Starbucks to encourage baristas to discuss race relations with customers
fortune.com
fortune.com
Now, this definitely could work in small coffee shops, which often serve as informal gathering places for certain groups in a given municipality or social circle. But then you wouldn't need to set up any particular campaign to encourage racial conversations - you already discuss everything to your heart's desire to begin with.
The highly blunt way this is being presented and the inappropriate setting is bound for awkward situations galore.
Barista: "Would you like to talk about race relations?"
Me: "Sure. Um... racism exists, and it fucking sucks."
Barista: "...Yep."
Me: "..."
On the one hand, I applaud them for doing something. On the other, I'm not sure what effect this could have.
A good PR campaign? They are in the news. People may go to Starbucks to see this in action etc.
It is not your job at any of these places to gauge whether I need a dose of your political nonsense. You don't know me, you don't know who I've hired, who my friends are, my roommates, my past relationships, my religion, my orientation. And it's none of your damn business either.
During the nonsense in NYC over Michael Brown there were a handful of rabble rousers whipped up into a frenzy by an irresponsible media and irresponsible political leaders. The vast majority of the city were on the subway, black and white together friends and coworkers, living their lives in harmony, talking, laughing, and being a community.
I just want my item with as little human contact as possible, please.
Of course in this modern age the strangers are on their computers/phones/ipads so I don't know how well it will go.
People have been talking about this recently, and I've even gone to a handful of local cafes that explicitly state this as their purpose, but I've never felt that this was achieved. I've never been to a cafe where I felt comfortable chatting up strangers. If this is what Starbucks is doing, and they do it successfully, I'll go out of my way just to go to their cafes.
Worst case scenario: one says something the other disagrees with, and the screaming and recriminations begin.
Will it make me feel better about an incident in elementary school.
Will Starbucks pay their baristas hazard pay when someone inevitably gets offended?
No. So, can someone explain why this would be a good idea?
Barista: What can I get you?
Me: I'd like a tall iced americano please.
Barista: OK, that's $2.75
Me: Here you go <hands card>
Barista: Thanks.
<wait 1 minute>
Barista: Tall iced americano for theorique.
Me: Thanks.
Barista: Have a good one.
Me: You too.
The lack of race relations discussion is not a bug but a feature.
I'm guessing this initiative won't change your particular daily interaction at all.
And I used to be a cashier. I'd rather die than start a talk about a touchy political issue with customers.
Talking about politics and/or controversial topics, which race relations is IMO, is impolite in public. If I owned a coffee shop, I sure as hell wouldn't want my employees making an effort to talk about stuff like that to customers.
Beyond that, I've got my own internal debate about whether or not GMO crops are safe without the pesticides... I mean, they may be... I've read the science and I've read the skepticism regarding the science. They're both about as conclusive to me as the argument that says that science negates all possibility of divine intervention and I can't honestly say, all things considered, that either negates any possibility of the other.
Until someone can conclusively prove to me that GMO is 100% safe, I will continue to consider that they may be unsafe and will, where possible, avoid them.
Anyway, that has nothing to do with my argument. My argument is that people have a right to know what they are consuming so they can make informed decisions. Starbucks are standing with Monsanto and protesting against GMO labeling. I will stand against anyone that argues against my right to know what I am eating. It's your choice to eat GMO and I respect that, completely. It's my choice to avoid eating GMO. Either way, you have a right to know what you're eating.
You're confusing pesticide usage with intentional genetic modification. Non-GMO food is also commonly treated with pesticidal products. Heck, even some GMO food is pesticide-free.
One of the key selling points of many GMO products is that you don't need pesticides (or at least as many of them).
Edit: For anyone wondering what this poster is referring to, here Starbucks' page regarding the allegedly false accusations. http://news.starbucks.com/views/starbucks-response-to-questi...
My argument is about where Starbucks stands with their labeling policy, not with their policy regarding GMOs - I have a right to know what I'm consuming and make informed decisions. Their label policy is completely counter to that.
