I have been enjoying Starbucks for over a decade. There are several dozens of Starbucks around the Greater New York City Metropolitan area, which includes parts of New Jersey. I am currently a student at one of the local colleges that likes to study at Starbucks. My courses are online and Internet access is required. The Free WiFi and the comfortable ambience at Starbucks provide a nearly perfect environment to study for long periods without interruption.
The business hours at this Starbuck are 6 AM to 1 AM. Many customers drop in during the day have a cup of coffee, or have some pastry, or have a sandwich, or some tea, or what other food is being served, or read the newspaper, take a nap, use the restrooms, meet friends, etc. Starbucks is more than a store. It is regarded as the community's coffee house of choice.
My course requires easily a minimum 40-hours of preparation each week. In addition to the course I work part time nearly 35 hours each week. Sometimes I come to Starbucks exhausted. Sometimes I fall asleep while studying.
The acting night manager called the police, on Christmas Eve, around 10 PM and had me escorted from the store, while I was awake because I had fallen asleep about 1 to 2 hours earlier.
This "acting" manager singles me out. On other occasions I have seen customers on the other side of the store with their heads on the table, sitting motionlessly, while he is accusing my dozing off as advertising to passers-by that the coffee brewed at this Starbucks is putting people to sleep.
I told him he is a terrible host. Threatening to call the police if I fall asleep again is childish. It's pretty absurd and stupid. I think most your customers would think that closing your eyes in Starbucks is not a crime. It would better to act as a friendly host and offer dozing customers a refill or complimentary espresso shots to help them stay alert instead of deploying terror tactics of police threats to give them an adrenaline rush before throwing them out into the cold night.
This is New York City, Central Park West, not Podunk. There are real crimes that need to be investigated, i.e. what happened to the $2.3 trillion reported missing from the Pentagon on 09/10/2001 by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld? . There are real crimes that need to be reinvestigated, i.e. the collapse of Twin Towers and WTC Building 7 on 9/11/2001.
Are your managers being trained to prevent customers from closing their eyes, while relaxing, in deep contemplation, meditating, accidentally falling asleep, or taking a nap, over a cup of coffee or tea, while listening to music at Starbucks?Do Starbucks customers lose the right to lower heads to the table and close their eyes over a hard day in the library, searching the internet, writing term papers,, etc what ever many of Starbucks customers do?
Do customers have to start wearing dark sunglasses at Starbucks to keep the management from seeing whether there eyes are open or closed from across the store? This is not the friendly atmosphere that built the Starbucks reputation.
I think coffee houses had a reputation as place for intellectuals, businessmen, political officials to congregate, and enjoy drinking the house coffee and contemplate the important matters of the day. Receiving threats for falling is not and should not be among them. In recent months it has decscended to a police-state madness, expected in a third world dictatorship, authoritarian "acting" managers calling the cops because a customer fell asleep a couple of hours earlier.
The cops were not amused at being summoned to a Starbucks, to escort a customer, who had been allegedly sleeping before they got there, who was not asleep when the arrived. This is nonsense. It reflects a lack of sensitivity and critical thinking on the part of acting Starbucks management. There should be a policy against calling the cops for dozing customers.
Isn't it kind of a mean thing to do?; compared to clogged toilets, overflowing trash barrels, empty soap dispensers, no toilet seat covers in the bathroom, cigarette butts and empty Starbuck coffee cups all over the sidewalks around the store that the managers could do more about.
Starbucks has done a lot to support coffee production around the world. The price of coffee keeps going up. It is much higher than it was 10 years ago..
What can Starbucks do to support coffee consumption here in the United States? The economy has taken a dive in the last 5 years. Do you know how shocking it is to be charged $1 for a banana at Starbucks today. Is that what $1 USD is worth to you? To turn this around, suppose customers brought in a bunch of bananas for a couple venti lattes with whipped cream, or brought in an eggplant for 2 venti frappuccinos? It's a good a deal. Your customers know a banana costs less than 50 cents. A banana is about the least expensive item that can be purchased at a Stabucks store.
Does Starbucks anticipate serving alcohol in the future? In bars, where alcoholic beverages are consumed, management is trained to know what customer conduct might require intervention. Smoking cigarettes or cigars in front of the store. Using loud offensive speech on the premises. Sexual harassment by either customers or employees. Might threatened other customers, but not dozing off inadvertently.
There are unsolved crimes perpetrated against citizens of New York City that are far more urgent than an allegedly dozing Starbucks customer who was wide awake when the police arrived. It is hard to imagine the Starbucks I grew up with would do such a thing
This is a very busy store. Hundreds of customers must come and go between 6 AM and 1 AM, 19 hours of business each day. The staff works very hard. There are more important issues at the store than occasional dozing customers. For example at this store the bathroom starts to stink around noon and needs to be cleaned and the air freshened much more often than it has been.
The floor of the bathroom is often wet around the toilet and sink and littered with strips of toilet tissue. Sometimes there is no soap for the bathroom. There is no plunger for the bathroom, etc.
This is a friendly reminder that people come to Starbucks for a variety of reasons. Among them to relax, for refreshment, to meet acquaintances, to work to do homework, etc I'd like to believe customers are welcome if they are not interfering with the activities of others, and the operations of the store.
John of Teaneck, NJ
12/26/10
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/food/starbucks.html
Okay, I would love to meet this guy. The guy who spend 3 hours to write an essay on the many problemes of starbucks. Really.
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