Starbucks Is Cra-Cra

Is that how you spell it? Or is it cray-cray?

So some Starbucks employee somewhere called the cops on non-paying loiterers in their store. The cops then led the loiterers out in handcuffs. This resulted in a stand-down of thousands of Starbucks, retraining sessions for the employees, a corporate apology and a change in policy so that anyone will be allowed to use Starbucks' restrooms.

Imagine what that will look like in San Francisco or even here in downtown San Diego.

This guy and his compadres may soon be part of the downtown Starbucks experience. Yay!

This was done because Starbucks was afraid that their workforce might be full of racists and other People of Intolerance (PoI). There's no word on whether or not Starbucks officials are also afraid of voodoo hexes, warlocks or the possibility that some employees have been ensorceled and now have toads in their stomachs.

Effectively, a large, successful corporate just shot itself in the foot because it, as one of my favorite analogies for crazy, religious fanaticism goes, saw the face of Mary in a tree stump. They found a single event with multiple explanations that they, in their desperation to validate their faith in the religion of racialism, interpreted conclusively as proving their employees were loaded to the gills with implicit bias.

If it can happen at Starbucks, if they can convince themselves to risk making a mess of their brand for fear of hobgoblins, it can happen almost anywhere.

Addendum: Starbucks doesn't sell coffee, it sells a coffee experience. If they turn their stores into public libraries where homeless people haunt the place, stink it up and make the bathrooms a mess, they have wrecked their entire reason for existence, all for the sake of their faith. Now that's what I call religious devotion!