VIDEO: Starbucks employees insult, mock, laugh at customer wearing Trump t-shirt

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives June 19, 2017

Comments | Print This | Subscribe | Email Us

Starbucks was the company that had this brilliant idea. Don't just serve customers $4 coffee and lovely pastries. Hector them about race, because who is better qualified to explain such weighty matters than a 22-year-old barista? The corporate culture has been encouraging this sort of behavior for awhile now. Why should anyone be surprised that these same employees would be abusive to a woman wearing a Trump t-shirt? No one should, because of course they did:

Note the weasel-like nature of the corporate statement. When your employees mock and abuse a customer, that is not an occasion for teaching. That's an occasion for firing. If Starbucks was serious about customer service it would not only can these people's asses, but would hold them up as an example of what would happen to any other employee incliined to behave in such a manner toward a customer. But we've known for some time that Starbucks values politics above good business sense, and a lot of their shareholders know it too. We also know their recently departed CEO hates Donald Trump. Starbucks employees are merely doing what the culture of their company - not to mention the culture of society at large these days - tells them is perfectly fine to do. If a shareholder can be booed at a company meeting for thinking business should come before politics, then why should business come before politics at the store level? A customer comes in wearing a Trump t-shirt? By all means? Ridicule her. It's what the big bosses would want, right? If Ms. Hart decides to return to Starbucks as a customer, she must either really love that coffee or she really has a forgiving heart. If I were here I wouldn't, not because I don't see the value in forgiveness but because it doesn't have to include continuing to put yourself in a position to be mistreated by people who should have known better than to do so. This is pretty much the environment we're living in, though. If you disagree with my politics, you're sub-human, and are deserving of neither respect nor consideration of any kind. At least they didn't shoot her. I guess Starbucks employees have that on James T. Hodgkinson. Thank goodness for the soft bigotry of low expectations.