Starbucks may close its bathrooms to the public again

Starbucks’ CEO, Howard Schultz, has announced that the company is considering closing all stores’ bathrooms due to an “issue of just safety”.

Starbucks first opened its washroom to the general public in 2018 after an instance in which a Starbucks employee refused two Black men access to the washroom and suspected them of trespassing.

Earlier during the 2018 incident, Schultz spoke at the Atlantic Council in Washington at the time. He had said, “We don’t want to become a public bathroom, but we’re going to make the right decision 100 percent of the time and give people the key. Because we don’t want anyone at Starbucks to feel as if we are not giving access to you to the bathroom because you are less than,” he said. “We want you to be more than.”

“I don’t know if we can keep our bathrooms open”

However, now, they may reconsider it owing to the ‘safety concerns.’ Schultz addressed the press during a New York Times DealBook event Thursday. He said, “There is an issue of, just, safety in our stores, in terms of people coming in who use our stores as a public bathroom. We have to provide a safe environment for our people and our customers. The mental health crisis in the country is severe, acute, and getting worse.”

“We have to harden our stores and provide safety for our people,” Schultz added. “I don’t know if we can keep our bathrooms open.” Schultz said Starbucks was exploring whether to alter the policy, which allows non-customers to use store bathrooms; due to a nationwide “mental health” problem that was posing difficulties for the coffeehouse chains’ employees.

There have been no comments from the Starbucks representatives on this issue. After the retirement of the company’s former CEO, Kevin Johnson, Schultz has been serving as Starbucks’ temporary CEO since April. Employees at the company’s stores are attempting to form a union. The group has only secured votes in a small percentage of the firm’s 9,000 US stores; it has had enormous triumph in the votes held so far.

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