Starbucks recently settled a discrimination suit against one of it's disabled employees. The woman who brought forth the claim has been diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder. The reason the suit was filed is because the employee had her hours cut and was publically berated for not being able to perform basic routine barista tasks.
So here's the issue, did discrimination overtly exist in this case? I want to make something very clear before disecting the discimination issue, I am against the manager berating the employee. I believe that shows poor leadership and lack of personal control on the managers part.
The discrimination claim bothers me, as a manager for an educational publishing company, I manage people everyday to try and get the absolute best performance out of my employees. I feel that the interview process is a isolated situation for discovering if the employee can meet your working style. With that being said, I have hired disabled employees for various roles, but nothing that would compromise their working capabilities and that is exactly what happened in the Starbucks discimination suit. The manager that hired the woman manufactured a role for her to work that didnt need to be created. Then when the old manager left the starbucks a new manager evaluated the positions and realized that the disabled person needed more resposibility to warrant her time spent and money paid.
If you were hired into a company and were directly responsible for increasing sales, increasing customer satisfaction, and eliminating wasted expenditures or your job was on the line, you would do what you were hired to do. Unfortunately in a capitalistic economy, you must take of yourself before others. This is exactly what the newly employeed Starbucks manager did. She accessed the situation and felt the need to cut the hours of the employee and unfortunatley became a victim to a discrimination suit. Minus the berating of the discrimnated employee, I think the manager handled the situation correctly.
The irony is that businesses every day discriminate against our own citizens by outsourcing manufactured labor because of the cheaper costs. The businesses are doing exactly what the manager did... Cut cost for increased profit.
Class action suit anyone?
Now there is an unlikely sentence. Yep, Starbucks doesn't offer the world's most expensive coffee beans. That award actually goes to a Costa Rican brew which just won the 'Taza de Excelencia' (means 'excellence cup') competition with their Aserri beans, and are now selling at the equivalent of $21.35 per pound. Not bad eh? So next time you think of that $12 bag of Starbucks think, hey, it's not THAT expensive...
For those of you that like Folgers coffee, you are in luck. Why? Because Wendy's has jumped on the premium coffee bandwagon by starting to offer Folgers premium coffee in all of its North American stores. So now you can chow down on your favorite Wendy's burger while sipping on a tasty Folgers cup of coffee.
