Source: New Yorker
In April [2018], two men visited a Starbucks in downtown Philadelphia, for a business meeting. First, they were refused a request to use the bathroom before they’d ordered, and then an employee called the cops on the men, who were black. Police arrested them on suspicion of trespassing, and escorted them out in handcuffs. They were released, eventually, and the company apologized. But #BoycottStarbucks began to trend on Twitter. It was a public-relations disaster. On Tuesday, Starbucks stores across the country closed early, at around 2 p.m., and a hundred and seventy-five thousand employees took part in four hours of “worker anti-bias training,” designed to make people more aware of unconscious discrimination. Afterward, I spoke with two of those employees, on opposite coasts.
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