The Starbucks thing

I was being serious. I love abortions. And I love privlege. It’s not a lecture. I love onion rings. Not romantically but good crisp onion rings like at Gary’s in West Orange

 

Nobody tell him.

 

Rebecca DeMornay agrees

 

If this has been suggested before I apologize. Didn't want to plow through 10 pages.

Starbucks wrote the book on slumming in their stores. They were among the first to have free Wi-Fi, comfortable chairs and couches, chess boards and by the way, coffee. So no Starbucks manager can really bitch if anyone of any color plops down and sits a spell. It's the vibe they created.

 

Exactly, and unless other examples have been covered up (which I can't see in this day of share everything on social media), it sounds like the Philly incident is an isolated one. Certainly doesn't make what that Philly manager did acceptable, but it does seem like a kneejerk reaction.

 

I can tell you my son is a Starbucks barista and is training to be a supervisor, and he was stunned to hear how this went down. It's totally against Starbucks policy and philosophy.

 

If the barista or manager or whatever called the cops two minutes after the guys arrived, God help me, but put that person on a ice floe and shove em out to sea.

 

I noticed a placard on a table in one of our Starbucks stating it is reserved for paying customers. I sat there for about 20 minutes without ordering because the person I was meeting was running late and no one said anything.

But I'm an old white dude, so why would they?

 

It's obviously a location by location thing, though, right? In the Starbucks in my small city, I'm guessing you could sit in the corner all day without a word, and probably build a pillow fort that took up 1/4 of the building without getting much pushback.

Downtown Philly is obviously going to be different, and, I'm sure, draw 1000x the traffic of the coffee shop in my little town. I remember going to a Fox and the Hound on a Saturday in the Old City area of Philly a few years ago and being struck how many rules there were about simply eating. Each TV had a strict schedule about what games it would show when, compared to a bar in my town where you can ask for anything to be put on almost any TV at any time.

Hanging around a sucking on a soda for the entire second half of a game was not allowed. It felt like a Vegas sports bar where (at least in my experience) you have to be actively drinking, eating and ordering to keep from getting kicked out.

I don't have a problem with a company applying a location-by-location approach to this.

 

I think so. My experiences in big-city Starbucks are very limited and it's usually been a "grab and go" situation where I wasn't planning on sitting for a while. I'd imagine they have more issues with homeless people coming in just to use the restroom, which I guess is why the manager said customers only for restroom. I've never been in a Starbucks like that where I had to get the key or a code to enter the restroom. Oddly though, the Subway near where I used to work had a key to use the restroom, and you had to buy something (or at least place an order) in order to use the restroom. I was a regular there and I still had to order before they'd give me the key to the restroom. But again, that area has a huge homeless population and they hang out around that Subway and other restaurants on that stretch of street.

And like I posted earlier, I've sat in many a Starbucks for a couple of hours at a time working on a story and never been bothered or seen anyone bothered. In fact, I think the only time I've ever been approached was in a Tallahassee Starbucks and the barista just came to ask me if I'd like a refill on my coffee.

 

I don't know Philly at all, others here do and can elaborate, but the news articles describe this as quite a ritzy area and not exactly diverse the way you'd think of the city.

Even though Philadelphia has a large African-American population, Rittenhouse Square is one of its whitest neighborhoods. The charges of trespassing against these two black men have to be viewed through that lens. Suspiciously Black in Starbucks - CityLab

And from VisitPhilly.com: One of five original squares planned by city founder William Penn in the late 17th century, Rittenhouse Square is the heart of Center City’s most expensive and exclusive neighborhood. https://www.visitphilly.com/things-to-do/attractions/rittenhouse-square-park/

 

Dear guy across from me … | Jeff Pearlman