"Yeah , yeah, I'll get you your frappuciono... AFTER I lecture you on Ferguson, MO"

And if I want a cup of battery acid, I’ll go to a garage.

Also, they might want to tweak their van paint jobs (though the current design does have a certain truth-in-advertising appeal).

<tips cap>

I hope nobody’s going to actually withhold a beverage until a talk’s been given.

That would be a “Stand Your Grounds” situation.

[QUOTE=from linked article]
Beginning on Monday, Starbucks baristas will have the option as they serve customers to hand cups on which they’ve handwritten the words “Race Together” and start a discussion about race.
[/QUOTE]
No doubt the actual quality of the conversations will vary depending on the participants (knowledge, earnestness, receptiveness, etc), but I don’t think coffee service will truly suffer (coffee delayed is coffee denied).

It’s strange, but…more rational talk about race can’t be any worst then holding private thoughts/assumptions/bubbles/prejudges, no?

We need a national conversation on coffee.

What’s great is that people have started by talking about Starbucks’ race issues

https://twitter.com/vidalwuu/status/577731504501055488
Starbucks needs to have a conversation with itself about race
Starbucks wants to talk about race in Philly’s upscale mostly white zip codes

Is Starbucks sure that they’ll like what their employees say about race? Those Oklahoma frat boys will have to work somewhere after they leave college, and it may well be Starbucks.

Umm. many things. Wow.

On the east-coast part of my road-trip there was a Dunkin’ Donuts (sp?) about every block or so.
Loved the coffee, the breakfast, and the conversations with employees and customers alike,
Starbucks. Nah. Their coffee sucks. Too bitter for my taste,
Oh. did I mention pretentious and over-priced?

I started reading this thread during a bathroom break (yeah, I took my phone into the stall, so what). Then when I exited, there was a black guy waiting to use it. I thought of engaging him in a conversation on Ferguson, but I figured he might have other priorities.

In related news, I was listening to “Forensic Files” on HLN (via satellite radio) on my way home from work. The episode was about a serial killer who murdered up to 20 people in the East St. Louis area over a decade ago. He was finally tracked down when he wrote an anonymous letter to a newspaper enclosing a map to show where he’d disposed of one of the bodies. They figured out the map had been downloaded by computer to an IP address described on the show as being “in a quiet, middle-class suburb of St. Louis”.

You guessed it - Ferguson, Missouri.

I think Schultz is trying to create this image of Starbucks as being where friends meet, and have deep, earnest, meaningful conversations about the issues of the day over coffee. He’s trying to make it about community, and much less about what it really is:

[QUOTE=Loach]
It’s always been busy. Stand in line. Give your order. Move over and wait to pick it up.
[/QUOTE]

I can’t say I’m against the general idea, but he’s swimming upstream against a pretty stiff current here, and this is pretty ham-fisted.

It’s closed on Sunday because the family that owns it is ultra-conservative nutso “christian” and they won’t employ or sell to a homosexual wherever they can get away with it. It made the news a while back, I don’t have one of these near me, either, but I pay attention to companies that publicly gay-bash.

I’ve been a barista. Not at Starbucks. If the CEO of the coffee shop where I worked “suggested” this, I would simply not do it. I wouldn’t debate, argue or complain about it, I would simply not do it. As I’m sure all the Starbucks baristas are simply not going to do it.

I would have to see a cite for that. They certainly have in the past given their money to organizations that are against gay marriage. No one can dispute that the Cathy family is right wing Christian. But I have never heard of the company refusing to sell to anyone or not hiring anyone. And they have made a concerted effort to distance themselves from making any political comments. One of the reasons why they have been pretty much out of the news since 2012. Cathy has put the business first and left the politics to his private life.

:confused: Cite for how “they won’t sell to a homosexual.”

“Excuse me sir. Before I sell you this fried chicken I need to ask if you are gay. Oh you are? No chicken for you! Next!”

There was a class-action lawsuit filed by a Chicago Alderman, I believe it was just before the Cathy statement incident, that claimed discrimination in both employment and service. In looking for it now, it looks like it was never substantiated and didn’t go anywhere. I just remembered the lawsuit from back then which may have only made local news, so didn’t follow up on it until looking for the cite now. So my memory from what I saw on the news is accurate, but the claims were never proven.

Maybe we can lighten this up with a story about the origin of the Starbucks logo?

Does this “conversation about race” include a white barista telling a black customer that Micheal Brown was stupid thug that got shot because he was a dumbass that tried to take a cops gun and race was at most secondary to incident ?

I’d pay $10 for a cup of sludge to see that one go down somewhere.

No doubt this approach is awkward and uncomfortable for everyone. But normal everyday people do need to be pushed into talking about racial issues and that will never be a comfortable conversation.

What I hear when people complain about talking about race when getting a cup of coffee is “I don’t want to be bothered with this at all.” And I find it selfish and offensive, because you have the luxury of not talking about it while I have to live with the consequences every day.

**billfish678 **, it would be awesome if a barista opened a discussion with a comment like that. And if I was a manager of a Starbucks, I would probably be the devil’s advocate to initiate conversation. Maybe then a white customer could jump in and talk about how many people can’t accept the fact that President Obama is an actual United States citizen. Or how often Mrs. Obama is likened to an ape.

Maybe someone like me could jump in and say that I worry about my beautifully chocolate-skinned little girl who wants nothing more than to watch anime and study linguistics, being treated like an animal because of her skin color. That where she goes to college (just got accepted to American University with a full-ride) was a real concern to us because of instances like that fraternity in Oklahoma.

Maybe we could have this conversation so that in 20-fucking-15 I can not worry about stupid ass racists messing up my kids lives.