Starbucks to Close All U.S. Stores for Racial-Bias Education
news.starbucks.com
news.starbucks.com
The cops came, and eventually arrested them after they refused to comply with instructions. They were taken to the police station, but Starbucks did not intend to press charges so they were let go.
What am I missing here? What is the correct play for dealing with a non-customer that refuses to leave your store?
There is an unwritten contract between any cafe and the public: purchasing any item - even the tiniest coffee - and you also get the option of staying at the cafe for a period of time. Refusing to leave, or to purchase something, violates that contract.
Because they were being asked to leave on a discriminatory basis.
> Refusing to leave, or to purchase something, violates that contract
Attempting to enforce a contract with racial bias is illegal and, ultimately, unenforceable.
Why did Rosa Park not give up her seat? Or Why did Gandhi choose to be thrown out of the train rather move out of first class?
Because they knew that they were being treated unequally.
actual. written. rules.
So even though she paid her fare, the rules at the time were that she had to give up her seat when asked.
So not the best counter-point, unless you agree that, whether or not money has been paid, and written or not, bullshit is bullshit. And getting kicked out of a cafe when there are other peaceful loiterers who were not also kicked out, is bullshit.
edit: gratitude, not appreciation, silly me.
what happened afterwards is what made it a historic act. Before the year-long bus boycotts began, she was just some black lady who got arrested for disobeying the law.
Regardless, Starbucks has explicitly stated they do not have this policy, so your opinion of unwritten coffee house expectation is wrong and immaterial.
Do you understand why they called the police in the two black men loitering, but not on any of the white people in the store who were also loitering?
I'm sure lots of people have been asked to leave at lots of starbucks of all stripes. And then they did, so it didn't get to the trespassing/police part.
We also have a few 911 responses (paramedics, Public Safety), generally involving homeless as well.
This is in suburban Sunnyvale.
These people were asked to leave and stayed 20 minutes after that, until the police showed up, who also repeatedly asked them to leave, before finally removing them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/8cysu4/starbucks_will...
No, that's not the definition of loitering. They had a purpose to be there. They were waiting for a friend.
As usual, rules become guidelines for the privileged.
the original videos of the situation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdFJAKFvVNs) only goes so far in terms of clarification. it certainly seems like management overstepped at some point, but when?
That's what the Starbucks manager did wrong - the men knew they were being asked to leave because they were black men, not because they didn't order. They weren't causing trouble and weren't doing anything different from the white patrons - during the arrest some white patrons were pointing out that didn't order either yet weren't asked to leave.
Do you have a link for this? My understanding was that one of the men asked for the bathroom code and was told the bathroom was for paying customers only. When he sat down, the manager called the police. I haven't seen any indication that management actually asked them to leave (but I certainly may have missed it).
I can't understand why they refused to leave
They were waiting for the rest of their party to show up.
From being told about it, he was refused the code because "the bathrooms are for customers," then started recording on his phone as he asked a white guy leaving the bathroom whether he'd ordered anything and whether he'd had any problems when he requested the code.
The argument is not nor has it ever been, "is a patrons only policy wrong?" The argument is "telling patrons they don't have to purchase an item every time they are in your store and then abrogating that agreement only if you're black" is wrong and illegal, and secondarily (not that you even asked) that the cops should not have arrested anyone once they got there; they should have deescalated the situation. The bystanders were right, and the authority figure was wrong; they listened to the wrong people.
As far as what you've read: in this moment they were meeting a friend. Waiting to order your coffee until your friend gets there so you're drinking coffee together is polite, and is kind of the whole point of meeting for coffee. Meeting for "oh I already finished my coffee, now isn't this awkward" isn't a plan I've ever made.
> What am I missing here? What is the correct play for dealing with a non-customer that refuses to leave your store?
State that up front and enforce it without a racial disparity.
Starbucks want people to always come to their stores to meet and hang out because they sell more coffee that way. It's in their interest to not enforce a purchaser only policy.
The Rastas have a word for this: Babylon. While it exists, no black person can ever be free.
Simply put, why close business when these trainings can be done staggered or off store hours? That's my line of thinking.
Closing 8,000+ stores for an afternoon feels like a sizable response, and I am going to suspend my cynicism for this and recognize that they do give a damn (even if it is influenced by PR).
