Hey, people might just want to reduce their home energy bill and catch up with friends/family in a central location... homelessness isn't necessary. I applaud Starbucks decision to give a little back to the community, even if it's only for a couple of months before they go out of business.
I'm also a fan of this. I hate having to pay for a drink or something just to use a toilet or have somewhere to wait for a while.
I also dislike McDonald's being the only place open in the middle of the night. Every time I go in there late it's always full of drunk people.
I'm a fan of it as well. I'll love to go there to get out of the rain, use the restroom, download torrents, etc. It isn't a smart business move though since it encourages this kind of freeloader activity, and these kinds of activities will use up their limited space and make the environment less enjoyable for paying "customers" (since they want to define everybody as a customer, regardless of whether they actually get money from them or not). It's going to be an expensive PR gambit to reverse.
They must never have walked around on the street outside in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, etc and noticed the rampant homelessness and addict population in those cities. Once word gets out that SBUX has this policy, what do they expect will happen?
I guess overall I'm not a fan of this - despite how convenient it could be for me personally.
I'm pretty anti-corporate in general, but with society structured as it is, I do support the right of (small) businesses to remove non-paying persons from the property when done is a reasonable manner. Arresting those those two black guys may not have been reasonable.
It would be nice if this policy was being put in place because society had evolved to the point where we can have nice things. Unfortunately this looks like SB management caving in a big way under race-related PR pressure and doing something nonsensical. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, but I'll be surprised if it doesn't turn out badly.
Time to short SBUX.
What are these people thinking? Do they want the homeless to become their number one demographic? Make your store a comfortable gathering place for vagrants and watch how quickly it becomes uncomfortable for customers and the yuppies paying for your overpriced product disappear.