Customer Connection Should Never Create Confrontation
9/30/25 – – A guest essay in today’s New York Times titled “How Did My Fellow Baristas End Up on the Front Lines of a Culture War?” is a timely reminder of the crisis vulnerabilities created by ill-conceived corporate policies.
Cassie Pritchard, a member of the Starbucks Workers United labor union, focuses on the fallout from a confrontation days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination between a Starbucks customer asking that Kirk’s name be written on her coffee cup and a barista denying the request. In a video of the incident posted on social media, the barista tells the customer that she is prohibited form writing anything political on cups.
Interpreted as a display of cultural bias, the barista’s coffee cup censorship set off a fire storm of anger and concern over the safety of Starbucks employees across the country.
Policy Puts Baristas in Eye of Political Storm
You may be wondering why baristas are writing anything on cups. On its website, Starbucks explains: “We believe that handwritten notes on our cups are a meaningful way for our baristas to connect with our customers.”
The policy, according to Pritchard, prohibits “slang, pop-culture references, current events and even anodyne messages like “Happy Black History Month” or Happy Pride” are frowned upon, lest they be misinterpreted or give offense to someone, somewhere.”
In her essay, Pritchard laments: “Working as a Starbucks barista, I didn’t expect that my job serving iced matchas would collide with the most charged political discourse of the day.”
Starbucks Has a Short Memory
Maybe Pritchard didn’t expect such tension, but Starbucks management should have seen this coming.
In 2015, the company encouraged its baristas to write “Race Together” on cups to encourage dialogue with customers on the topic of racial inequality. Turned out that the employees, already stretched thin to prepare special-order drinks for time-pressed customers, were not prepared to constructively lead such sensitive discussions.
The policy created so much turbulence behind and in front of the counter that it was terminated in less than one week.
Policies Hatched at Headquarters Don’t Always Thrive in the Field
In Chapter 3 of The Crisis Preparedness Quotient (Where Crises Come From”), I examine nine common causes from which crises spring: people, products, priorities, policies, performance, politics, procrastination, privacy and past. Discussing policies, I ask, “Are your employees prepared to sensitively enforce policies that may create conflict or confrontation?”
Encouraging baristas to initiate potentially explosive conversations or write anything personal on coffee cups is asking for trouble. Creating artificial opportunities for “connection” may sound wonderful in a conference room back at headquarters. But in the field, the policy comes apart. It reveals a misunderstanding of the capabilities and capacity of baristas, a misread of customers’ priorities, and a disregard for today’s politically charged environment.
In her essay, Pritchard expresses her displeasure with the company’s response to this latest incident:
“Its statement in response to the original video implied that the employee might have acted improperly, when she was clearly just trying to follow the rules. A better response would be to stop requiring employees to write messages on cups (something the company has previously refused to bargain over). Most of all the company should have all baristas’ backs. We’re the ones facing hostile customers and hidden cameras.”
Starbucks announced last Thursday that it will be closing hundreds of locations in the U.S, Canada and Europe. And 900 “non-retail” employees will be laid off. While they’re trimming, they may want to rethink their writing-messages-on-cups policy. I’m confident the baristas and customers will not miss the “connection.”
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