Skip to main content

Corporate Intolerance and Starbucks

The company that I work for is very much committed to tolerance amongst it's workforce and strives to ensure it doesn't come across as some kind of political or moral arbiter. Which I think is perhaps the most sensible route for any company to take. So I'm surprised to see that the Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is using the Starbucks company to wade into such political waters.

Why does he have to take such an aggressively intolerant stance towards a large section of his customers, and even his shareholders? If Howard Schulz wants to project Starbucks as being generally supportive of gay 'marriage' then surely he could do that without taking up arms against those who don't support such legislation?

He has crossed a line, not by using Starbucks to actively promote such an agenda but by opening up on those who don't agree with such a move. He told shareholders at the annual shareholders meeting that Starbucks wants to "embrace diversity of all kinds," he then moved on to tell a shareholder who personally supports traditional marriage that he should sell his shares and invest in some other company.
Credit: Dumpstarbucks.com
What message does that make Starbucks send to a large portion of it's customer base? It's certainly spawned a movement to boycott Starbucks, caused some to set up a Dump Starbucks website and led to a loss of revenue. A Ratners moment perhaps?

Anyways, time to whip the intolerance card out methinks.



Authored by Chris Hall

Related articles

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Spammers, trolls and blatantly offensive posts will be summarily deleted. My blog, my rules. Otherwise comment away!

Popular posts from this blog

Sound familiar?

Watching the BBC interview of Adele by Graham Norton tonight and Adele sang one of the new tracks off her forthcoming album. The track was called A Million Years Ago. Listening to it reminded me of a different song by someone else. You know where you almost recognise a tune but get lost with the words, yet it's the words which are the key! Eventually it came to me, El Shaddai by Michael Card, famously sung by Amy Grant. It's a song that I occasionally play during worship. Have a listen. What do you think?
Post a Comment
Read more

The Upper Rooms

We often think of the 'upper room' as being the place where Jesus and the Disciples held the Last Supper but the Bible has many more 'upper rooms'.
Post a Comment
Read more

The Archbishop and Wonga

Image via CrunchBase Have to say I was initially chuffed to see the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby laying down a challenge to Wonga and others of their ilk. The AoC communicated that he wanted to see the payday loan industry driven out of business by promoting the use of credit unions. The payday loan industry is involved in outright usury which is condemned by many faiths such as Islam and Christianity and others. Usury we can look upon as the lending of money at exorbitant rates of interest. But then I thought what was the AoC actually saying? He wanted to replace excessive usury with not so excessive usury. Is that what we should be aiming for? Plus the architects of our current austerity are backing the AoC! I would love to see all of the credit industry driven out of business but it will only be done by paying workers a decent wage, sharing in the profit of their labour and making capitalism history. At the end of the day this sort of initiative is just a...
3 comments
Read more