Starbucks Rediscovers Freedom Of Association

Oh that poor henpecked fool, he just walked into a Planet Fatness. Officially known as the Planet Fitness Gym, the chain is a notorious suburban ghetto for Social Justice Warriors of plus-sized genders. From its purple-and-yellow decor intended to keep autists away… so I’ve been told… to its famous advertising slogan of “Pizza Mondays”… to its trademark “Lunk Alarm” used to shame any male who breaks a sweat, grunts while lifting or does anything to unconsciously fat-shame the Estropod clientele, no other gym in North America does better at putting the “why?” in your Y chromosome. I wonder if they still do that Lunk Alarm?

BREEE! BREEE! BREEE!

Yep, sounds like they do.

Wait a minute… that alarm… it came from…

…behind…

GunnerQ turns around.

There, next to the Starbucks coffee shop, is… a Starbucks coffee shop with a Lunk Alarm… and an employee kicking some DEI government drone’s ass out the door for overstaying the one cup of coffee he bought three hours ago. And the laptop he walked in with!

If Donald Trump did that, then I take back every snarky comment about him not being God-Emperor of Mankind.

Starbucks staff given ‘panic button’ for laptop lurkers who won’t leave

h ttps://www.yahoo.com/news/starbucks-staff-given-panic-button-115607099.html

By Daniel Woolfson for the Telegraph, 27 January 2025

Starbucks is to install panic buttons for staff as it cracks down on customers who sit in its shops or try to use its lavatories without buying anything.

US workers have been given new guidelines on how to eject customers who stay in the stores for a “prolonged” amount of time, attempt to use lavatories or fill up water bottles without making a purchase, as first reported by Business Insider.

Turns not, not Trump, but a new CEO taking over from a Pajeet CEO whose reign was so tolerant-in-diversity, the company began putting locks back on their doors in the wake of his departure. The new guy is finally ‘empowering’ his employees to kick the bums out!

The company is also training workers in conflict de-escalation.

Wait, what? How can they have both “kick the bums out” and “less conflict”?

Starbucks said earlier this month that it would no longer allow customers in the US to use its amenities for free, as part of an attempt by Brian Niccol, the new chief executive, to revive the business.

It had previously operated an “open door” stance, first implemented by the chain in 2018 after two men were wrongly arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks where they were holding a business meeting.

The incident, which was caught on camera, proved embarrassing for the brand. In its wake, the two men met with Kevin Johnson, then-chief executive, to discuss ways Starbucks could prevent similar events in future.

I already know what I’m going to find… yet I must look anyway…

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New Starbucks policy: No purchase needed to sit in cafes

h ttps://apnews.com/general-news-small-business-2305a7e4e6de4b71bdd38631882c7bd4

By Joseph Pisani, 19 May 2018

NEW YORK (AP) — Starbucks announced a new policy Saturday that allows anyone to sit in its cafes or use its restrooms, even if they don’t buy anything.

The new policy comes five weeks after two black men who hadn’t bought anything were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks.

Company executives have said its previous policies were loose and ambiguous, leaving decisions on whether people could sit in its stores or use the restroom up to store managers.

“We are committed to creating a culture of warmth and belonging where everyone is welcome,” Starbucks said in a statement.

The two men who were arrested April 12 in Philadelphia were awaiting a third person for a meeting. One of them was denied use of a restroom because he hadn’t bought anything. A worker called police, and the men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, were arrested. They spent hours in jail before they were released.

One wonders if something happened between an employee asking for a purchase, and an employee calling the cops who actually responded. Don’t tell me it was hood rats chimping out in yet another retail outlet! That would be racist! *GunnerQ opens youTube, types in a search query* Starbucks… Philadelphia… ooh, it autocompleted with incident!

…There’s no footage of what happened, but I counted five cops in the aftermath and heard the brass backing them up until political pressure came down. Four years later, the store in question was closed for safety concerns.

Left unanswered is whether those Starbucks employees had prior, personal knowledge of Rashon and Donte.

The incident, video of which was posted on social media, was a major embarrassment for the coffee chain. Starbucks has long projected itself as a socially conscious company and promoted its stores as a neighborhood gathering place.

In response to the arrests, Starbucks plans to close more than 8,000 of its U.S. stores on the afternoon of May 29 for racial-bias training for its employees.

The men who were arrested settled with Starbucks earlier this month for an undisclosed sum and an offer of a free college education. They also reached a deal with Philadelphia for a symbolic $1 each and a promise from city officials to set up a $200,000 program for young entrepreneurs.

Donte: “I wanna use the bathroom!”

Employee: “You gonna buy something?”

Starbucks Corporate: “The winner of the 2018 Ghetto Lottery is *drum roll* Donte Robinson of Filthydelphia!”

End segue

The about-turn comes amid a wider pushback against customers who sit in coffee shops for hours at a time, taking advantage of free wi-fi but not spending more than the cost of one coffee in many cases.

