Thread: Starbucks employees, customers express concern over new policy: 'I can't see how this

Originally Posted by Judy

Yeah, I hope it does, but I'm pretty certain they'll end up firing all those racist employees, you can't fix them, you can't train them. You have to keep them out of your business, they'll just sneak around behind the backs of corporate and do bad things, say bad things, and of course get caught on tape, bad for the victims, bad for other customers, bad for business. Just get rid of them. American companies can't pussy-foot around with this any more, you hire a bunch of illegal aliens and visa immigrants, you will get burned, sooner or later, by racism.

Racism is an old playbook that has found itself in civil society once again.

I want to know why. Why now, Why Starbucks.
People work at Walmart but there isn't a nationwide Walmart class on racial bias.

Why? Why school shootings? Why terrorism? There are bad people who do bad things to other people for no reason and a few wiggled their way into a Manager's position at a Starbucks when Starbucks had their guard down. GET RID OF THEM.

Why Starbucks? Because a good person caught it on a cell phone video and went public with it. And then another good person caught it and another. That was enough for Starbucks to realize they had a problem they didn't know they had. They'll fix it, they'll fire these people, and rightly so.

Originally Posted by Boomslang

Racism is an old playbook that has found itself in civil society once again.

You think it left?

Originally Posted by Boomslang

Racism is an old playbook that has found itself in civil society once again.

I want to know why. Why now, Why Starbucks.
People work at Walmart but there isn't a nationwide Walmart class on racial bias.

And WHO continues to play this PLAYBOOK over and over again????

What? No racial profiling in Africa? In Somalia? In Iran? In Afghanistan? In Japan? In China? In Mexico? In Guatemala? In Russia? In Syria? In Libya? In El Salvador? In Honduras? In Quatar? In New Zealand? In Australia? In Philippines? In North Korea?

We are the ONLY country on the planet who racial profiles? Did not fight for black people to have freedom and their right to vote...LOL!!! Did not fight, lose our blood, our treasure, our families? WHITE PEOPLE GOT SLAUGHTERED...FOR WHAT? TO BE TRASHED FOR ANTOHER 150 YEARS! DISGUSTING!

People racial profile themselves with their attitudes, their behavior and their choices in life. Racial profiling of "rednecks", "white trash", "good ole boys", "snowflakes", "yuppies", "druggies", blah blah blah, only black people and brown people are profiled...BALONEY!

I suggest people go visit Gettysburg, Antietam, all over Maryland and Virginia. 23 THOUSAND people lost their lives in 24 HOURS in Antietam!!!

Get off the racism rant!

The only thing that is NOT racist is OUR green money who everybody on the planet seems to want, or why would they not stay home and solve their own problems. Where is our reparations for ALL the TRILLIONS WE have worked for and have been forced to pay out?

The only thing that "found it's way in society" is THOSE who continue to stoke the flames, scream the preach and stoke the fires of hate for 150 years! Oh yeah, give me an "Amen"...let's keep it going another 150 years!

Oh yeah, hallelujah, let's preach slavery in front of a bi-racial couple getting married in the ROYAL place!

Good going...NOT

(Video at Link)


VIDEO: Reactions to new Starbucks policies: ‘It will be a homeless camp’





May 22, 2018

DML


People have expressed mixed reactions to Starbucks’ recently announced changes to their corporate policies, which allow anyone to use their bathrooms or simply hang out in their cafes even if they do not make a purchase.



“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 a recent speaking engagement for the Atlantic Council. “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.’”


Chris Holmstrom, a reporter at CBSLA, went out into the Los Angeles community to gauge public reaction to Starbucks’ policy changes.


Regarding the use of their bathrooms without making a purchase, Nicole McDonald said, “I’ve definitely done it. So I don’t see a problem with it.”


“I think it should have always been that way, especially because of the way racism is, you know,” said Desiree Mollere.

Starbucks’ policies were revised just weeks after two black men who did not purchase anything were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks.


Others expressed differing perspectives on the new rules at Starbucks.


“If you go into a business and you just sit there and you don’t buy anything, you are taking up space at the table,” said Melrose Larry Green.


Joe Selva noted, “You could end up having a squatters problem where you just have people coming and staying. I mean if they are going to do that they need to limit how long people can stay in there.”


CBSLA also sought opinions on the issue on their Facebook page.
One commenter said “it will be a homeless camp. At least we won’t have to deal with them on the street.”



