about and appreciated me sharing it.
It was at that time that I was like, I didn't think that I wanted to work at any of the other stores until I saw people within my own store not being able to grow. I felt like I was taking up all the space, I wanted to move out of that space into a different space. And then when I was at Los Feliz it was clear to me that I cared a lot about making sure that there was consistency across like all stores in terms of like the service, the culture, those things were just paramount to me.
Ashley: And then that point is that when you folks kind of came up with this idea of like, we need somebody who can ensure that consistency?
Jaymie: I think it wasn't until the end of 2017 that I really was beginning to transition into this position, into a version of this position. I think I probably had like a few performance reviews with Charles and Kyle about where I see myself in five years and what is it that I want to do.
And I would speak really broadly about those things. Yeah like, “Oh, I want to be happy. Like maybe, I wanna have a family… like a house?” None of those things are really related to how my life changes at work. I just knew what I wanted the end result to be.
When Kyle had floated the idea of this position to me, I definitely jumped at the opportunity because I had said in so many ways, in almost all of my performance reviews, that I wanted to be able to replicate the style of service that we do at the store everywhere, because I think it doesn't require specific humans to do it. It doesn't require this configuration of me, this person, this person, this person…to execute the best service possible. I think we can teach people to do that. I wanted it to believe that that, and so I was like, “Let's do it. I'm ready to like, take that challenge.”
And so opening Los Feliz and being the GM of that store helped me to realize what was possible, like if that was even something I was capable of doing. I feel good about the work that I did there, so…
Ashley: I think a lot of people feel good about the work that you did there, and just in general.
Jaymie: Nice. Thanks everyone.
Ashley: I mean, yeah. I think so. I think that’s the general—I've never met a person who I'm like, “Hey, you know Jaymie Lao?” and they're like, “Oh yeah, her? She's the worst.” Like I've never heard that.
Jaymie: Oh, thank God. Okay.
Ashley: I'm going to take a larger poll after we release the episode and I'll report the findings to you.
But I think it is really interesting that you identified that, like, “I want to be able to replicate like how successful we are at serving coffee in this location. And I believe that’s not just about the math of these people all working together in a certain way—that it can be taught.”
And it does seem that combining your focus on like helping people grow and be happy and then teaching them and giving them the skills to execute this high level of service. You saw kind of the meeting point, the intersection of those two things.
Jaymie: Yeah, absolutely.
I wasn't sure if there were other people in the store that felt the same way. I truly felt like in those days, everyone who worked at G&B and everyone who worked at Go Get Em Tiger at Larchmont were like, “We are the only people that can do this.”
And I love that about them because they took a lot of pride in the work that they did, and they knew how special it was that people just kept coming back, but I think everyone who has worked in cafes knows what it feels like to bring a new employee into the fold and how difficult it is to either be that new employee or to be someone who works with that new employee where—are they going to figure it out? Are people going to be like, “I don't want coffee from that person because I don't know them?”
I firmly believe that those new people could do exactly what we were doing, but we needed to coach them into it.
Ashley: Yeah. I feel like every coffee shop I've worked at, in some way, there's this magical configuration of people where, like, you feel like you feel like on top of the world, right? We totally understand each other and we know what this is like.
And I think that as I've gotten older, I realized like, this is cool, this is fun. But like, people will come and go for good reasons—ideally. Sometimes for bad reasons, but people want to grow and do different things. People move, people just move on with their own lives. And like, we have to ensure that people who come into that new sort of position feel that they can be successful.
That it isn't just some some magical stroke of genius that these four people like work together really well, because I can feel also really alienating if you're that new person.
Jaymie: Yeah, it's incredibly alienating and it can sometimes create resentment among coworkers and that's awful. But I also think that when you're a more experienced barista, one of your responsibilities is to make sure that people have a better experience being a new barista—in any space, like a better experience than you ever had.
Because certainly most people's first experiences as a barista are never very pleasant. I mean, I can't think of someone who's like, “Wow, this was easy. And everyone loved working with me immediately!” That doesn't happen.
Ashley: Yeah. It's hard. Especially when you're learning how to make coffee for the first time. You're struggling maybe to do latte art or like foam milk. And you're like, “This is really hard. And I just want the support to know that I can do this. Like I can get to that point that you're at.”
I imagine that a lot of your job—and this is going to sound really cheesy—[involves] heart work, like a lot of just connecting with people and being like, “Why are you here? And how can I help you be successful?”
Like, how would you describe—I don't want to say, how would you describe your job, but how would you describe the way that you connect with people to help them be successful?
Jaymie: Yeah. I mean, you're right. That it does require a lot of hard work. How to describe my job…
Like, I dunno, I was a teacher for a long—not a long time, that's incorrect.
