Starbucks Wants To Talk About What?

Starbucks apparently has a new policy. They want their baristas to discuss race relations with their customers. Hmm. This will not end well.

Oh, where to begin.

(1) Their baristas aren’t smart enough to discuss politics. And how exactly are they supposed to start these discussions?

Bubbly Barista Attempt No. 1: Hey, you’re dark like this coffee!
Rare Black Customer: What the f*ck?

Bubbly Barista Attempt No. 2: Why can’t people of different races get along?
Redneck Customer: Yep. We should ship all them coloreds back where they came from.
Bubbly Barista: I know, right?

Customer: Wasn’t Selma great?
Barista Attempt No. 3: Selma Blair?

Barista Attempt No. 4: Wanna talk about race relations?
Customer: No! I want you to get my f***ing order right! I said SKINNY MACHIATTO!

(2) What does Starbucks know about race relations? They’ve never had a black customer and they don’t hire Mexicans. All their customers, well 95.7%, are white suburban mothers in mini-SUVs and yoga pants. (The other 4.3% are angry white males in bike shorts who glare at their electronic gadgets as they spend the day using the free wifi.)

(3) The average interaction time with a barista is about 20 seconds. So these “discussions” will more likely turn into trivia sessions. How useful will this be:

“Black people make up 14% of the population.”
Ok.

“Black unemployment is 24%.”
Hmm.

“Mexicans come from Mexico.”
Really? Do tell.

“Asian are the new illegal immigrants.”
What?

Or is it going to be touchy-feely?

Bubbly Barista Attempt No. 1: I like black people.
Rare Black Customer: Are you hitting on me?

Bubbly Barista Attempt No. 2: Black people make great athletes.
Customer: (jaw drops)

Seriously, this is not a good idea. In fact, I can’t wait for the lawsuits as hypersensitive race baiters start visiting Starbucks waiting for the inevitable slip up. Even better, I can’t wait for the comedians to take advantage of this and go lead various unsuspecting baristas into making suicidaly stupid pronouncements about race, which they will then post on Youtube. You know it’s going to happen and it’s going to be hilarious.

Look, it’s one thing for people with an interest and some knowledge of a topic to engage in a discussion. But it’s quite another to ask thousands of low-wage morons to start randomly opining to customers about controversial issues.

Starbucks seems to think this isn’t a problem because they encouraged their baristas to talk about gay marriage and no one freaked out about that. But here’s the thing: that was an easy debate because the groupthink position was not only widely known, but so were all the acceptable responses to stay safely on the PC reservation. Said differently, even the worst morons amongst us knew what to say to stay out of trouble because the media and celebrities drilled it into them.

This is really different. There is no set of approved talking points about blacks and race relations because race relations are a broad range of issues, not a single issue that can be distilled to one view point, and the race baiters are super touchy and will freak out pretty much randomly – that’s how words like “picnic” and “black hole” can suddenly be called racist. Moreover, the race baiters often find offense in statements that are true. Hence, it takes an experience expert to avoid the landmines this topic encompasses.

Good luck.

It might be time to sell their stock.