Starbucks serves up a bitter brew

Fire him. Fire him now. After a highly-publicized debacle at a Philadelphia Starbucks, in which two people were arrested for trespassing, it’s clear that there is only one way to rectify the situation. The Starbucks employee who cast a pall over the company and gave the brand a black eye needs to go.

It’s time to fire CEO Kevin Johnson.

But make no mistake. He shouldn’t be fired because the incident occurred, but because he showed cowardice by abdicating his primary responsibility of being a leader.

He threw the store manager under the bus, used inflammatory rhetoric, invoked race and discrimination when it wasn’t warranted, and profusely apologized – all before facts were known. Quite frankly, it was an apology that may well have been for the wrong reason.

And now he’s closing 8,000 stores on May 29 for “racial bias” training because of an incident that may well have had no racial bias at all.

Let’s stop shedding tears in our coffee about what we “think” happened, and instead take a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine (aka the truth) go down.

Once again, we have willfully allowed social media to rule the day: A situation exploded beyond reason, rising to a level of importance that it simply didn’t deserve, all because a social media video went “viral.”

A post, by the way, that offered little explanation of what actually transpired, because it had virtually no context.

Let’s recap what we know. Two men, who happened to be black, had been sitting in a Starbucks for some time and hadn’t ordered anything. One asked for the code to unlock the bathroom. The store manager denied that request, and asked them to leave since they were not revenue-generating patrons. The men refused, and the manager called the police. The police repeatedly asked the men to leave the private establishment, but again, they refused.

According to the police chief, they were also disrespectful towards officers. The men were eventually arrested, but charges were dropped after Starbucks decided not to pursue the case.

That’s it. Maybe it was a bad managerial decision to call the police, and maybe not. But why was race immediately invoked? Why was it automatically assumed that the manager’s decision was based on bigotry and discrimination?

Starbucks CEO Johnson released a statement that made him look like a fool. It read: “First, (I wanted to) once again express our deepest apologies to the two men who were arrested with a goal of doing whatever we can to make things right.

Second, to let you know of our plans to investigate the pertinent facts and make any necessary changes to our practices that would help prevent such an occurrence from ever happening again. And third, to reassure you that Starbucks stands firmly against discrimination or racial profiling.”

Johnson’s inability to respond to a crisis with even a modicum of objectivity makes him entirely unfit to lead such a prestigious company. For the benefit of Starbucks customers and shareholders alike, Johnson should be given his coffee to go – permanently.

For sound business reasons, many Starbucks, especially those in urban areas, print the code to the bathroom on the receipt. Last time we checked, private companies don’t stay afloat without people patronizing them with their wallets.

It’s great to say Starbucks is a meeting place, but at some point, people hanging out there should actually buy something. Since not doing so denies valuable space to paying customers, it’s good business practice to ask people to make a purchase, or move along.

Too bad the CEO forgot about that part of the job.

Would the police have been called had the situation involved poorly dressed white people? Or non-black homeless? Who knows?

But undoubtedly, the answer has a high probability of being “yes.”

Bottom line: We simply don’t know whether the manager’s decision was based on racial bias. That’s why God made objective investigations.

Unfortunately, it’s too late for that now, as any meaningful investigation has been trumped by impetuous decisions and wild accusations that have become the de facto “truth.”

And you don’t need to read the tea leaves to know that such a precedent will prove more bitter than a Starbucks coffee.