The point is that if you have that conversation in the line at Starbucks all you will accomplish is pissing off the guy behind you who only has a few minutes to grab a cup of coffee on the run so he can get back to work. Slowing down service so people can talk politics and race does not seem like a good business model to me.
And if I was the manager of a Starbucks, I’d be more concerned with maximizing sales and customer satisfaction while minimizing controllable costs, not with “initiating conversations”.
This old white guy agrees in theory, grayhairedmomma.
It must follow, then, that when I engage you in a discussion on the ravages waged upon my immediate family by the Nazis during WWII and how that violence resonates to this day and has filtered how many ethnic Jews relate to everyone on the planet who is not a Jew and how the complexities of being held personally responsible for the full measure of deprivations and rage by every African-American for the ills rained down upon THAT social group create a layered tsunami of guilt that is fairly paralyzing, you’ll be more than patient and understanding, interested and engaged.
The fact that you are already running late for a job interview that may well change the course of your adult life is of exactly zero interest to me.
I’ve got shit to talk about, you’re standing in front of me, you had just best deal.
It doesn’t really work, does it?
Couldn’t agree more. Painful dialogue needs to occur. But not in this manner and not in this venue.
Voting against this policy with my wallet by buying my coffee elsewhere will mean I’m a racist last-century archaic white motherfucker just because I chose not to go into Starbucks to buy my morning cuppa and risk repeatedly being “engaged”.
That doesn’t work either.
(bolding mine)
What do you think we’re all doing right here, right now? What do you think was going on in living rooms across the country during the riots and protests?
While you have my complete and utter sympathy, and while I wholeheartedly agree with your points about the baseless ugliness that the Obamas face, the point most of us are making is that it’s counterproductive at best to force this kind of conversation onto a person who’s in a hurry to complete a simple business transaction. As Anne Neville pointed out upthread, it won’t even go over well with folks who are already in complete and utter agreement with you, let alone with anyone else – and those are the folks with whom you WANT to have this conversation, right? The ones who don’t already agree with you? So don’t start the conversation knowing up front you’re picking the absolute worst time & place to do so.
Congrats to your girl on her scholarship, by the way. 
Of course the conversation is relevant and necessary. As a former barista, I can tell you it could not happen while I was working 3 machines, steaming 2 pitchers of milk at a time and having drink orders pile up with 20 out the door waiting for their drinks. It’s such a tone-deaf statement for that CEO to make, so out of touch with what a barista is doing just to fulfill their job making drinks. The guy needs to spend some time at a store behind the machines, with no one treating him like a CEO and see if he can do all that and have a conversation about anything.
Yeah that’s the other component I was thinking about. On one side you have a bunch of customers who just want to grab a cup of coffee. On the other you have employees busting their ass to fill orders. Maybe the CEO wants his stores to be quiet neighborhood hangs with lively conversation. In reality they are busy stores with lines and employees attempting to get orders filled as quickly as possible. It makes me wonder when he was last in a Starbucks.
I agree that the notion that Americans would have productive conversations about race in this context is silly. But I think the error here was the CEO’s ignorance about the nature of racism rather than ignorance about the business economics.
Starbucks sells a luxury good: overly expensive coffee that you have to wait in line too long to get. The business of selling luxury goods is very different from selling other things. You aren’t competing on price and efficiency. You are selling an idea, an experience. That’s why Starbucks pays so much attention (and spends so much money) on ambiance and carefully controlled experiences. That’s why they make their coffee distinctive by over-roasting it.
For well over a decade, Starbucks has branded itself as a business with a social mission. They pay their employees well. They buy fair trade coffee. They are Seattle. So it seems entirely consistent with their luxury brand image to try to market themselves as being productive on racism. If there’s a trade-off with efficiency, or annoying some customers, that stuff doesn’t really matter if it perpetuates whatever ideas underly Starbucks as a luxury good.
And yet, you know what we Seattlites really dislike?
(Underline added)
Bullshit. Err… I mean “cite”. (Damn auto-correct.)
“When getting a cup of coffee” is the key here. I think it’s offensive, and incredibly stupid, to fuck with people when they’re trying to eat, or caffeinate themselves. It’s redickuless to expect your employees to stop serving long lines of customers in order to push your personal agenda. There are other times, and other places, to have this, or any other, conversation.
In short, I might discuss your racist problems online, on a bus, on a train, or on a plain, but I expect to eat and drink in peace.
Caffeine-addicted people are grouchy before they’ve had caffeine. Trying to talk to them about race or any other social issue, when they want their coffee, is very bad timing. Just saying.
What if the Starbucks’ employee who is told to talk to customers about race happens to be racist? It could be a recurring character on Conan, racist barista.
Cartooniverse, I’m wondering why you think references to the Holocaust are relevant here? Are we not allowed to talk about racism against black americans without playing a game of one-upsmanship?
purplehorseshoe, thank you. She’s extraordinarily happy.
As a coffee-fiend myself, although not Starbucks, I get the desire to just get it and leave. But, I’m willing to slow down a little bit to talk about something this important.
What about the ten people behind you in line?
It was in the context of his comments on the relationship between Jews and African-Americans, therefore fair game in a discussion about race - point being (I think) that the issue of race in America is complex and therefore relatively little progress can be made before the people in line behind you start yelling at you to get the fuck out of the way so they can get their coffee.
I am totally applying to Starbucks tomorrow.
Exactly, if we’re going to have an open discussion of race in America while in line at a fast food restaurant, then it’s all on the table, including the antisemitism of Zulu Shabazz and the New Black Panthers; the experience of recent Korean immigrants in black communities; the legacy of Jim Crow; the fact that some Native American tribes fought for the Confederacy; and the war on drugs. Once we decide to open it all up, you don’t get to choose where the conversation goes.
Lateral move?
Unfortunately, yes.
“I’d like for this topic to be pay forwarded to the next guy. Can I do that?”