Starbucks has decided to impose customer-first rules on people who want to hang out in the store or use the restrooms. It’s a sign of the corporate times and an indication of the decline of public civility.
It’s also an aspect of the erosion of the Starbucks’ fantasy-mystique. As an early owner of the company once explained to me, all those people just hanging out in Starbucks stores were part of the fantasy and the scene-setting. On entering the store, the subconscious part of the customers’ mind imagined that they were soon to be writing poems, reading Sartre, working on a novel, or doing mega-deals. Order a coffee and you can indulge this fantasy. “If customers and grad students didn’t enact this drama, we would have to pay folks to hang out,” this owner explained, wanly.
The main customers at Starbucks just take out an order, rather than plopping down at a table, but they survey the scene of cafe-denizens and get hooked by their imaginations. Starbucks, since Howard Schultz, always was a marketing fantasy — all those Italian names and colors and struggling poets!
Unfortunately when you don’t assign a value to a product, service or experience, free riders can make it miserable for everyone else. See also: light rail before they enforced fares.
I beg to disagree. After years of stopping in Starbucks in the middle of a long walk or tired from shopping, and just hoping to enjoy a few minutes rest while sipping my latte – only to find all the tables taken by people camped out there for the day with their laptops, I welcome this change. And you will rarely find any coffee shop these days in which you don’t have to request a code or a key from the barista to use the restroom. I may try going to a Starbucks again with some hope of finding a seat.
I guess I agree with Mary Beth; thoughtlessness (if not actual rudeness) abounds at many Starbucks, particularly with table grabs and long, long stays. That patron who enters, drops a coat on the one table still left, and only then, after securing themself a table, actually gets in line to order and pay. I’ve seen exhausted-looking mothers with strollers back out of the store with a latte in hand. No seats. I know the baristas notice that behavior and dislike it, but they’re not in a position to say anything, It’s very difficult to design commercial interiors that take into account patrons’ reluctance to share space. That increasing entitlement.