Here's a great list of GMO-free brands for you, so that you can continue your lifestyle choice while waiting to see if Starbucks finds that the market dictates going GMO-free. Just remember that it's likely these brands still use pesticide-treated products. Have a great day! http://gmo-awareness.com/shopping-list/gmo-free-brands/
Honestly, you don't necessarily know what you're eating with non-GMO crops, either. As a previous poster mentioned, we've been selecting for certain characteristics for hundreds of years, which is just a slower way to modify genetics. If the innovators in this sector would have avoided using the word "genetic", nobody would care. But just like "Nuclear" there are certain words that the uneducated Fox News-consuming public froths at.
Being someone with no shortage of empathy (despite my obvious abundance of sarcasm), I like to try to understand people that I disagree with. But what's all this about pesticides? That's a separate matter entirely, and isn't specific to GMO crops. You are wanting to specifically avoid GMOs, which is your right to do, but you shouldn't expect everyone to add a warning label for something that science has conclusively stated is fine. Hell, some GMOs are engineered such that less pesticides are necessary. That's a big win to me, personally.
It'd be like asking for warning labels on faucets because some people think the government puts mind controlling agents in the water supply. Some fringe nutjobs have 100% unfounded theories, therefore everyone else should have to humor them? Nah. You can avoid GMOs and stick to products that are clearly labeled, but that's not a realistic expectation for everyone else. Those non-GMO labels are just taking advantage of this poorly informed minority, kind of like the Gluten-free craze.
Are the plants that have been forcefully and unnaturally hybridized over the last 1000 years 100% safe to you?
You walk by cars that emit gasses that are definitely not safe for you every day but probably don't go out of your way to live in a country-side free of combustion engines. 100% is an unattainable goal post and is effectively saying, "I don't care what anyone says, there's a chance!" Life is full of risk, most far and away more dangerous than the remote possibility that some GMOs, in certain circumstances, may be harmful.
Still why the issue with labeling your products? They label products with aspartame even though that one is more safe than sugar.
A moderately detailed label, that says "This product is a GMO containing genes X, Y, and Z, from Q Lab at B Company, manufactured on Y/M/D". This is a good label.
A label that says "This is a GMO" is a bad label.
It's a bad label because it succumbs to one of two failure modes. It's an unstable equilibrium.
The first failure mode is (I suspect) the underlying motivation for pro-labelling folks. By putting a black box warning label on things, they want to nudge people away from them. The reason this is bad, is because "GMO" is a very large category, and different GMOs have different risk profiles. My personal favourite go-to example, since my girlfriend is diabetic, is insulin. Insulin is mass produced by genetically modified E.Coli. Not only is there no argument whatsoever that this is dangerous, it's necessary for her to live. On the other hand, take roundup-ready. Roundup-ready could be dangerous, because a pesticide-resistant plant will get more pesticides used on it. Creating one label, explicitly as a warning label, that encapsulates a category this broad is misleading.
The second failure mode is the exact opposite: Prop 65 warnings[1]. Lets say that we get warning labels, but the economic case for GMOs is so strong that people start routinely ignoring them. You end up with a situation where everything is labeled WARNING! CANCER^W GMOS! but nobody takes it seriously. This is a failure mode, both because it erodes confidence in public regulatory authorities and institutions (which generally exist to protect us), and it causes people to discount legitimate warnings. Like when I got a prop 65 warning about my apartment and assumed it was bullshit, only to find out (while mounting things to the wall) that it was a warning for lead paint and holy shit don't do anything to the walls without a face mask
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As a compromise, I'm 100% for labels that seek an informational role instead of a cautionary one. Like how my coke zero has a warning label for PKU[2] consumers: "CONTAINS PHENYLALANINE!". If products were required to list any artificially inserted genes as ingredients in their ingredients list, that would also be great! But ultimately, I don't think this would ever happen. Maybe I'm overly cynical, but my belief is that the people advocating for labels, want the simple black box warning label. They think all GMOs are categorically bad, want to warn people away, and seek to create a moral panic as an effective way of doing this. I think this is dangerous, because not all GMOs are created equal. After all, GMO rice saves 2/3 of a million children in developing countries every year [3]. I would not want to throw that baby out with the modified bathwater
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[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_65_(1986...