Starbucks employees expressed concerns for their safety.
“We get attacked a lot. Hollywood Boulevard. So I feel like obviously if you get attacked then we have the right to say no. We have the right to say no and call the police,” said Starbucks employee Ayumi.

One family that Holmstrom encountered on Hollywood Boulevard totally supported the new policies.


“Bathroom and sit,” said Dolores Charles. “Sometimes you don’t feel like drinking the coffee or something and they let you stay, then I think that’s good.”



http://dennismichaellynch.com/video-...homeless-camp/

What's so sad about this is none of these other retail establishments do this, they don't lock their bathroom doors or hand out codes. They don't eyeball you to determine how long you've seen sitting in a booth waiting for someone. Dunkin Donuts doesn't lock their bathrooms. They don't monitor your activity in their seating areas. Most Starbucks don't even do what these few stores were doing and the article I posted stated that the stores not the customers and visitors were violating Starbucks policy. Also, none of the black people involved in these videos were homeless, using drugs, or creating any kind of disturbance. They were just there, they were black, hadn't ordered, 1 video involved a guy who was waiting for people and wanted to use the bathroom, the other 2 guys were in another city across the country and were just sitting at a table waiting for friends. They didn't even ask to go to the bathroom. They were just sitting there quietly at a table talking and they were arrested!!!

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Public Restrooms Become Ground Zero In The Opioid Epidemic

May 8, 201712:32 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered

MARTHA BEBINGER

FROM



A public restroom on the platform of the Central Square MBTA station in Cambridge, Mass., which people have used as a place for getting high.


Jesse Costa/WBUR

A man named Eddie threads through the mid-afternoon crowd in Cambridge, Mass. He's headed for a sandwich shop, the first stop on a tour of public bathrooms.

"I know all the bathrooms that I can and can't get high in," says Eddie, 39, pausing in front of the shop's plate glass windows, through which we can see a bathroom door.

Eddie, whose last name we're not including because he uses illegal drugs, knows which restrooms along busy Massachusetts Avenue he can enter, at what hours and for how long. Several restaurants, offices and a social service agency in this neighborhood have closed their restrooms in recent months, but not this sandwich shop.

"With these bathrooms here, you don't need a key. If it's vacant you go in. And then the staff just leaves you alone," Eddie says. "I know so many people who get high here."

At the fast food place right across the street, it's much harder to get in and out.

"You don't need a key, but they have a security guard that sits at the little table by the door, directly in front of the bathroom," Eddie says. Some guards require a receipt for admission to the bathroom, he says, but you can always grab one from the trash.

A chain restaurant a few stores down has installed bathroom door locks opened by a code that you get at the counter. But Eddie and his friends just wait by the door until a customer enters the restroom, then grab the door and enter as the customer leaves.

"For every 10 steps they use to safeguard against us doing something, we're going to find 15 more to get over on their 10. That's just how it is. I'm not saying that's right, that's just how it is," Eddie says.

Eddie is homeless and works at a restaurant. Public bathrooms are one of the few places where he can find privacy to inject heroin. He says he doesn't use the drug often these days. Eddie is on methadone, which curbs his craving for heroin, so he only uses the drug occasionally to be social with friends.
He understands why restaurant owners are unnerved.

"These businesses, primarily, are like family businesses; middle class people coming in to grab a burger or a cup of coffee. They don't expect to find somebody dead," Eddie says. "I get it."

Managing public bathrooms is "a tricky thing"

Many businesses don't know what to do. Some have installed low lighting — blue light, in particular — to make it difficult for people who use injected drugs to find a vein.

The bathrooms at 1369 Coffee House in the Central Square neighborhood of Cambridge, Mass., are open for customers who request the key code from staff at the counter. The owner, Joshua Gerber, has done some remodeling to make the bathrooms safer. There's a metal box in the wall next to his toilet for needles and other things that clog pipes. And Gerber removed the dropped ceilings in his bathrooms after noticing things tucked above the tiles.



1369 Coffee House owner Josh Gerber opens the bathroom door, which has a combination lock given to patrons at the front counter.


Jesse Costa/WBUR

"We'd find needles or people's drugs," Gerber says. "It's a tricky thing, managing a public restroom in a big, busy square like Central Square where there's a lot of drug use."

Gerber and his staff have found several people on the bathroom floor in recent years, not breathing.

