Some years ago on Ninth Street in Durham a problem developed with homeless people. This threw the lefty one-worlders who had shops on the street into a quandary. What to do? The smelly homeless panhandler bums were driving paying customers away and affecting their (dare I say it?) profits. Their idealism shattered, they put together a flier asking customers not to give handouts to these deadbeats but to give donations to charities that enabled their homelessness (my words there, but accurate, nonetheless).
It seems that the baristas at Starbucks have had the same epiphany:
The comments section at Starbucks Gossip is filled with tales from baristas about their encounters with the homeless:
How about all the people who come in before you are closing and ask for “Markouts” of RT&E and Pastries…I like to tell them the only thing we have left is the Velencia Orange Cake…(If you give them the display one that has been sitting out for weeks it’s ROCK Hard!!)
Here’s another:
I hate to sound a little crass, but my experience with homeless people at Starbucks has been if you give them an inch, they’ll take a yard.
And another:
I’ve seen people “move in”. They spend all day. Never buy anything. Take up space that real customers would like to use. They also smell. Our SM and DM won’t do anything about it. There is a difference between kindness and weakness.
There’s a lot of wisdom in those last two.
