Life in America
A couple of guys go to Starbucks to meet a friend. They asked to use the restroom and were told it was only for paying customers. (Fun fact: I’ve used the restroom at various Starbuckses without buying anything, and no one batted an eye.) They hung out quietly chatting while waiting for their friend, and then…the police arrived and handcuffed them and arrested them.
Lauren, who asked that her last name not be used, shot video of the two men being arrested at the Starbucks just before 5 p.m. on April 12. She said the incident began after the men asked to use the bathroom and were told that it was only available for paying customers, which Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross later confirmed.
After the men had been “quietly hanging out, chatting and waiting for their friend,” she said officers entered the restaurant and asked the two men to leave, saying that they would be trespassing if they did not leave.
“The two young men politely asked why they were being told to leave and were not given a reason other than the manager wanted them to leave,” she told ABC in an email.
The men told the officer that they were waiting for a friend to arrive and offered to call that friend to prove that they had legitimate business at the restaurant, she said.
At that point, she said several officers began to move tables and chairs around the two men and take them into custody.
Notice something missing? The part where the manager asks them to buy something or leave. That never happened.
The friend for whom the men were waiting then arrived and attempted to intervene, but police told him the men “were not paying customers and thus were trespassing,” Lauren recalled.
“The two men stayed calm and did not raise their voices once. Everyone else in the Starbucks, however, was appalled,” she added.
Lauren said another woman had entered the Starbucks minutes before the men were arrested and was given the bathroom code without having to buy anything and that another person in the restaurant at the time of the incident “announced that she had been sitting at Starbucks for the past couple of hours without buying anything.”
Yeah but she had been sitting at Starbucks for the past couple of hours without buying anything while white. Apparently it makes all the difference.
Usually have a hard time finding a seat at Starbucks because of all the (usually white) people using their laptops. I wonder how many minutes of wifi do you get to go along with that high-priced watered down coffee?
Yeah, Pliny, I spent a lot of time at Starbucks last summer when my motel wifi wouldn’t work (and for some weird reason, every other coffee shop in Lincoln seemed to be having wifi problems, too). I bought a bottle of water and sat there for at least three hours. But…well, I am white. And no one is afraid of middle-aged white women (except maybe a handful of middle-aged white women’s husbands who have been caught doing things they shouldn’t).
The “bathrooms only for paying customers” thing is definitely the sort of thing a manager will use to get ‘undesirable’ non-customers out the door, as opposed to some sort of company-wide policy. I remember when Starbucks made it very clear it has no such policy after they got ‘net-shamed awhile back because one of their managers refused to let a little kid dealing with severe bowel issues use the bathroom.
And yeah, scruffy-looking white dude here, never once been hassled while waiting in Starbucks for my wife.