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Tag Archives: Philadelphia

Starbucks: The Adults In the Business World

18 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by Paul Kiser in All Rights Reserved, Branding, Business, Communication, Crisis Management, Customer Relations, Customer Service, Discrimination, Employee Retention, Ethics, Honor, Human Resources, labor, Lessons of Life, Life, Management Practices, Nevada, Public Image, Public Relations, racism, Respect, Social Media Relations

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CEO, employee relations, Kevin Johnson, Philadelphia, racism, Starbucks, United Airlines

When you have with 238,000 employees, most of whom interact with the public all day, someone is going to do something stupid. That is a fact of human nature. The question is, how the leadership of a company deals with an incident? In the case of Starbucks, you be the adult and not the five-year-old.

Racists Don’t Think They’re Racist

Racism is a major problem in this country. Racists usually don’t know they are a racist. In their minds, they do what they think is ‘natural’ from their cultural perspective. What is natural is what is correct. This means most racists are in the bigot closet and don’t even know it.

There is no racism test for an employer to give a job applicant. If there were, a lot of people would be unemployable. Closet racists are going to be hired at all major corporations. Sometimes, like at Cracker Barrel, the racism is condoned by the employer; however, most companies avoid hiring overtly racists employees. At least that’s what they claim.

Regardless, when an employee does something that is racist, many executives will attempt to minimize the incident, or attempt to deny the issue was about race. The public relations (PR) people are experts at diluting the obvious by reminding the media that motivations can’t be proven. From a PR perspective, a company, like United Airlines, can do no wrong, even when it does something wrong.

Starbucks Policy of Responsibility

The leadership at Starbucks is probably not perfect, but at least they make every attempt to be aware of what is correct from what is wrong. That is why Kevin Johnson, the CEO of Starbucks wasted no time in responding to one of his employees calling the police on two African Americans for trespassing in a Starbucks when they didn’t purchase something in the store.

In this incident is noteworthy that at least six officers were present to arrest two non-combative African American males. It was overkill that the police were called, and overkill that six police responded. If a white man had robbed the Starbucks it is likely that it wouldn’t have had this response.

The victims of this incident were held for over eight hours after being arrested. They were released after the police admitted they had no crime to with which to charge them.

What Starbucks Didn’t Do

Johnson didn’t offer excuses for his company. He didn’t say the video doesn’t really tell the whole story. The CEO didn’t even hint that it might not have been a racist act.

Instead, Johnson offered apology after apology.  Johnson met directly with the men involved. He called the act “reprehensible.” It is unclear what happened to the employee in question, but the employee is no longer at that store.

Most companies today look like children trying to cover up their misbehavior after a public relations incident such as this one. It is good to know that Starbucks is capable of using common sense and decency in responding to this situation.

Sadly, the rest of the employees at Starbucks will be impacted by this one person’s act. We all pay for the bad behavior of others.

Sanders is Still DOA: Math Trumps Rhetoric

04 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by Paul Kiser in Ethics, Generational, Government, Honor, Politics, The Tipping Point, Women

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Tags

2016, Bernie Sanders, convention, delegates, Democrat, Democrats, Election, Hillary Clinton, Philadelphia, President, Presidential candidates, Presidential election, Presidential race, superdelegates

Bernie Sanders Math: If I lose, I should still win!

Bernie Sanders Math: If I lose, I should still win!

Bernie Sanders won Indiana. Well, sort of. 

If by winning, you mean he received 34,466 more votes, then yes, he won.

However, exit polls showed him pulling a surprise 12% win, which would have helped his famous, and endless claim of ‘momentum,’ but he only came in with less than half of that percentage.

But the real contest is who wins the most delegates. Before Indiana Sanders was 327 delegates behind, and his Indiana ‘win’ nets him six more. Six more delegates is not even close to what he needed. Now he is has a deficit of 321 delegates, and between now and the June 7th California primary there are only 262 delegates available. Even if Sanders won one hundred percent of every primary and caucus between now and June 7th, he would still be behind Hillary Clinton in delegates.

California is the end of the road for Sanders. He can refuse to concede, but it won’t matter. There are 548 delegates available in the California primary. Clinton needs 181 of those delegates, along with the superdelegates who’ve pledged their vote to her, and she has the nomination.

Sanders needed to have a stunning win in Indiana to keep up the appearances of a contender, and he didn’t. His campaign has even given up the idea that he has to win the most pledged delegates, and is now focusing on converting the superdelegates to vote for him even if he can’t win the majority of regular delegates. That’s just a fantasy.

Hillary Clinton:  In her 3rd decade of fighting for a government by the people

Hillary Clinton: Coasting to the nomination

The superdelegates are loyal Democrats. That’s how they earned the honor of being a superdelegate. Sanders is not a Democrat. He is an Independent who refused to join the Democratic party until he decided to run for President. His plan to ‘convert’ the superdelegates would require that some of the most loyal Democrats abandon the real Democrat who has won the most pledged delegates, to give the nomination to a candidate who is a Democrat in name only. It is not going to happen.

Under the rosiest scenario, Sanders will 129 delegates between now and June 7th. That would only give 66 more delegates to Clinton, but she would then only need 115 more delegates to win the nomination. Currently she is ahead of Sanders in California by ten points, but lets assume that Sanders wins by ten points. He would win 329 delegates, and Clinton 219.

Clinton will clinch the nomination in California by over one hundred delegates, even if Sanders wins every primary/caucus up to, and including California. Not only does Clinton win, but she also will still have over one hundred more pledged delegates than Sanders.

Sanders is claiming the system is rigged. He’s correct. It’s rigged to nominate the person who wins the most delegates, and that is Hillary Clinton.

The only question left is who she will face in the general election. Will it be the Donald Trump, or will there be an eleventh hour switch to Paul Ryan?

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