Starbucks is brainwashing employees!

Originally posted by Longtimegone
2. I doubt the store will go out of buisness if he tells some customers to take a hike.***

1. A business relies on PAYING customers. Telling your customers to "take a hike" is certainly a great step towards going out of business.

2. Even if the man was told to "take a hike", he was not a CUSTOMER. He was just a loitering bum trying to get out of the rain.

Yes, let's all take a moment to feel sorry for someone who was just trying to get out of the rain, its not his fault, its the economy, or the education system, blah blah blah. Fact is stores spend money to have an attractive welcoming place for PAYING customers. Starbucks is not a soup kitchen, and their customers do not have to be forced to sit next to some crazy smelly guy while they are trying to drink their coffee and relax in the environment they are accustomed to.

[edit on 1-4-2010 by Blazer]

www.laborradio.org...

Is Starbucks really an “evil” corporation as suggested by opponents, or is it truly a “good” corporate citizen as supporters argue? The answer, according to a new book, isn’t quite so black and white. Jesse Russell reports: Labor activist Kim Fellner watched in 1999 as a trash can was hefted through a Starbucks window during the Seattle protests of the World Trade Organization. She says it was that moment that forced her to reconsider the role that what she had previously only considered as a coffee shop played in the scope of the world economy. The result is her new book “Wrestling with Starbucks: Conscience, Capital, and Cappuccino.” In it she argues that Starbucks struggles with “benevolent paternalism.”

Fellner2]: …what it shares with Wal-Mart and McDonald’s is a baseline hourly wage around $7 and $10 and they don’t like unions very much, and over the years they have vigorously fought workers efforts to form unions…sometimes to the point of illegality.

blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com...

While we await details, barista Gabrielle Evans at the Starbucks drive-through on Westlake Avenue has become a one-woman marketing campaign for Via, Starbucks' new instant coffee. She serves lattes bedecked in a necklace and earrings made from Via packets to help her store win a Via sales contest. A four-year Starbucks employee, she's in college now but dreams of someday working for corporate, Evans said.

Nearly all of the companys I have worked for in the past, I always have referred to the company as "we," "us," or even "my company." To work for any company, one must be in cooperation with your co-workers and obedient to your boss, supervisor, and/or superiors. Categorizing one's self collectively with their place of employment is... logical since you are working cooperatively with others to accomplish the same job.

In my opinion, your OP has not stated any significant evidence of brain-washing.

reply to post by Longtimegone


You scream brainwashing When it is you trying to do the very thing you are crying about. Do you know what a hypocrite is?


It is a coffee shop not a homeless shelter and if he was asked to leave so what. Empathy is a good thing until you try to force people to use it. This weakness of mind is what is making this country fail. Politically correct dogma is weighing down the very soul of this nation.



The funny part is I bet that if he was on your doorstep you would ask him to leave. This is the fatal flaw in the progressive mindset they push it on everybody but themselves.

reply to post by Subjective Truth


Have you watched the documentary yet -- Black Gold -- I haven't finished it because seeing STARVING BABIES in Ethiopia is a bit depressing.

Why? Because the big coffee buyers pay next to nothing for coffee -- and Ethiopia relies on coffee since that's where coffee comes from.

Seriously the hypocrisy is Starbucks is creating mass homeless and poverty -- starvation -- farmers without shoes and ripped shirts.

The farmers that make starbucks coffee would get kicked out a starbucks store and the starbucks "employee" is legally not even able to criticize starbucks! It's fascism.

video.google.com...#

socyberty.com...

According to Meskela, for every Kilo of coffee harvested, bagged and shipped, approximately 80 cups of coffee are brewed. A cup of coffee in the western world costs approximately $2.90. If you multiply that by the 80 cups of coffee each Kilo produces, the amount the multinationals are making off of each Kilo is approximately $232. When Meskela took the camera crew of Black Gold into the Kilenso Mokonisa co-operative, the difference between today’s market and the farmers’ understanding of that market was made glaringly apparent. He asked how much they thought a cup of coffee costs in the Western World. None of the farmers had any idea what the going price for their product was. Where they live, in Hagere Maram, the price for a cup of coffee is one birr, which translates to $0.12. When told that, in western societies, coffee goes for 25 birr, they were enraged because, for every Kilo of coffee they sell, they are receiving 2 birr while the corporations are turning around and selling that same amount of coffee for 2,000 birr. It is the private traders who have gotten fat, leaving hard working, impoverished farmers with nothing. “Our problem is when our coffee ripens and is ready for sale, a man comes to our farm and says to us, ‘I will take your coffee and pay you 0.75 birr ($0.08) for a kilo.’ There’s no negotiation, one person decides to buy our coffee at 0.75 birr ($0.08). We have no up-to-date price information, and one person controls the market. When our coffee is ready, please take it at the right market price.”

[edit on 1-4-2010 by drew hempel]

reply to post by Longtimegone


Longtime gone... fantastic OP... S+F... I don’t think you realise just how endemic this brainwashing is!!!

I read the first page of responses and had to laugh... people really are lost!!!

