It was not so long ago that an incident at a Philadelphia Starbuck’s, involving the arrest of two black men who were doing nothing but sitting there, spurred a tsunami of social and mainstream media rage. Starbucks made a showy attempt to renovate it’s image, but it seems a day’s worth of training didn’t take…
The hard copy: Printed proof of the ‘SSSam’ diss at a west-side Philadelphia Starbucks…
Maybe it did, across most of the chain, but the day in May that Starbuck’s closed across the U.S. for intensive sensitivity and cultural training for its staff seems to have no effect on at least one barista in the same city, but at a different location.
The counter person in question (who was not named) seemed not to have gotten the message from the training session, that Starbucks teats all customers equally, with respect and discretion.
According to a cell phone video of the event by the customer’s friend, Tan Lekwijit, a student from Philadelphia, a man named Sam (again, no last name given) asked for coffee and the server mocked him saying, “Okay, SSSam.”
If that wasn’t enough, the Sam’s order came back labeled “SSSAM”.
That was more than enough to spark an e-mail to Slatbuck’s by the injured party. But the chain came back with a reply that struck Lekwijit as formulaic and insincere and an offer of a $5 gift card as recompense.
Enter, social media…
Then, the incident was posted on social media and the internet went wild.
Lekwijit wrote:
“When he received his coffee, he was shocked to see that his name on the cup was written as ‘SSSAM’, which was disrespectful. Later that day, he wrote an email to Starbucks Customer Service and got a pretty standardised email saying they were sorry that he ‘felt disrespectful [sic]’ for the way they wrote his name and offered him $5.Clearly, Starbucks missed the point. It was about how you treat people with speech impairments, not how you write names.”
It took no time at all for Starbuck’s head office to post back that the employee had been fired and that regional Starbuck’s officials had swooped in and taken over the ‘case’:
“We want our stores to serve as a welcoming place for everyone who visits and want to ensure our partners provide a positive experience. Our local leadership has reached out to Sam to better understand what took place and the specifics of his experience and apologise directly. We have zero tolerance for discrimination and are addressing this immediately.”
What are they putting in the water in Philly?
Philadelphia is, as its name proclaims, the ‘City of Brotherly Love’. At least on paper. So, we wonder why, of all the other cities in the U.S. where the two Starbuck’s episodes coljs have taken place, did they happen there?
Is there still a cultural issue Starbuck’s. Or is it an issue among the populace, a general insecurity that drives some people to proclaim that they’re better than others by disrespecting blacks and the challenged? What next? Will a Starbucks deny service to someone in a wheelchair? Someone with a thick foreign accent? Someone who is openly and flamboyantly Gay?
I guess we’ll just have to wait and watch, and hope other cities aren’t putting the same stuff in their water…
~ Maggie J.