A reprehensible outcome
The CEO of Starbucks has apologized.
The men, who have not been identified, were arrested on suspicion of trespassing. But Starbucks did not want to press charges and the men were later released, Commissioner Richard Ross Jr. of the Philadelphia Police Department said in a recorded statement on Saturday.
They were released at 1:30 in the morning. I think the arrest was about 5 p.m. – so that’s 8.5 hours sitting in jail.
The company apologized on Twitter Saturday afternoon. Later that day, while the hashtag #BoycottStarbucks was trending on Twitter, Kevin R. Johnson, the chief executive of Starbucks, released a statement in which he called the situation a “reprehensible outcome.”
Mr. Johnson said he hoped to meet them in person to offer a “face-to-face apology.”
He also pledged to investigate, and to “make any necessary changes to our practices that would help prevent such an occurrence from ever happening again.”
The thing is…if it were a regular restaurant with a high turnover, you can see why managers would ask people to leave if they’re not going to order anything. But Starbucks obviously has a de facto (at least) policy of allowing people to treat it as a living room and/or meeting place. People hang out there for hours. Everybody knows that. Singling out these two guys because oh noes they’re not white…it just doesn’t cut it.
Johnson’s apology would carry a lot more weight if he outlined concrete steps Starbucks was going to take. Explicit policies, explicit training. Disciplining the (blatantly racist) store manager that told these guys to leave and called the police. Otherwise it’s just hot air for damage control.
Uh, Rob: to me that last bit rather implies something along those lines. It remains to be seen how they follow through, of course.
Yeah Steve, I’ve become a bit jaded with corporations that get bad press pushing someone out front to offer a good sound bite and after that nothing happens.
Boycotting Starbucks is all very well, but the crucial thing is to do it while occupying one of their tables. Let the manager call the police because thirty people are “trespassing”.
The only problem I see is: is this Starbucks policy? Or just a rogue manager? If the company doesn’t move to fix the problem, then boycott.
I say that as someone who dislikes Starbucks – I think their coffee is awful and I don’t like the ambiance. I prefer a different, smaller, local coffee house down the street. The only reason I end up in Starbucks is if the town is too small to have another coffee shop, or if, in the case of a situation I ran into last summer, Starbucks is the only place I can access the wifi. (And no one has ever asked me to leave if I’m sitting there for hours with my only purchase being a bottle of water I’ve long since finished).