As well as preventing shops from making money by turning tables, so-called laptop lurkers have also been criticised for dampening the environment of bars and coffee shops and turning them into less social spaces.

Mr Niccol, who previously ran the Mexican food chain Chipotle, has been battling to turn Starbucks back into what he has called a “community coffee-house”.

Community as in, a “paying customer coffee-house”. Aside from freeloaders not contributing to the heating bill, the reasons Starbucks franchises have become mainly online-order drive-thru affairs is

1.Allowing drug addicts and low-level criminals.
2.Endless corporate financialization.
3.The general death of free association in the United States.
4.Low social trust.

The company has struggled in the past few years. Some consumers have cut back because of higher prices, while it also suffered boycotts over a perceived link with Israel and its actions in Gaza. Starbucks says it has never given money to Israel or its military and that this perception is fuelled by misinformation online.

At the same time, activist investors have bought up shares, piling pressure on its board to revive its performance.

What an interesting juxtaposition of facts. “Starbucks has never given money to Israel” next to “activist investors are pressuring Starbucks to perform better”.

However, the end of Starbucks’ open-door stance raises the prospect that staff could end up in uncomfortable situations when confronting customers. One worker told Fortune magazine: “We know that these situations are going to happen more frequently in our store.”

Hence the panic buttons? I guess they aren’t Lunk Alarms after all, something to shame the freeloaders with, but what are they? Many retail outlets already have panic buttons that silently notify police of danger; they’re a necessity when you actively try to court Social Justice Warriors for a clientele. What makes these new panic buttons different?

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Select Starbucks Stores Have a Panic Button: Why Do They Need It?

h ttps://retailwire.com/starbucks-panic-button/

By Lucille Barilla, 27 January 2025

Select Starbucks stores have a panic button hidden underneath their counters that baristas can access if necessary. Is there a reason they need it?

Per Fortune Magazine, the button is installed in select stores. Fortune cited a Starbucks employee who revealed the presence of the panic button, which should be utilized as a safety measure only. It is reportedly only supposed to be used when there is an incident that would require further assistance than normal or when customers or workers feel unsafe. However, that same employee said they didn’t have explicit training on when to push it.

Oh, hell. Don’t tell me that after the Philadelphia Incident, employees were ordered to not call police upon hood rats refusing to leave? “We removed the silent alarms so nobody could hear them scream” would be a great horror movie plot. Sure, they already filmed Assault On Precinct 13, but not in a coffee shop.

This button activates an emergency lock-down. It secures the doors to outside customers while allowing those inside the store to exit. When a barista hits that button, an internal security team is also alerted.

I would gladly pay six dollars for a cup of coffee, if it came with a private security team tasked with disappearing hood rats. This business model could work. Kinda like the Army buying $2,000 claw hammers.

Oh. Ohhh. That was not an employee kicking out a freeloader, that I witnessed. That was a corporate mercenary performing a “black op”!

What do Lunk Alarms and corp-merc strike teams in the breakroom have in common? They are both responses to we Americans not being allowed to choose who we associate with. Only when safety becomes so urgent as to authorize deadly force, do whites get to disassociate from the darks.

Planet Fatness handled it by making their gyms toxic to masculinity.

Starbucks is trying to handle it with building lockdowns and private security.

I gotta admit, I prefer Starbucks’ method. It’s more honest. Why do frightened people put up video cameras everywhere? They only help the Soros D.A.s pick you apart at their leisure in the aftermath. Take ‘em all down instead, then put a guy like me on retainer and keep the bean juice flowing. Wire the lights into the silent alarm so the entire joint goes dark when the red button is pushed. I’ll bring my own night vision.

Because that’s the only way Heritage America can get away with defending itself.

The button has only been installed in around five U.S. stores to test its effectiveness. It was installed to assist with in-store security and help its baristas feel safer while working, particularly since Starbucks reversed its open-door policy for customers. The previous open-door policy was put in place in 2018 after two Black men were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks where they had gone for a business meeting.

According to Business Insider, testing these panic buttons is just one way Starbucks is prepping for the policy reversal. It is also training its employees to de-escalate conflict with customers who are breaking its new guidelines, such as those sitting in-store for a “prolonged” amount of time without buying anything or asking to fill up a water bottle without making a purchase.

Why Would Starbucks Baristas Need To Push a Panic Button?

Ever since Starbucks implemented the new policy, effective Jan. 27, which states that customers must purchase an item to use its restrooms or hang out in the stores, there have been reported security concerns. The company’s previous policy was lax — customers were able to sit at the store as long as they wanted, and anyone could use the restroom if they needed to.

