Starbucks seeking volunteers for sociology experiment
Previously Starbucks’ customer base had its own individual criteria for choosing a favorite coffee spot among the company’s many outlets. It might be a comely barista, the pastry selection or the free Wi-Fi signal’s clarity. For the immediate future, however, I suggest abandoning all criteria but one: The strength of the cellphone connection, because chances are you’re going to need it.
Since two trespassers were arrested in a downtown Philadelphia Starbucks in April, the corporate has been doing the Social Justice Limbo where management sees just how far it can bend over backwards and still maintain a functioning business. Now that headquarters has decreed it’s ‘Come One, Come All’, everyone is welcome to use the bathroom, occupy furniture and log on to the Internet. If they happen to buy something, so much the better, but it’s no longer required.
It’s a brave new business model that’s a combination of temporary office suite and homeless day shelter.
This week saw the company issue new guidelines for employees who might want to tempt fate and call 911. It’s a bureaucrat’s dream. The decision-making process includes observation, self-doubt, second-guessing, second opinions, re-checking the manual, calling corporate and then hoping the problem went away while the staff was negotiating with itself.
Incidents that qualify for an immediate 911 include fire, robbery, selling drugs, destruction of store property or a gas leak (although God help the employee if the leak was simply Venti bean burrito exhaust).
Other incidents are a judgment call and require a corporate-choreographed decision-making process. First the ‘partner,’ as Starbucks laughingly calls its employees, is to “assess” the “guest’s” behavior. Is it culturally appropriate or is it cultural appropriation? It’s important for the partner to separate the behavior from the individual. The process resembles Evangelicals and homosexuality — hate the sin, while loving the sinner.
Behaviors that are currently held in corporate disrepute include “being unreasonably noisy, viewing inappropriate media, verbally abusing people, making unwanted sexual advances and indecent exposure.”
Step three of the pre-emergency call journey is the partner “[considering] how any decision will affect the customer’s experience.” Will not cursing out the person who tripped over his shopping cart mean the guest suffers increased stress? Will he/she/zir experience heightened sexual tension if they’re prevented from groping an adjacent guest? And could the partner be judgmentally assuming “indecent exposure” when the guest was only trying to increase air circulation?
Assuming the incident hasn’t been resolved by customers acting on their own initiative, the partner will then ponder “whether the customer or situation is safe to approach and whether an employee’s chosen response would be the same for any customer in the same circumstance.”
Before this glacial minuet brings the partner within hailing distance of the disruptive guest, another partner must be asked to “observe and verify” the behavior. Only then is management to approach and introduce themselves and ask for the person’s name.
In no time at all I predict Starbucks will be home to the type of colorful human-interest stories — often featuring bodycam footage — that are commonly associated with Waffle House and Walmart parking lots.