"It's very scary," Gerber says. His eyes drop briefly. "In an ideal world, users would have safe places to go [where] it didn't become the job of a business to manage that and to look after them and make sure that they were OK."

There are such public safe-use places in Canada and some European countries, but not in the U.S., at least not yet. So Gerber is taking the unusual step of training his baristas to use naloxone, the drug that reverses most opioid overdoses. He sent a training invitation email to all employees last week. Within 10 minutes he had about 25 replies.

"Mostly capital 'Yes' exclamation point, exclamation point, 'I'll be there for sure!' 'Count me in!' " Gerber recalls with a grin. "You know, [they were] just thrilled to figure out how they might be able to save a life."

Safe spaces and hospital bathroomsLast fall, a woman overdosed in a bathroom in the main lobby of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Luckily, naloxone has become standard equipment for security guards at many hospitals in the Boston area, including that one.

"I carry it on me every day, it's right here in a little pouch," says Ryan Curran, a police and security operations manager at Massachusetts General Hospital, pulling a small black bag out of his suit jacket pocket.

The woman who overdosed survived, as have seven or eight people who overdosed in the bathrooms since Curran's team started carrying naloxone in the last 12 to 18 months.

"It's definitely relieving when you see someone breathing again when two, three minutes beforehand they looked lifeless," Curran says. "A couple of pumps of the nasal spray and they're doing better. It's pretty incredible."

Massachusetts General Hospital began training security guards after emergency room physician Dr. Ali Raja realized that the hospital's bathrooms had become a safe haven for some of his overdose patients.

"There's an understanding that if you overdose in and around a hospital that you're much more likely to be able to be treated," Raja says, "and so we're finding patients in our restrooms, we're finding patients in our lobbies who are shooting up or taking their prescription pain medications."

Many businesses, including hospitals and clinics, don't want to talk about overdoses within their buildings.

Curran wants to be sure the hospital's message about drug use is clear.

"We don't want to promote, obviously, people coming here and using it, but if it's going to happen, then we'd like to be prepared to help them and save them and get them to the [Emergency Department] as fast as possible," Curran says.



Ryan Curran, the day shift operations manager of police and security at Massachusetts General Hospital, stands in front of the bathrooms in the main lobby.


Jesse Costa/WBUR

Speed is critical, especially now, when heroin is routinely mixed with fentanyl. Some clinics and restaurants check on bathroom users by having staff knock on the door after 10 or 15 minutes, but fentanyl can deprive the brain of oxygen and cause death within that window. One clinic has installed an intercom and requires people to respond. Another has designed a reverse motion detector that sets off an alarm if there's no movement in the bathroom.

Limited public discussion
There's very little discussion of the problem in public, says Dr. Alex Walley, director of the Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program at Boston Medical Center.

"It's against federal and state law to provide a space where people can use [illegal drugs] knowingly, so that is a big deterrent from people talking about this problem," he says.

Without some guidance, more libraries, town halls and businesses are closing their bathrooms to the public.

That means more drug use, injuries and discarded needles in parks and on city streets.

In the area around Boston Medical Center, wholesalers, gas station owners and industrial facilities are looking into renting portable bathrooms.

"They're very concerned for their businesses," says Sue Sullivan, director of the Newmarket Business Association, which represents 235 companies and 28,000 employees in Boston. "But they don't want to just move the problem. They want to solve the problem."

Walley and other physicians who work with addiction patients say there are lots of ways to make bathrooms safer for the public and for drug users. A model restroom would be clean and well-lit with stainless steel surfaces, and few cracks and crevices for hiding drug paraphernalia. It would have a biohazard box for needles and bloodied swabs. It would be stocked with naloxone and perhaps sterile water. The door would open out so that a collapsed body would not block entry.

It would be easy to unlock from the outside. And it would be monitored, preferably by a nurse or EMT.

There are very few bathrooms that fit this model in the U.S.

Some doctors, nurses and public health workers who help addiction patients argue any solution to the opioid crisis will need to include safe injection sites, where drug users can get high with medical supervision.

"There are limits to better bathroom management," says Daniel Raymond, deputy director for policy and planning at the New York-based Harm ReductionCoalition. If communities like Boston start to reach a breaking point with bathrooms, "having dedicated facilities like safer drug consumption spaces is the best bet for a long-term structural solution that I think a lot of business owners could buy into."

Maybe. No business groups in Massachusetts have come out in support of such spaces yet.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...pioid-epidemic

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