Starbucks Stupidity Insults Their Customers

Starbucks announced a new policy Saturday that allows anyone to occupy the coffee shop or use the store’s facilities, even if they don’t buy anything, but many are left to wonder if it’ll have a negative impact.

The “Third Place Policy” maintains that employees should consider anyone who enters Starbucks space, including restrooms, cafes and patios, a customer “regardless of whether they make a purchase”, the company said in a statement.

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

Yes, Starbucks is a private company. They have a right to determine their own policies, so long as they don’t commit fraud or poison customers.

However, their policy is not one that creates a successful business.

If Starbucks had this policy in the years they were taking off, they would not be who they are today. If they permitted anyone to enter their coffee shops regardless of circumstances, people would have been turned off and said, “I’m not going to that place. They’re letting bums in off the street. Let’s go to McDonald’s.”

Political correctness poisons everything it touches. It’s no accident that successful and innovative corporations like Starbucks got where they are by not being politically correct. Think about it. Political correctness means conformity. It means refusing to threaten or offend the established order. Successful, breakthrough companies by definition become established only by establishing an entirely new niche in the marketplace. Only when they attain the level of financial success and reputation they’ve attained can they afford to flirt with stupid, silly or self-defeating ideas.

Remember that the central purpose of a business is to please its customers. The central purpose of a service/food/beverage business like Starbucks is to please customers on the sensory level.

While political correctness supports the idea that “we are all one big universal brotherhood of a family, we are all Comrades, and we are all the same”, the senses tell us otherwise. Not everybody looks, acts and smells the same. Not everyone who enters a Starbucks is appropriate for that setting. When you tell the public, “You’re all welcome here, even those of you who cannot or will not purchase any of our products”, you’re opening up the door to just anyone. Yes, you’re refusing to discriminate. You’re also being indiscriminate. You might feel like you’re being superior, while in reality you’re just plain stupid. It’s not this kind of stupidity that got Starbucks to where it is.

Political correctness is at war with the senses, with objectivity, with common sense and with even the most obvious, self-evident facts. It’s almost as if advocates of political correctness wish to convey, “I don’t care. I’m bigger and better than reality.”

Starbucks offends its customers by telling them, “You’re no better than the people who come into our stores not to purchase our products. You’re all the same.”

Perhaps Starbucks is counting on the premise that everyone who buys their products is politically correct like they are, to the point that they are completely indifferent to and ignorant of their surroundings, and who do not mind being insulted by the people from whom they’re purchasing $10 coffees.

We’ll see just how true that is, in due course.

 

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