What these brainwash sheep forget, when their having their morning pep talk about driving sales and being the best, is that the company does not give a crap about them!!!

What they forget, when they are giving each other high fives for selling a coffee, is that the fourth double shift in a week may please the boss... but he aint gonna be there for you when your child is sick... or when your wife goes into labour, or when your husband needs that operation...

You are an asset... plain and simple... as long as you are fit and healthy and nod like a puppy dog... you will be offered empty praise and silly rewards like employee of the month etc...

The moment you get sick or need time for your family the tone changes immediately from asset to burden!!

The amount of people i have seen brainwashed in the way that you describe in your OP is breathtaking... people actually fall for this garbage... i have had arguments with people about their workplace and they defend it as passionately as i would defend a member of my family...

Sad little drones.... it is only at the end they will realise...

How many career woman do you see in their 40's running around wine bars, with their dried up wombs, desperately trying to find a man to impregnate them??? 20 years earlier they were sneering at young mothers who “waist their lives” and boasting about their aspirations... Now they would give it all up to have a baby of their own suckle from their breast... Sold their motherhood for a pay rise!!!

How many men in the 50's while at their daughter’s wedding, look back with sadness when they realise how much of their daughter’s childhood they missed? Thinking that, if they hadn’t had that fling with the girl from accounts, they would now be sitting next to their daughters mother on the head table instead of Jim the gardener!! Didn’t even really like the girl from accounts... but the nudges and winks from the boss and colleagues proved too much after several drinks at the work Christmas party... if only he had listened to his wife and spent that Christmas at home!!!

The most common excuse that people use when first selling out to the fake corporate dream is... "It will give my kids a better life"

Sell out!

My Father was a postal worker... we never had much money... but he rarely worked overtime. On days off, we would often go for walks or play football in the park... these are the most cherished memories of my childhood... and looking back, I would never have given them up for extra presents at Christmas or a Swimming pool in my garden...

Time is THE most precious commodity we have... don’t give it up so easily!!

reply to post by Subjective Truth


To have an opinion is NOT brainwashing!!!

To impose a culture on people under your control IS!!!

Originally posted by Longtimegone

***Please don't respond with, "If Starbucks goes out of buisiness because of customer complaints he is out of work." 1. This is not his career and he can find another aweful job for extra cash while he is in school. 2. I doubt the store will go out of buisness if he tells some customers to take a hike.***

[edit on 31-3-2010 by Longtimegone]

I could work at any job, go up to a customer, and yell "**** YOU!" for no reason, and probably be fired for it. The place wouldn't go out of business for it, but I would be out of a job. An "aweful" job like working at Starbucks may seem petty to you, but to some it's the best they can do at the moment and need the job for money, not just "extra cash"...not everybody has mommy and daddy paying for college for them, but that's beside the point. People do what they need to do at their job to keep their job, for whatever reason they wish to keep it.

As far as use of the word "we", it seems to me like you are just splitting hairs. An employee is a representative of a company, and acts accordingly while on the job...if you think this is limited to Starbucks, you are sorely mistaken

My dad is a barista at a Starbucks, not because he needs the money (my mom was always the breadmaker), but because he loves coffee and loves meeting people and talking with them, both of which he gets to be involved with at work. He's not a robot, he's not on a mission to take over the country with more and more Starbucks locations, he's a normal guy who enjoys what he does.

reply to post by Cantthinkofaname

I could work at any job, go up to a customer, and yell "**** YOU!" for no reason, and probably be fired for it. The place wouldn't go out of business for it, but I would be out of a job. An "aweful" job like working at Starbucks may seem petty to you, but to some it's the best they can do at the moment and need the job for money, not just "extra cash"...not everybody has mommy and daddy paying for college for them, but that's beside the point. People do what they need to do at their job to keep their job, for whatever reason they wish to keep it.

Yes but if, in the example used in the OP, the person had said "I didn’t want to chuck the guy out... it felt wrong... but i need the cash and didn’t want to lose my job" at least that would be human!!

But the person didn’t... instead they defended the company and argued as if Star Bucks was a member of their own personal family...

What amazes me is if we was talking about a religious group, and not star bucks, most of you would be screaming cult and brainwashed!!!

He's an employee? He works for the company and he has a right to use "we." And he's right, it is bad for business.

reply to post by drew hempel




This has nothing to do with Starbucks it has to do with our politically correct box that I guess you will not choose to look out of.

I dont care about kids picking coffee I bet they want to do it who cares? We need to care about important things again like faith in God and the economy and freedom. If we take care of the bigger things the smaller things will fall into place.



When we get stuck micro managing everything we lose our vision and I dare say our morals.

Originally posted by Muckster
reply to post by Subjective Truth

 

To have an opinion is NOT brainwashing!!!

To impose a culture on people under your control IS!!!

Turning a mole hill into a mountain comes to mind. This politically correct crap is getting out of control it is no wonder why our country is failing. We worry about everything except what is going on in our own backyards.

