Please e-mail--Starbuck's refuses to serve homeless man...

Discussion in 'World Events' started by Shanna, Dec 14, 2001.

  1. Shanna Registered Member

    Messages:
    1
    Hi everyone,

    I'm posting to ask you to e-mail Starbuck's about an incident that occurred at one of their coffee shops. The facts about what happened are listed below. You can send them an e-mail through the form on their web site at:

    http://www.starbucks.com/customer/contact_forms.asp?nav=3e

    When:
    A few days ago

    Where:
    Union Station Starbuck's Washington, D.C.

    What Happened:
    An African American homeless man was given a free coffee certificate which was completely valid from a passerby. He was refused service. The employee asked where he got the certificate and then stated that their manager does not allow them to serve people who have not received the certificates "directly." I (and others) have used free drink certificates in the past and have never been harassed about where they were obtained.

    Ideas about What to Say in the e-mail:
    Assert your anger at the situation and insistence that you will not go to Starbuck's until this situation has been rectified. Talk about the unacceptiblity of discrimating customer based on their social status/income, (racism??).

    Thanks so much everybody! I appreciate you taking the time to read this post and hopefully to write an e-mail as well. If you want to, reply to this post so we can see how many people took a couple minutes to send an e-mail.

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    Shanna
     
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  3. Chagur .Seeker. Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,235
    Shanna ...

    Could it be that he was pretty 'grungy' and that was a convenient way to get rid of him?

    Take care.

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    Oh, and welcome to Sciforums where you can be as 'grungy' as you care to be.

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  5. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    I have to ask, Chagur ....

    Which is quicker: giving the man his free coffee and getting him back along his morning way, or to ask him to stand around explaining where he got the certificate until he's convinced you that he's worthy of the free coffee?

    There's a Fossil store in the mall below my office; the other day a fax certificate came around entitling me to 35% off, and all I had to do was bring this "invitation" page. Why me? I'm the one who grabbed it off the fax machine. Who else? Everyone I could give a photocopy to. And, yes, they stood out front of the store, stopping any undesirables from entering--and even those with the invitations. Bottom line, those turned away did not "look" as if they had enough money to spend.

    Whether Starbucks or Fossil, I suppose you're entitled to behave this way if you like. But if the appearance of affluence is a prerequisite to obtaining service, it should be printed clearly on the coupons, certificates, invitations, or whatnot. It's the common modern marketer: "Everybody's welcome, as long as we're just saying that and not being held to it. But everybody's welcome!"

    Even my own odd standard of propriety aside, I'm left wondering if the quicker course of action would not have been to give the guy his coffee and get him out of the store. In the end, some people's money (or coupons) aren't worth the same as others. So much for the free market. So much for the natural economy. Those last points, of course, brought to you by my own sense of irony.

    thanx,
    Tiassa

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  7. Chagur .Seeker. Registered Senior Member

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    tiassa ...

    But just think: What if he had accepted his free coffee and then decided to
    sit down! Don't you think it would have been far more difficult to come up
    with a 'valid' reason for asking him to leave?

    Take care.

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  8. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Fair enough ...

    It's a matter of why he's not acceptable. If he smells bad, sorry, that ain't a reason. Sure, he might smell like a dumpster, but all that tells me is that he's smarter than the woman who comes in behind him, who went to Dior and paid $90.00 to smell like a dumpster.

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    I don't think it was racism, though. It was cashism. You can smell like whatever you want as long as you also smell like money. (again ..

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    )

    But this is Starbuck's, and they have a reputation for screwing a few things up. They charged the NYFD for water during the immediate 9/11 crisis ... you know, I don't see spite, but an idiot behind the counter. Oh, well. I think the same thing happened here. It's tasteless, it's wrong, but I don't think the person refusing the guy service really knew what was at stake.

    If we refuse people service because of an assumed lack of potential toward future spending, then property truly has become robbery.

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    thanx,
    Tiassa

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  9. Chagur .Seeker. Registered Senior Member

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    2,235
    tiassa ...

    "... property truly as become ... "? When hasn't it been?

    And, you ain't smelled anything (re. humans) until you've been out to sea a
    few months on a pre-nuclear submarine!

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    Take care

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  10. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    'Twixt you and I, sir?

    Well, I'm one of those prone to say it's always been this way.

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    But the functional problem I run into comes when the society (collection of individual consciences) creates a way of being that denies or affirms an idea. We maintain that property is a right in this country, yet apparently that right is to be used to suppress that right of others ... oh, I think we've all been down this road before.

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    But, yeah, I'm one who will say that property is robbery. It's just that most of my neighbors (in Seattle, home of Starbucks) seem to feel otherwise.

    thanx,
    Tiassa

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  11. Yo_girlfriend_still_love_me Registered Member

    Messages:
    8
    WHO THE FUCK CARES?
    IT'S FUCKING CORPORATE COFFEE, WHO GIVES A SHIT?
     

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