Back in the pre-Covid days of BLM, when the Left/Press was trying to lay down the battle lines in which any white can only act due to racism, and anything that impacts any African American is due to racism, young Shannon Phillips became a media target. She was a Starbucks manager who did what most I've known who work in such establishments do, and that's ask two non-paying customers who were using the facilities to pay or leave. Problem? The two were black.
Of course charges of Nazi collaboration and KKK membership immediately flew like starlings. Starbucks acted like they never heard of such a policy. The press dove into Ms. Phillips' life and found any and all dirt they could to paint her as the discount Goebbels she was.
Eventually, a year or so later, I saw on a small story behind the grocery ads that Starbucks finally admitted she merely followed store policy. A policy they proudly announced would be eliminated. Were there any major nationwide apologies for the false accusations based on her skin color?
Eh. She was white. Who cares. You'd think then Starbucks would have rushed in and tried to make amends. Apparently it didn't. She sued. I'm not a fan of frivolous lawsuits. But if she was any color and fired for her color, I'd support the lawsuit. Including her being white.
Turns out, a jury agreed. Starbucks canned her because she was white. Her settlement, at least at this point, is in the millions. How that will work I don't know. It's just nice to see we live in a country where, even when racism is promoted by our best and brightest, the law sometimes kicks in and makes it right. It makes me think of an old political science professor I had in college. He said the Founding Fathers never promised a country that would never do wrong. They promised a nation that would be able to fix the wrongs when they were done.
Excellent news!
ReplyDeleteAs for the two non paying nitwits, how hard would it have been to buy a small coffee? And, voila, they become customers. When I have to use a store’s facilities I always make a point of buying something.
But that’s just acting white I guess.
Yep. The funny part is that Starbuck's lawyers weren't able to convince the jury that she wasn't fired simply because she was white. I bet it had to be flagrantly 'Jim Crow for White People' level of obvious racism to go against them. Now I'd like to see justice for those two white girls who were fired because they followed rules, their company admitted they did and that they didn't do it for any malicious reason, but fired them anyway simply because they were white and the BLM activist was black.
DeleteThere was a similar incident at Chipotle. A group of Somali men complained that they were treated unfairly by a manager, who did not even deny them service but simply said that they would have to pay before their food would be prepared. This was due to an accusation that those specific people had dine and dashed there before, which the servers confirmed. The men complaining had many, many social media posts where they bragged about doing dine and dashes.
ReplyDeleteHowever, once they posted their video online there was a universal agreement in the media that this was clearly racism. The manager was fired within 24 hours (I'm not even sure if her next shift started before she was fired.) Articles commenting on the situation stressed the lack of power that black men have in this country, despite every mainstream article instantly taking their side and the fact that they got the manager fired almost instantly.
Even when their history of dine and dashes came out, the media initially defended the crooks. Articles pointed out that while they had certainly bragged about not paying at restaurants, they had never bragged about doing this at that SPECIFIC Chipotle. So obviously they couldn't have done it! (And all the serving staff was just a bunch of racist liars too, even the black employees.)
Eventually Chipotle did offer the manager her job back, but only after the facts of the matter became clear. And the guys who did the dine and dash never had to face any consequences.
Was this in Minnesota?
DeleteYes, in St. Paul. About four or five years ago.
DeleteWhen I was looking back through news articles apparently the men who made the initial complaint sued Chipotle about a year later (for racial discrimination and character assassination, via the claim that Chipotle somehow faked Dine and Dash messages and put them in their twitter histories), though I can't find any information on how the lawsuit ended up, if it even made it to court.
Uh-huh! Minnesotans are just willfully ignorant of human nature... it’s apparently the Scandinavian in them. I say this as a native Minnesotan from the more sane rural areas. But even those places have some willfully ignorant among their ranks.
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