Posted on 05/11/2018 11:05:29 AM PDT by grundle
Starbucks Executive Chairman Howard Schultz said Thursday that Starbucks' bathrooms will now be open to everyone, whether paying customers or not.
"We don't want to become a public bathroom, but we're going to make the right decision 100 percent of the time and give people the key," Schultz said at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. "Because we don't want anyone at Starbucks to feel as if we are not giving access to you to the bathroom because you are 'less than.' We want you to be 'more than.' "
Two black men, business partners Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson, both 23, were arrested on April 12 as they sat in a Philadelphia Starbucks after not buying anything and asking to use the restroom.
The store manager called the police after asking them to leave — a "terrible decision," Schultz said.
Video of their arrest sparked outrage on social media and accusations of racial bias. Protesters stood outside and inside the Philadelphia Starbucks store where the arrest occurred.
"The company, the management and me personally — not the store manager — are culpable and responsible. And we're the ones to blame," Schultz said Thursday.
"We were absolutely wrong in every way. The policy and the decision she made, but it's the company that's responsible," he added. With Philadelphia Arrests, Starbucks Again Becomes Focus Of Cultural Debate
Schultz said the company had a "loose policy" around letting paying customers use the bathroom, though it was up to the discretion of individual store managers.
The company responded to the incident by announcing that it would close its more than 8,000 U.S. locations on the afternoon of May 29 for racial bias training. Schultz said on Thursday that the company brought in outside help to design the curriculum.
Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, is one of those helping to shape the training.
"Racism is deeply entrenched in our society, and any real effort to confront it means you have to be in it for the long haul," Ifill told NPR's All Things Considered last month. "It means you have to be in it seriously. It means not just training. It means monitoring the effectiveness of that training."
Schultz claimed that that was the case, saying the May 29 session is "the beginning, not the end of an entire transformation of our training at Starbucks."
He said the company was also working with Stanley Nelson, director of the documentary Freedom Riders, to produce a documentary that would "make sure that people understand: This is not a marketing thing, we're deeply committed to this."
Schultz also addressed the company's past failure to address racial issues in the U.S. with its short-lived "Race Together" campaign in 2015. The company had encouraged baristas to write "Race Together" on customers' cups in an effort to start conversations about race.
He said the goal was to "elevate the national conservation, the national discourse around race" after the killings of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and Eric Garner in 2014 had brought up "racial divide."
Starbucks held meetings among employees about race, involving workers sharing both "their pain" and "their bias," Schultz said, which spurred the idea for some type of outreach beyond the company's workers.
It didn't last one day.
"Within two hours, the entire initiative was basically hijacked by social media. Hijacked by hate, by anonymous people who just pretty much stole the narrative," Schultz said. They shut it down quickly after, mostly out of concern for safety of the company's workers, he said.
NPR's Code Switch rounded up reactions at the time, many of which called the campaign ill-conceived and too sensitive and complex a topic to start with a coffee shop cashier.
What kind of a public store or restaurant refuses to allow people to use the restroom, anyway? Nobody wants to use a public restroom unless they absolutely HAVE to. At my age, I don’t always get much warning before I need a visit to the restroom, and if I’m away from home, I’m going to hit the closest one, and woe betide me, if I don’t get there in time. Businesses that are open to the public should NOT restrict the use of their bathroom to those who need it. It’s just a part of serving the public. I don’t shop at Starbucks; their uppity atmosphere and leftist politics doesn’t appeal to me, but if, in an emergency, I had to use the restroom, and there wasn’t a closer one, I would use theirs. But only if I had no other choice. And I wouldn’t feel like I had to BUY anything. I do, however, understand them not wanting loitering, but waiting for a friend or associate, is not loitering.
And just remember to NOT flush.
I’m watching this and enjoying it. This ought to work well in San Franfreako. The homeless will come in and stay. On cold nights, the baristas will not be able to put them out in the street. If a White barista calls the police, she will be fired.
It will become very hard to find anyone willing to work under those conditions.
I’m enjoying watching starbucks put themselves out of business. The only way a business can work is if it has free market rules to operate in, and if its people are productive and can enjoy the benefits of their productivity.
.
Danger!
Danger!
Sanitize ........
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Save water!
.
I never go to Star Bucks for anything. The few times I have been to one for a regular coffee it was horrible. I can’t understand why their coffee is so bad. McDonald’s is a lot better and cheaper.
StarButz: “Crappuchino spill in stall #1.”
He's a cross between a bed-wetter and a pearl-clutcher.
Biggest bunch of bunk I've ever heard.
How does the CEO of a major corporation reduce himself to playing a middle-schooler SJW?
I don't drink coffee so I have never been to a Starbucks nor plan to in the future.
This is just one more reason to avoid it.
Starbucks will need to police the restrooms, to clean up after each homeless person takes their “sink-bath” in their establishment.
I’ll make it a point to visit them the next time I’m out and need to take a dump. Meanwhile, I’ll travel to the next block to buy Dunkin Donut coffee
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