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h ttps://www.businessinsider.com/starbucks-needle-disposal-boxes-more-locations-2019-4

Starbucks stores in at least 25 US markets have installed needle-disposal boxes in bathrooms in recent months…

End Segue2

“Implementing a Coffeehouse Code of Conduct is something most retailers already have and is a practical step that helps us prioritize our paying customers who want to sit and enjoy our cafes or need to use the restroom during their visit,” Jaci Anderson, a Starbucks spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement to The New York Times.

This new rule is part of Starbucks’s updated Code of Conduct, which is now on display in every store. Behaviors such as discrimination, harassment, smoking, and panhandling are prohibited, and those who violate these rules will be asked to leave the store. Employees will be within their rights to call law enforcement, per the new policy.

The tedious irony of banning discrimination survived CEO Brian’s purge.

This is likely why the panic button was set in place, as a way for employees to deal with those unwilling to adhere to the new policies without being confrontational. Sara Trilling, the president of Starbucks North America, said in a letter to store managers, “We know from customers that access to comfortable seating and a clean, safe environment is critical to the Starbucks experience they love. We’ve also heard from you, our partners, that there is a need to reset expectations for how our spaces should be used, and who uses them.”

Starbucks reversed its open-door policy after almost seven years. The new policies are meant to prioritize paying customers and improve the environment of its coffee shops. The company first began to reconsider this policy back in 2022.

Or 2018, whichever.

End segue

Mr Niccol’s predecessor, Laxman Narasimhan, was ousted last year after less than two years in the role.

Back to India, one hopes. *checks* That Pune toilet stain was a uPenn graduate and McKinsey consultant for nineteen years, proving he’s both Deep State and grossly incompetent. Most McKinsey spawnlings are proficient enough at usury to be assigned C-Suite roles with less than ten years’ postgraduate training.

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h ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laxman_Narasimhan

Narasimhan worked for McKinsey for 19 years until 2012, rising to director and location manager for their New Delhi office. In 2012, he joined PepsiCo, rising to chief commercial officer.

Narasimhan succeeded Rakesh Kapoor as CEO of [UK-based] Reckitt Benckiser in September 2019, formulating a turnaround plan which was intended to rejuvenate the company "following a series of missteps and lacklustre growth that marked the final years of his predecessor".

Talk about the blind leading the blind… by the curry smell.

In September 2022 the company unexpectedly announced his resignation, explaining that he had "decided for personal and family reasons to relocate back to the United States and has been approached for an opportunity that enables him to live there."

“There’s too many Pakis in London!”

In September 2022, Starbucks announced that Narasimhan would become the company's next CEO. He succeeded Howard Schultz, who had been interim CEO since Kevin Johnson resigned in March 2022. Prior to Narasimhan taking over as CEO, he trained as a barista for six months to learn what changes needed to be made. The New York Times has described Narasimhan as less resistant to Starbucks unionization than Schultz.

YOU USELESS HOMINID MEATSACK! “I am your new CEO, fresh off the boat from tea-sipping England, what is this cough-ee drink you sell? I will first spend half a year figuring out what I am supposed to do, because there is no MBA with relevant barista experience anywhere to be found in North America. Especially in Seattle.”

I’ll be generous and suggest that he actually spent those six months unionizing with the peasants in preparation for coercing unionization upon the board of directors. Rather than spending six months serving coffee on a CEO’s salary.

In 2023, Narasimhan's total compensation from Starbucks was $14.6 million, or 1,028 times the median employee pay at Starbucks for that year.

Peasants, I say!

In August 2024, Starbucks announced that Narasimhan would leave the company effective immediately, and was replaced by Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol.

Sounds like he has a history of sudden departures from every business he ran, except the one that trains sociopaths from his homeland to rule the world. I wonder what about him…

Narasimhan made headlines for saying he never works past 6 pm.

…oh. Lax-Man is aptly named, then. Wikipedia entries can be quite entertaining, if you perceive them as editorials written by retired Freemasons.

End segue

In an open letter to customers following his appointment, Mr Niccol admitted the business was not “always delivering”, saying: “It can feel transactional, menus can feel overwhelming, the product is inconsistent, the wait too long or the hand-off too hectic. These moments are opportunities for us to do better.”

Don’t sugar-coat it like your lattes, Brian. The supply-side problem with your “Sixbucks” business, is that this ain’t your customer:

But at least the customer’s social “change” now comes with a chance of Jason Voorhees with an ugly stick hiding in the broom closet and waiting for a trigger. Progress, ho!

The change of chief executive sparked a rally in the brand’s then-declining share price, but has not been without controversy: the company has been criticised for allowing Mr Niccol to fly between his California home and the business’s Seattle headquarters by private jet, drawing the ire of environmental groups.

Private jet: $3,000 per flight hour
Not having to live in Seattle: priceless
Freedom of association: yes

A Starbucks spokesman said: “The operational updates being introduced on Jan 27 are for North American stores and are not being implemented internationally (including the UK) at this time. Across Starbucks global markets, licenced and joint venture partners operate stores with locally relevant policies”.