Starbucks updates 911 guidelines

Chain to close 8,000 stores for mandatory unconscious bias training.

Medical emergency, burglary, physical assault.

These are a few instances in which Starbucks is now saying employees should call 911.

The guidelines are a part of Starbucks’ new policy allowing customers to use restrooms and sit in cafes and patios even if they do not make a purchase. The approach lays out specific steps for how employees respond to and address disruptive customer behavior. Underlying the rules is the expectation that customers use company spaces as intended and be considerate of others, specifically they should refrain from smoking or drinking alcohol, panhandling or sleeping.

The new guidelines come days before Starbucks will close 8,000 stores for mandatory unconscious bias training for 175,000 employees on May 29. Starbucks announced the training in the wake of the arrests of two young black men at a Philadelphia Starbucks who arrived early for a business meeting. They did not make a purchase immediately after arriving and were reported to police by a white manager.

Previously, Starbucks did not have clear guidelines on what do to about customers who did not make purchases, often leaving decisions up to individual managers. A Starbucks spokesperson previously told The Post that at the Philadelphia location where Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson were arrested, “the guidelines were that partners must ask unpaying customers to leave the store, and police were to be called if they refused.”

In a letter to partners on Friday, Rossann Williams, executive vice president and president of U.S. retail, wrote that the company consulted Starbucks employees, government officials, community leaders and experts on unconscious bias in forming the new rules. Key to the policy was the conclusion that everyone who enters a Starbucks is a considered a customer and is “welcome in our spaces.”

But Williams acknowledged that no policy or procedure can account for every situation.

The procedure identifies eight examples of when employees should call 911, including gas leak or fire, robbery, threat of violence, use or selling illegal drugs and destruction of store property.

The guidelines also lay out a three-step model for addressing disruptive behavior.

First, employees are instructed to assess a customer’s behavior — rather than the person alone. Disruptive or harmful behavior identified by Starbucks include being unreasonably noisy, viewing inappropriate media, verbally abusing people, making unwanted sexual advances and indecent exposure.