Starbucks Conundrum

He Said – She Said

Starbucks Conundrum

By Stephanie Fuentes and Don Valentine

She Said:    I’m really impressed by Starbuck’s reaction! It’s nice to see that Starbucks is taking this slap in the face like a big kid should! Closing the stores (and may I add it’s just one afternoon) for racial bias training just brings us one step closer to prevent future discrimination. You know my opinion that open communication bridges gaps in bias!

He Said:  Stephanie, don’t “fall for the banana in the tailpipe. ” Starbucks is making the wrong play trying to cover one racist manager’s blunder.  They should have stopped after they fired that joker and apologized.

It would have been easy to demonstrate that this is not a pervasive trend in their stores.  Heck, they have been advertising for years that they want to be your 3rd place. It is “Home, Work and Starbucks”.

She Said: Don, this is Black and white here (no pun intended). I bet if these two men were Will Smith and Denzel Washington, the manager would have gladly given these two “Black men” service without it being asked for.

I don’t know who “trained” this manager but as the CEO of Starbucks, I would be embarrassed. I mean seriously, you call the police after 2 minutes? Ignorance is bliss!

He Said:  Ha, Ha of course if they had been “A” list celebrities this would not have happened.  As a Black man living in the state of reality this could happen to me any day of my life.  The sobering part is that it has happend dozens of occasions in different ways.

You’re naive, if you think closing down every corporate owned store for training is going to have any real con-sequence. If the barista they hire hap-pens to be a bigoted idiot their ethos will not suddenly change. Hey, I’m not a smart man, but even I know that if the company wants “butts in seats” then calling the police on people is not a good idea.

MarketWatch has calculated that these locations could lose about 20% of their daily revenue, or $12 million, they should have cut 3 checks. Each check would be $100k. Two for the men arrested and one for a charity for racial diversity education problem solved!