The question is are they making a real sacrifice at that amount or paying a small sum for the PR?
If you don't spend the night in jail, then you have one data point suggesting not PR.
Have a reasonable sample of people repeat the experiment in multiple locations and multiple times and carefully record and report the results to you.
Collate the data points and report on the number of people arrested during the experiment.
Feel free to include Starbucks in a tweet about your results when you publish.
This whole thing is going to have huge variation between locations. Suburban or drive - to locations often don't ever lock the bathrooms, while ones in cities are more likely to.
They didn't cause problems. The problems were brought to them. They were just sitting and waiting for a friend.
Not all of us like to respect unjustified requests, especially when there's a reason for doing what we're doing.
You leave when requested or you are trespassing. It is that simple.
Even buying a coffee doesn't entitle you to stay against the owner's wish.
Why did they look homeless? Because they were bearded black men?
Your sophistry is all about equating asking a homeless smelly white dude with two perfectly respectable men waiting a couple minutes for their third to arrive.
When you go out with someone to eat, do you order as soon as you arrive and begin to eat even if the other person hasn't shown up yet?
In any case they should have left when they were asked to and just waited outside like a normal person. I've seen baristas ask white people to leave and all of them did without any issues. Why wouldn't those guys leave? Why did they cause problems?
Isn't it unusual for guys to go out and about wearing sweatpants. I haven't seen guys other than the homeless do that if they're not at the gym.
No.
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/8cysu4/starbucks_will...
The guys had ~20 minutes to leave before the cops showed up, and still refused after the cops asked several times. Per the police commissioner:
> On 3 different occasions, officers asked the males politely to leave the location because they were being asked to leave by employees because they were trespassing. Instead, the males continued to refuse as they had told the employees previously, and they told the officers that they were not leaving. When the call was initially made the Starbucks employees had told the males that they were going to call the police and they said go ahead and call the police we don't care. So the police get there and they are confronted with the same type of attitude. They repeatedly told that they were not leaving. In fact, there's some alleged rhetoric about 'you don't know what you're doing, you're only a $45,000 a year employee' or something to that regard.
Why even get involved with anything happening on the other side of the counter? Take the money, dispense the coffee, collect your paycheck, and read the community-college catalog so you can get the hell out of there someday!
If someone is genuinely "in the way", people will repeatedly jostle past them annoyingly until they get the hint. It's a self-correcting system.
If someone is such a foul presence that they're driving away customers, that's Starbuck's problem, and not really a big one for them either. You as the manager, meanwhile, have less to do because of it, not more; use that time to read the community-college catalog.
If someone is actively threatening or harassing someone else, yelling at the top of his lungs, or committing some other actual literal crime, THEN you call the cops.
2. Are all retail locations of all businesses now expected to let anyone use the restroom for free? I do not know the specifics of this story other than "black person tries to use the bathroom, isn't allowed, doesn't leave, gets peacefully removed from premises". If a store doesn't let people use the restroom for free, isn't that their prerogative?
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/17/us/philadelphia-starbucks-911...
I believe you are incorrect.
Two men wanted to use a SBUX restroom without purchasing anything. I guess they had to ask for a key or something? Otherwise how would sales intervene? Anyway, they were told they weren't paying customers so they couldn't. They then squatted and cops were called.
I really don't know the details, and it's easy to assume either or both parties were asinine. Maybe they really were doing nothing wrong, or maybe they were disturbing customers. No news I've read characterizes the incident. In any case, even if an employee handled it poorly, it sounds like an overreaction.
Well, we can rule that out because you can hear other customers telling the police they did absolutely nothing.
Also, the reason for being in the store in the first place is that they were waiting for a friend. They had a purpose to be there.
Other patrons who were there at the time said they were not disturbing anyone nor doing anything different from other customers - some of which have not ordered either but were not asked to leave.
Does anyone else kinda just hate all capital-B Brands now, as they increasingly pull this crap? Or is everyone else falling for it, actually having their opinions about these Brands influenced by the grand public gestures they make, spending tons of money on PR people to spin said gestures in the most positive way possible?
Is there really a secret anti-black undercurrent in the management staff in any reasonable number of SBUX locations, such that this grand gesture of corrective action actually has any demonstrable effect on anything at all, aside from making people think more positively about SBUX as a brand?