I was a teacher for a year and I feel like a lot of my job was to see what a person was doing and try to understand why they were doing it. And not to be like, “You're doing a bad thing and I'm going to admonish you,” but to step back and be like, “If this person's not doing well on a test, why is that? Is it because there's something happening at home? Is there something distracting them? Is there something that's getting in their way of their success?”
I imagine that that was probably a lot of your job.
Jaymie: Absolutely. Yeah, I remember in those early days being more involved in the hiring process. Now, the company has HR, who is homegrown HR— Ian Hamilton, what's up, former GM of G&B.
But in those early days, when we would onboard folks, do the walkthrough in the space, at some point we would sit down and one of the first questions I would ask people is what do you want to get out of your time in this company?
I never wanted to make the assumption that people were going to be there forever. I think that that's like an unhealthy assumption to make about anyone. That was a really important question for me to ask every single person, because once I knew what they like—and it’s not that they needed to have a firm response, but I wanted them to think about it.
It allowed me to ask that question again later in one-to-one or check-ins. And if I knew that someone was looking to grow into, you know, leadership positions, that was super helpful to me. Whether they were ready for it and or not, it kind of gave me purpose to create a path for them to get to that point.
And of course, at the end of the day, it's up to them to follow that path. Meet me there, but think just knowing what someone wants out of their time, wherever they are is super important. If they're not meeting the expectations to get onto that path, then I can be totally honest with them and they'll understand why I'm talking to them about that stuff.
On the other hand, if they're not interested in growing, but they have interests beyond the company or maybe interests that are coffee company related, but not positions that exist yet. For example, at that time, when I was initially managing Los Feliz, we weren't roasting our own coffee. And some people would come and they would say that they would want to roast coffee one day and it's like, “Well, we're not roasters—yet.”
I think one thing that was always important to me and truly it was always important to the founders of the company was for Go Get Em Tiger to be a stepping stone or a launchpad for someone to do whatever their next thing is, even if it's not in the company. So if you know, having Go Get Em Tiger on your resume helps you to get that roaster position, fucking great.
That’s what we want for you. Of course you should still do your work well while you're here and be present. But if you articulate, like this is what I want and I say, “That's not something that exists here. However, I know that this other company is looking for a roaster is like going to hire an apprentice roaster. We'll have you in mind now, and I can suggest those things to you.” It's not important to me that you stay here if the thing that you ultimately want to do is elsewhere.
Of course I would be bummed to like lose a power player. But I'm not gonna stop someone from growing that would—that would hurt me more.
Ashley: One of the reasons that I wanted to interview you was kind of on that premise, that notion—it almost seems that the ethos at G&B and Go Ge Em Tiger is very much about we want people to be successful and we're never mad at them for doing what they need to do to be successful.
And I often feel that's the root of why people feel resentful of their jobs—it’s that feeling that we are supposed to give our employers loyalty beyond reproach. No matter what, we're supposed to live and die by this company. And if it can't fulfill our needs, then like this is somehow our fault.
That's why people often leave companies and like, don't feel good about it. But hearing you talk about like, “This is okay if this is a stepping stone. This is okay if this is not the thing that you want to do forever.”
Number one: that’s very realistic, but number two: it also almost turns the focus on the employee, not the employer. So it's like, “Well, what do you want? And how can we help you get there?”
Jaymie: Yeah. I think a lot of the people that I've met and asked that question to never expected me to ask them that question. They just weren't ready for that question, but I'm like, “Hey, when it occurs to you, you just holler at me. I will listen.” And everyone around you, whoever your manager is at the time or your lead, tell them that too. That's important to say.
Ashley: Right. It's important to acknowledge that the people that work with us and work around us have hopes and dreams, or have ideas about what they want for their lives. This capitalistic working world assume that people are going fold themselves smaller to fit into their jobs, to fit into their roles.
But it seems like you're going to have a better time at work when you feel like you can unfold, like you can be all parts of yourself in a way that feels genuine and feels like it will be supported and that's not intuitive.
That requires someone like you, someone who's the director of cafe experiences to foster and I don't know that that's intuitive. So it's really interesting that you went into this job and started asking these questions without like—it seems like you weren't really coached in that direction. It seems like you kind of fostered that on your own.
Where did that come from for you?
Jaymie: Oh my goodness. I mean, I really have to give it up to Charles and Kyle, because, if I haven't mentioned them enough, they were the ones that empowered me to ask those questions.
And even though they didn't ask me those specific questions for myself, when I was learning how to interview folks—and by learning how to interview folks, especially at Go Get Em Tiger and G&B like, I didn't really mean something prescriptive necessarily.
It was me sitting down—and sitting down with Kyle and Charles, so maybe a little bit intimidating because there's three people that you're interviewing with. But in those early days when Charles and Kyle were doing the bulk of the interviewing, it was really important for them to get the most natural answers out of people.
