Starbucks and racism

[Burning Petard]

The current news about bathroom access in Starbucks for those who have not yet made a purchase has me slightly bewildered.

I have sat in a starbucks establishments for more than an hour at one time in San Diego, Chicago, Philadelphia, Virginia Beach, New York City, Boston, Washington DC, I admit except for VA Beach, and the places in Delaware, it was all several years ago. Never have I found I needed some kind of key to get into the bathroom. Sometimes it was not easy to find, but there was nothing to prevent anyone from just walking into the business and going straight to the facility.
Is this now longer the way most Starbucks operate?

snailgate

[Big RR]

I haven't seen it either, but I do know that many fast food places in NYC and other places where there are a lot of homeless people restrict bathroom access (either by a key or entry code) to paying patrons only, so it wouldn't surprise me if Starbucks did this as well.

[Long Run]

There are a few SBs around here that require a key. Most do not.

[liberty]

To my way of thinking regardless the bathroom policy if it applies to all people on the premises it is not racist. Of course the rules may not be as I think they should be. My idea of rule-making is that they be fundamentally based on fairness, the same standard for all people regardless of race, religion or wealth.

But perhaps people of a protected class may have more rights than someone of an unprotected class. Maybe a black person has rights a white person does not have. Maybe a white person can’t tell a black person no.

I am speculating here based on the limited amount of information. The details of this story are being guarded like national security information. I understand they are suing star buck for them being arrested, but I am sure that was their fault to avoid arrest all they had to do was leave the store.

[Burning Petard]

Well, this is a 'local' story on my tv news. On the day it happened, the Philly CBS, NBC, ABC outlets [yes I am a snob that never watches Fox] that evening all had clips of a white woman and/or a white man stating they had been in this particular Starbucks many times and had never been required to make a purchase before they were permitted to use the bathroom. It was clearly a choice by the manager of this Starbucks to call the cops and make a complaint of 'trespassing'. Nobody has claimed this call was because of anything the customers did--no disruptive or objectionable acts at all--just being in the room without buying anything. And they did not even do anything the cops could call uncooperative. Such hanging around just to be in the place has been part of the Starbucks experience that the company has encouraged. The free high speed wi-fi provided by Starbucks is not to get bodies in and out of the store faster.

I am curious how Starbucks is going to work this special training on such a dispersed group of employees, with any real effectiveness. I was an 'industrial trainer' and it is a tough goal to change the behavior of employees at the interface with customers and do it broadly. It requires really good technology, well planed, and strong management support (when I was doing it the buzz-word was 'buy-in' ) at every level, with feed back loops to verify actual changed behavior. This instance means cultural change within the company that is in direct contrast to the general culture the employees are living in outside of work.

snailgate