Starbucks’ ‘Everyone Invited’ Policy Floods Stores With Homeless, Used Needles
By Conservative Tribune. After a Starbucks manager in Philadelphia screwed up big league and had two men arrested while they were waiting for a friend because they wanted to use the bathroom without making a purchase, the Seattle coffee giant has decided the best way to rectify this is to turn the restaurant’s bathrooms into public lavatories, free for everyone. . .
Other people were probably more adept at guessing what the problems created by this might be. And, as it turns out, the Wall Street Journal managed to chronicle some of the issues — including drug needles, drug needles, and even more drug needles. . .
“Drug use wasn’t happening in the bathroom every day, but it was definitely something that was happening once a week. The cops were called a lot,” said Darrion Sjoquist, a 21-year-old former barista who worked in one of the chain’s Seattle stores two years ago.
He describes getting pricked by a needle once while taking out the trash. At the time, it was bad enough that other Seattle Starbucks employees “asked Starbucks to install Sharps containers — the kind of locked boxes found in doctors’ offices — in the bathrooms, to encourage drug users to properly dispose of their needles.”
While drug use was the biggest problem for employees, “defecation outside the toilets” was also an issue. (Read more from “Starbucks’ ‘Everyone Invited’ Policy Floods Stores With Homeless, Used Needles” HERE)
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As Starbucks Closes for Bias Training, Black-Owned Coffee Shops Open Their Doors Wider
By NBC News. In nearly a decade of owning coffee shops in the city, Blew Kind has learned the rhythms of East Kensington, her working-class neighborhood that has felt the strain of the opioid crisis and the pull of gentrification.
Once in a while, people come into her business, Franny Lou’s Porch, just to use the bathroom, or they sit down without ordering anything. Kind, 30, offers them water and allows them to linger. . .
The welcoming vibe at Franny Lou’s, where lattes are named after historic leaders of color, presents a stark contrast to the incident that unfolded in a Starbucks a few miles away last month, when two black men were arrested after a white manager called police on them as they waited for a business associate.
The arrests spurred protests against Starbucks and the Philadelphia police, as well as calls for the city’s coffee drinkers to support small, black-owned coffee shops instead. Franny Lou’s customers shared stories on social media about how Kind offered a “safe space”; one patron left a handwritten note: “I’d rather give my coins to Blew & crew than racist Starbucks.”
Now, as Starbucks plans to close more than 8,000 locations across the country on Tuesday afternoon for “racial-bias education” for the staff — which could cost the Seattle-based coffee chain an estimated $12 million in revenue — owners of small coffee shops from Philadelphia to Sacramento, California, see both a financial opportunity and a chance to emphasize their value to the community. On the same day, Kind and other black owners of Philadelphia coffee shops will take part in a roundtable discussion at Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse to promote inclusivity and racial justice. (Read more from “As Starbucks Closes for Bias Training, Black-Owned Coffee Shops Open Their Doors Wider” HERE)
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