Not only is Starbucks known worldwide for its coffee, but it’s also known here in America for being “woke,” as evidenced by its publicly stated support for the violent Black Lives Matter “protests” that wreaked havoc on Democrat-run cities across America during the George Floyd demonstrations:
In addition to that, Starbucks also created a stir a few years ago when they announced anyone could come in and use their restrooms, even if they hadn’t purchased anything. The policy was put in place after backlash and accusations of “racism” erupted after the 2018 arrest of two black men on “trespassing” grounds for allegedly refusing to leave the premises of a Philadelphia location after an employee told them they couldn’t use their restrooms because they hadn’t bought anything during their visit.
“We don’t want to become a public bathroom, but we’re going to make the right decision a hundred percent of the time and give people the key,” Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said at the time, “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.'”
As we previously reported, however, the changes backfired quickly on the popular coffee chain as it opened them up to all sorts of problems. For instance, bathrooms in areas like Manhattan sometimes reportedly had to be closed for days for “prolonged cleanings” stemming from drug use in the bathrooms and “incontinent vagrant” issues. In Seattle, employees were said to have had to take “antiviral medications to protect themselves from HIV and hepatitis” after “encountering hypodermic needles on the job nearly every day.”
Between all of that and the occasional rioting and looting that has happened at some of their locations thanks to woke agitators, Starbucks announced this week that they will be closing 16 locations in Democrat-run cities due to crime and safety concerns, and noted that “there’s gonna be many more”:
Not surprisingly, instead of reflecting internally on their own poor decision-making they laid the blame at the feet of local Democrats for failing to aggressively fight crime and for not doing more to address mental illness and drug addiction:
And for those thinking this is a “go woke, go broke” thing, in actuality Starbucks will be closing “profitable” locations because they feel there is nothing they can do about the issues they’re dealing with and because employees simply don’t feel safe:
Concern about store safety was central to a letter to employees published on Monday from Debbie Stroud and Denise Nelson, two senior vice presidents of U.S. operations at the coffee chain. The letter cites several societal safety concerns, including increased violence and drug use in the area of the stores.“We know these challenges can, at times, play out within our stores too. We read every incident report you file — it’s a lot,” the letter said. “Simply put, we cannot serve as partners if we don’t first feel safe at work.”
In addition to the store closures (six in Los Angeles, six in Seattle, two in Portland, OR, one in Philadelphia, and one in Washington, D.C.), the “new” bathroom policy in the short term apparently is to make it a store-level decision by the manager as to whether or not to open them to non-paying visitors (which, ironically is what they said got them in trouble in the first place in 2018 after the Philly incident):
The company also announced that store managers will be allowed to decide if store bathrooms are open to to non-paying customers and that new stores will be redesigned for safety and workers will be trained on how to deal with active shooters and use conflict de-escalation.According to the memo, redesigns for safety will include “adjusting store formats, furniture layouts, hours of operation, staffing, or testing store-specific solutions.” The upgrades could also include bathroom occupancy sensors and alarm systems plus company paid ride shares for employees.
Employees at some of the stores that are closing will be reassigned to other locations.
Though the Democrat leaders the company blamed for their problems have not yet commented about the accusations that they’ve poorly managed their cities, I suspect that a very public war of words between the two sides will commence very soon, because leftists have a penchant for never wanting to admit it when they’ve done something wrong.
Whatever the case may be, the Dem on Dem infighting should be amusing to watch.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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