Starbucks has been the most innovative in the modern art of supple scheduling. The company has created a software program called Star Labor that allows head office maximum control over the schedules of its clerks down to the minute. With Star Labor, gone is anything as blunt and imprecise as a day or evening shift. The software measures exactly when each latte is sold and by whom, then tailor-makes shifts—often only a few hours long—to maximize coffee-selling efficiency. As Laurie Bonang explains, “They give you an arbitrary skill number from one to nine and they plug in when you’re available, how long you’ve been there, when customers come in and when we need more staff, and the computer spits out your schedule based on that.”22 While Starbucks’ breakthrough in “just-in-time” frothing looks great on a spreadsheet, for Steve Emery it meant hauling himself out of bed to start work at 5 a.m., only to leave at 9:30 a.m. after the morning rush had peaked and, according to Star Labor, he was no longer working at maximum efficiency. Wal-Mart has introduced a similar centralized scheduling system, effectively reducing employee hours by pinning them precisely to in-store traffic. “It’s done just like we order merchandise,” says Wal-Mart CEO David Glass.23