And so it was incredibly conversational. There were questions that were similar to what I had asked, but it was during the interview process and not after someone's been onboard, like I'm asking someone after they've been onboarded and they're trying to get at like what they want in that interview process, whether or not it's something that can be fulfilled, doesn't make or break their future employment.
They just want to know that people want to do stuff, that they want to do cool stuff, that they're motivated, you know?
Ashley: Yeah, no, I get that. That makes sense.
Jaymie: But I also think that like, maybe my time a shift lead in the past, or just as someone's peer made me realize how important it was to have those conversations, because it's clear that coworkers know a lot about each other.
I don't need to know, as someone's manager, all the details of their life, but sometimes they do want certain things to be considered and sometimes someone just needs you to hold space so that they can be a better version of themselves in the space that they have to work in. I got to do that and I wanted to do that, and it was really fulfilling.
Ashley: I think that my very first coffee job, and I think I've mentioned this a couple of times on the show, but my boss was really great about telling people what they were good at. And I assume that that was part of this job. I was like, “Okay, cool. That's your job as a manager.” And it felt good. It was like, “Oh, someone's noticing the work that I'm doing and is telling me what I'm good at,” and also identifying things that I might not have noticed.
A couple of years later I was working at another job and I asked my coworker—I was like, “Oh, well, what do you think you're good at? Like, I think I'm good at this, this, and that…” she was like, “I don't know what I'm good at.” And I was like, “Has no one ever told you, has a boss never ever told you you're good at these things?”
And she said no. I think for me, that was a moment where I realized that the thing that happened to me at that first job was not normal. That was not a normal part of work, even though I thought it was because it made me feel really good. And it made me feel really empowered to be like, “Oh, I'm good at these things. Maybe this is the path I'll pursue because I'm good at X, Y, and Z. So maybe I'll keep going in this direction, or maybe I'll explore more skills that kind of involve this other skill that she mentioned I was good at.”
It just feels like for most jobs that we really don't focus on the people at all. We kind of like put people in place and then hope that the company around it will inform what they do next. But that's where these unequal ideas about what loyalty is about, what turnover is about—all of that comes from not treating people as people.
And it seems like, for you, because you were on the floor for so long—and I'm going to go ahead and say because Charles and Kyle were also on the floor and they're also ex-baristas, there is this deep sense of connection that you feel with people because you're making coffee with them for hours and hours a day—that never escapes you.
I have to hope. But also seems like it informed the way that you really approached your job.
Jaymie: I mean, tremendously. Oh my gosh, you learn so much about your coworkers, not from hanging out with them outside of work, but from working beside them and doing the special dance that you do when you're in a high volume situation.
I feel like my experience has been really, unfortunately unique in that I would have people like Charles in our previous job encouraging me to go for certain positions as were some of my peers.
But everyone was like incredibly qualified for the same position, you know? And then sometimes I see certain people who like…I recognize when someone is potentially like a good consideration for a position, but no one is telling them that. Like even their GM is not telling them that or their peers are just like, “Ah, who cares? They're just going to choose whoever, they're going to choose this person.” And it's like, “Nah, like everything you say like matters.”
Ashley: I don't know, if no one's telling you to believe in yourself—and not to say that you need external validation at all times, but like, it's hard to know what you are qualified at. It's hard to know what you are good at or what people see in you.
And I think as a manager of any type, your job is to be everyone's cheerleader in a way, your job isn't to be—I have to imagine that you thought of it this way, too. Your job isn't to micromanage, your job isn't to say like, “Hey, go like clean the condiment bar.” Your job is to be like, “What's happening around this space and who needs to be told that they're awesome. Who needs that encouragement? Who needs that power? Who needs to be seen?” Right?
Jaymie: Yes. Yes! I remember in probably in 2016 or 2017, um, Billy Hawkins, who was the operations manager before leaving, which meant that he did like HR related stuff and anyway, loved Billy. He wanted to make sure that people could express praise to each other. And he would always say things like “I see you,” when someone would do something like really cool in the stores.
Then that sort of evolved into these little note cards that we would write for each other. It was like, of course branded, like ‘Go Get Em Tiger’ [stationary]. And it would say at the top, “I see you,” in a really cute font. And then someone could hand-write a note about something that they had observed about their coworker throughout their time on the floor.
Anyone could write one to anyone that could be like store internal, it'd be store to store, management to employee and employee to management—it was great. But it was just kind of a reminder of that people don't say the good things enough. And even if they did, they don't stick. It's easy to focus on the things that people are critical about.
Ashley: I don't know. I hope people listen to this episode and take a minute to just like, say something nice to say.
Jaymie: Yes, please. Please everybody say something nice to your coworkers, to your friends, to anyone.
Ashley: Jaymie, thank you for taking time to chat with me. I really appreciate it.
Jaymie: Oh my gosh. Yeah. I had a lot of fun, just babbling on and on. Thank you, Ashley.
Jaymie Lao Wants You To Say Something Nice