[edit on 1-4-2010 by Subjective Truth]

i do not go to starbucks for the reason that they do not support military perons and me being former military i think that is bs how can an american company not support the military im sure many of you have heard this already

reply to post by Subjective Truth

Turning a mole hill into a mountain comes to mind. This politically correct crap is getting out of control it is no wonder why our country is failing. We worry about everything except what is going on in our own backyards.

What?!?!



Politically correct?? Mole hills??

Sorry but that just sounds like ramblings!!

I simply stated an opinion!?!

Maybe you would prefer it if someone had control over the population thus preventing them from making "politically correct mountains out of mole hills" ??

You know... maybe we should brain wash everyone... oh wait... that’s already happening isn’t it!!

Wow this reminds me of the coffee shop just down the street from my job in the business district, I go there about 3 to 4 times a day as their coffee is cheap, get a range of business men, police, locals and of course all the way to junkies, crackheads, pillheads, homless and every other lowlife going into this place as its situated in the middle of a busy street with a laneway inbetween leading to a casino and down the street froma methadone clinic...

I see numerous copcars and incidents everyday there due to people like the homeless or people that have drug addictions selling pills and ruining it for everyone else, I don't blame the owners for throwing people that are socially unacceptable out the door, It just cheeses me off when I go to buy a coffee and get hit up for change or cigarettes, I dont even smoke anymore, and these low lifes always make assumptions...

Last year one of the junkies was shooting up in the bathroom and hit a vein the wrong way soaking the mens bathroom with blood, just one example of the sick minded individuals these homeless or lowlifes may be...

Last thing I need is going back to the office with aids in my coffee

I've been working the graveyard shift at a small hospitality establishment owned by a large corporation for about 10 years. On a few occasions I have allowed folks who didn't have the funds to rent a room rest their weary legs on our couch for an hour or two with the understanding that it would ONLY be an hour or two. Most have been very thankful and when their welcome was worn I sent them off with a day old doughnut and a cup of coffee (not very good coffee though). However this has backfired a time or two and I sent them off with some choice words and a promise that next time they showed their ungrateful mug the authorities would be contacted.

I can kind of understand both sides of the argument. On one hand it doesn't cost me a dime to show a little compassion but on the other hand it could cost me a paycheck if the bossman got wind of it. Tough call either way.

Off topic but a humorous and somewhat related story. Last summer I went to a concert in a metropolitan area 3 hours from where I live. Having been to many concerts there I was accustomed to the pan handlers and various vagrants and was used to ignoring them or just giving them a polite f*** off. At the concert in question though I was outside having a smoke and was a tad tipsy. When one of these pan handlers came up to pester my friends and I, I decided to turn the tables on him. I told him that I spent the last of my money on a brewski and so maybe he could help me out so I could get another. He actually dropped $.44 cents into my hand! Four dimes and four pennies. I still have them and they still elicit a good chuckle whenever I look at them.

it is like being a brainwashed citizen of any place in the world

Originally posted by Longtimegone

The point of this post is to discuss why an emplyee would include herself with the company (using the word "we") when it is NOT her career job.

No offense, but after that statement I've got you pegged as somebody who's never had a job before. "We" is standard language when discussing a business that you work for.

I've never worked at any business that I didn't refer to as "we." That includes jobs that I had for a month or less, and couldn't stand. It's not brainwashing, it's language. You work there, you're part of it, so it's "we."

And your friend probably DOES get more money when the store makes more money. There's probably profit sharing and bonus checks, and possibly even tips (I'm not sure if Starbucks allows tipping... I don't live near one.)

Most homeless people end up that way because of their own lousy decisions. They're usually criminals, they tend to be sociopaths, they have bad hygiene to the point where it's a problem for the people around them. Do you like fleas with your coffee? I'm guessing not. Neither do the other people at Starbucks.

Your friend isn't brainwashed. He/she just understands that Starbucks isn't the place to go for charity shelter, it's his/her place of work and it needs to be treated as such. Knowing that there's a time and a place for everything - even charity - is part of adulthood and learning that division is part of reaching maturity.

It's not just starbucks! It's every other business too, that I have ever worked at. Grocery stores, gas station, local sandwich shop, hotel, etc.

I've never worked for someone where they allowed the vagrant homeless to sleep, create trouble, stink up the place, pan handle..... did not matter what color of skin or how old.

My friend who works for wal-mart as a cashier told me that they had trouble all summer and winter with a group of 4 men who sit outside of wal mart all day and evening pan handling. They accost the customers in the parking lot, they claim to be vietnam vets and gulf war vets. They don't bathe, they don't clean up.... they do not want to get their lives on track, they don't want anything but $$ in their hand. If you ask them if they want food they will refuse it.

Recently these guys got busted for lying about being war vets.

I'm sure there are true homeless war vets out there needing help. But for the people who do not want to get out of the cycle of living on the street and changing that...... then what can we do?

OP - you have a big heart. Don't ever let anything change that. It's very hard to see anyone homeless. It's a painful fact of life I did not really learn until I moved away to a large city.

The unfortunate thing is, I've encountered way more homeless that don't want to do anything to change their situation.

If you felt such a connection. maybe you should of bought him,a coffee,and a cookie, then he would of been a paying custumer.