Yea, you either ask the cashier or it’s printed on the receipt.
Eh… 80/20 on this one. I don’t fault the police for showing up and asking them to leave, but arresting and holding them at the station until ~2am from reports was not the right response. Walk them out, maybe a block away even if it makes the manager feel better and be done with it.
Spend some time in downtown SF or LA and you won’t encounter anything else.
I agree with that. 80/20 makes more sense. I think a lot of that can be chalked up to overly aggressive policing for sure.
That said, the manager of the store caused the problem. The focus needs to be right there. Everyone in his/her orbit should be asking wtf he/she was thinking and Starbucks should certainly be doing the same.
Yeah, this is one of those things where people are gonna need to learn that the police are far more likely to over-escalate a situation and cause some real harm–or even death–anytime you’ve got certain groups of people involved, and it’s better for everyone to avoid calling the cops to the scene for as long as possible until lives are genuinely in danger. Which is, uh, pretty unlikely to be the case with Starbucks loitering.
I mean ideally we fix American police departments to not be murder-hobos, but that seems unlikely to occur anytime soon.
I’m thinking you guys didn’t see the other articles:
The official reason was trespassing because they hadn’t ordered anything. But an eyewitness told NBC News she had been sitting next to a white man who had been in the cafe for 30 minutes without making a purchase, and that a jogger had come into the store earlier to use the bathroom without making a purchase. She said the men had been sitting quietly and playing with their phones. It was later reported that the two men were real estate developers waiting to meet an investor.
Same store.
Agreed. But do you blame corporate Starbucks for this or do you blame a racist Starbucks manager? I would imagine someone who is probably looking for a job about now.
Personally, I blame the manager, but I also blame every.single.person. who responded to this article with there must be more to this story, or I don’t see what the big deal is. These issues are not isolated… and this one just happens to have video and witnesses who gave a damn. Not everyone gets that.
If you allow irrational fears to become justification for things like this, or for police shootings of unarmed people, then shouldn’t creating irrational fear be a crime? #outlawfauxnews
I think blaming the manager is exactly right. And for those that want to demonize the chain, I’ve worked for a major retail chain; each store is only as good as the people working in it. Now, if the chain’s response is inadequate, fine, but is a boycott of the chain over this incident really justified?
From what I’ve seen most of the boycotting is local which is fine. I think Starbucks corporate did a great job in taking ownership of the issue and getting ahead of it with a swift apology. I guess they didn’t have to wait too long to see if there was “more to the story”, since there were eyewitnesses, actually in the real life video saying they’d been there for a long time and those two didn’t do anything requiring police attention.
I don’t know if the manager was fired or not, but it sounds like she is not there, which is good for her safety. She’s lucky this went down peacefully and the cops involved seemed mostly by the books and didn’t just start additional conflict because they could.
Just to make sure I’m clear, I’m totally ok with it if it were justified, I just think yelling “boycott” over every incident like this loses its power after a while.
On the flip side of that, I’ve always said that attitudes are top down. The question is, is the top in this case the manager or is there a larger pattern at work? If I were Starbucks corporate, I’d be looking at that right now to make sure there isn’t a bigger problem.
I too would like to know the history of that store. Starbucks as a corp doesn’t have a known history for racism, so it’s likely a local problem and maybe down to the one manager. The problem is, I suspect a lot of people would just take the discrimination and leave to avoid confrontation, but they shouldn’t have to. Those are not small guys. If this manager freaked out because a couple of sizable black guys showed irritation at a policy that, according to the people in the store, isn’t really a policy, that is not a reason to be afraid or call the police.
Black men should be able to show irritation without people around them calling it violence. I’m just assuming they were irritated because I would be.
If it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.
https://twitter.com/incantatricks/status/985923848813121538
Did they clear out the entire staff? Are the staff that normally work there all white? 4 people sounds like a full crew. Seems disingenuous to assume that was the reason.
If I was at Starbucks corporate offices, I’d certainly swap out leadership. But I recall friends who worked there back in the day, and picking up shifts from other stores was pretty normal.
It would be pretty strange for an all white store to go all non-white on the day they know boycotts will show up without intention. I hope corp. didn’t have anything to do with that sort of plan.
Oh, I totally agree. I thought it was just this one guy, however
edit - yep, I missed the tiny bit at the bottom
Does anybody really know how many Starbucks locations there are, and does anyone really think Starbucks corporate micromanages the staff?
I wouldn’t be surprised if that location is having problems getting people to show up for work right now.
The last time i remember Starbucks having a corporate wide issue,aside from Republicans getting angry every Christmas about their cups, was that weirdo thing they did with managers and the tips which went to court.
The original issue is probably manager specific, but the decision to replace all the white people with not white people on a boycott day that … could be a misguided effort from someone higher up. We won’t know for sure though unless someone reports on the decision because it could be local too like just who said yes when the phone call was made.
That definitely doesn’t sound normal. I mean, they may have left go of the staff after the whole ordeal, but that seems unlikely.