If you want to hang out or use the restroom at Starbucks, you’re going to have to buy something.
Starbucks on Monday said it was reversing a policy that invited everyone into its stores. A new code of conduct – which will be posted in all company-owned North American stores – also bans discrimination or harassment, consumption of outside alcohol, smoking, vaping, drug use and panhandling.
Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson said the new rules are designed to help prioritize paying customers. Anderson said most other retailers already have similar rules.
I hope they can make their drinks even more expensive.
Support Local Coffee Shopsthanks.
The local shops all close early. I don’t even drink coffee. I just want a place to work with WiFi. I usually buy a snack and drink.
I did a support call for a local coffee shop about a decade ago.
They had a separate WiFi router for guests. When they got a squatter they unplugged the guest WiFi if when they wanted him out.
They were in a very high traffic area and had minimal seating.
LOL
Ten years ago I would have just blocked the MAC address.
It’s a café though… Isn’t this normal for a café?
Targeting the growing homeless population. Don’t let it confuse you for anything else.
Exactly. Fascism was here but all the billionaires are putting out their flags now.
Why would it possibly be on Starbucks to provide places for homeless people to hang out for hours. This should be a public function.
Yeah! Why should a business within a community do things that help support that community!
I know you’re just circlejerking here so discussion is probably pointless, but there are many ways to serve the community and providing a quiet, nicely ambient place (aspirational goals, only met sometimes in reality) to sit or work for a few hours, for the price of a $3 coffee is one. I live in New York and for just over the price of a subway ride I can get wifi, a desk to work, outlets and a decently comfortable chair, and a restroom, and I can hang out there a while.
Serving the homeless in public places is notoriously difficult to get right, as most state and local governments experience demonstrates. Why we’d expect a cafe company to do a good job as well as meet its other goals is confusing.
If seating isn’t at capacity, it doesn’t cost them anything additional to let someone sit down a bit to warm up.
That’s true only if homeless people make zero noise, do not act or behave eccentrically, do not bother other customers, do not have offensive odors, immediately cede their seat to a customer who arrives, somehow don’t make through their presence prospective customers believe the shop is too crowded, etc. Do you think even actual customers who are not mentally disturbed or addicted can fulfill this bar you’ve set by saying “costs nothing”?
Warming is a canard, every street homeless person can get warm at a church or shelter. In NYC you can 311 a city department and they’ll go offer the person a ride to a shelter anywhere in the city in a van. Their average time is <1 hour. They can walk into any library in the city.
I encounter homeless every day and resent dumb online joke, these are individuals who have serious problems and, as stated, there is a reason even public services find it hard to serve these populations.
There’s also a reason neither you nor I regularly invite street homeless into our homes.
If you don’t like megacorp there are 1000 better ways you can argue it than saying “they should let homeless in to hang out”. Choosing the argument that you have chosen, just sounds ridiculous.
I agree with you about the first part but not the second. Not everyone lives in a large city that has warming stations. In my town the few are run by churches you have to participate in to stay and they’re so spread out across the city there’s no way to get to them. Starbucks is right downtown
Hanging out in Libraries is free! I’ve gone in just for the AC.
AC, read something, have a nice seat for a while.
The best thing I’ve seen in a coffee shop was a “Please no laptops” sign.
Its ridiculous how everyone just goes and works in coffee shops all day.
I understand buying a coffee, and working while you enjoy it. But once you’re done, and your work is saved gtfo.
We need more third spaces.
I troubleshoot a VPN connection for a man who does his work from a Dunkin at least once a week. He doesn’t even drink coffee or eat donuts. He just hangs out there and works until his VPN breaks.
Starbucks coffee isn’t even good anyway. But without more coworking spaces or some other alternative people like me will occasionally be forced to work from one for one reason or another. In the towns around military bases especially you frequently see spouses of those who work on base in Starbucks doing their remote work since it’s the only possible place they can work from if they were staying in a hotel the night before.
“Hey, look at us–we’re the new public hangout, everyone’s invited”
Expands into an empire dotting the entire country
“Sorry poors–paying customers only, please.”
Embrace, extend, extinguish all over again 🎉
Embrace, extend, extinguish all over again
I do not think that means what you think it means.
So what I’m hearing is people need to start pissing and shitting on the building itself.
I can piss and shit on Starbucks management by not going there - all doing it for real does is force some underpaid barista to have to go clean shit up, and management learns nothing.
You can do both. I never go to Starbucks but will gladly make a detour just to piss on the flowerbeds.
No don’t, that’s not good for the flowers!
Meh, the last time I’ve been in one was 2011. Too expensive for what it is, and plenty of other options in my city.
My fiancee got a Starbucks gift card from work, so we stopped by the one nearest us. The drive-through wrapped all the way around the building, so we went inside. Inside, there was only one huge table, with only one spot with an electrical outlet, and the music and cafe atmosphere were so loud… I can’t imagine anybody trying to bring a laptop and “work” there.
But if I did, I guess I’d buy a coffee? That seems fair. I definitely prefer my local library for remote working outside of the house, though.
It’s been awhile since I went to a library, but are there places for taking remote meetings to avoid disturbing others?
Oftentimes, yes. Mine has a series of little rooms. They are often used by teens working on homework together.
To add on to the other replies here, both of the two closest libraries to me have several small rooms for this as well.
My local one has 10 or so small rooms for maybe 3-4 people max, and 2 larger conference rooms that could easily hold 30+ people each. It’s not even one of the bigger city libraries either. The ones down town have even more facilities.
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