(I am Rob)
Over at StarbucksGossip, they have a letter from a now-former employee at the coffee chain, who claims he was given the boot from his java-dispensing job because he turned off the in-store free WiFi in an effort to stop customers from looking at porn.
After working at the ‘Bucks for three years, the employee says he was axed on Aug. 29:
Two days prior, a number of men had been using Starbucks’ new free Wi-Fi to watch pornography while customers, some of them children, could see and hear. In order to verify whether or not it was within his power as a Starbucks employee to pull the plug and after a number of complaints from customers, [he] went through all the steps, asking supervisors, calling managers, and even looking through the employee handbook (which not only said nothing about this act being against policy but actually explained how to do it) before cutting the public Wi-Fi… What he did was not against policy.
The StarbucksGossip editor who posted the letter chides the former employee for turning off the WiFi, saying he should just “tell the customers to stop viewing porn, or leave the store — now!”
If you were working at Starbucks how would you have resolved the situation if you saw people openly surfing the web for porn? And is the company in the right if, as he claims, they fired him for turning off the WiFi?
This isn’t the right way to deal with porn-surfing Starbucks customers….. [StarbucksGossip.com]
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They have as much right to be thier viewing porn as anyone else has the right to be thier viewing sports scores or national news (all are about equal in value in my book). Good for this guy being fired.
It wasn’t his business to determine what customers can view on their PCs. Not (apparently) against company rules either. He chose to be the morality police and lost. Case closed.
No, sir, you were fired because you made a shitty business decision: instead of dealing with the small number of customers who were the problem, you pissed off the large number of customers who weren’t the problem. I’d have fired you too.
If by “dealing with the small number of customers who were the problem” you mean “telling the porn watchers to stop and getting threatened for it” and by “you pissed off the large number of customers who weren’t the problem” you mean “got permission from the other patrons”, sure.
The real lesson is: never do anything that’s outside your job description. Doesn’t matter if you thwart a robbery, save a baby, or stop perverts from watching porn in front of kids, it can always be used as a reason to fire you.
There are guys who do love watching porn (over the Internet or in magazine) in front of others, especially young women to witness other people’s discomfort and smile.
It once happened to me on a train.
There was a middle-aged and not so “sexy” man who was watching a porn magazine and held it high in order to be visible from nearly every corner of the train-car.
He moved when he saw a woman casually looking his way and had a great time when the woman/girl blushed.
He tried with me, but I have him a scathing look and he stopped.
Some men are virtual “flashers”.
Was the magazine doing anything interesting?
No need to post a policy. Most states have laws about watching that in public, e.g. if you are driving your van with the headrest displays showing porn, and it is viewable outside the vehicle it is illegal. I’m sure viewing porn in public where other people are subjected to it. Even redacted city Starbucks in the specific state would have allowed us to pull up local laws.
I would have told them to leave.
In fact I work for BBY and we have displays that people can use to surf the Web I tell people atleast once a day to either leave or stop using our store displays to view youporn.
Turn Wifi off.
Claim network problems.
Turn back on when creepers leave.
It is pretty common, I have seen people doing it at McDonalds while lots of kids are around. Most people simply don’t care about anything around them. kinda like the idiots who randomly stop in the middle of the road to start a conversation with a friend walking down the sidewalk.
The problem is that from the business point of view, little kids don’t really care about porn and wont understand it. Allowing someone to come in and watch porn may also mean that they may buy some coffee. If the worker was to kick them out, he would have still gotten fired because that means they are removing a paying customer. Evin businesses care about money not people. People could walk into starbucks and eat rat droppings and they would not care as long as they didn’t lose customers and as long as the feces eating idiot buys coffee at their insanely high ripoff prices.
I totally side with Starbucks, and would go further and say that telling them to leave would have been just as out of line. If they were projecting it on a wall? That would be a problem. However, a restaurant should not be trying to censor what their customers are talking about, looking at on their own equipment, reading, etc. It’s no different than them throwing people out for reading a Playboy while drinking a latte.
If you’re watching porn with your morning coffee, me hopes it’s iced coffee….
Uh, no. You can’t remove a company’s most touted service because you’re too much of a pussy to ask a customer to leave. Customer shouldn’t watch porn in a store. Customer should be asked to leave. Manager should be fired.
I see this being a problem for Starbucks. The employee was obviously disturbed enough by the actions of some customers that they felt the need to do it. The things these customers were looking at were obviously of a nature that made them uncomfortable to approach them.
I’d say that this made it a hostile work environment and the things making it hostile were sexual in nature so you could claim it was sexual harassment as well.
Maybe they should have considered using OpenDNS, then use their filtering tools to keep said “people with needs” from accessing the porn sites, BitTorrent, etc. etc. using the free wifi.
I’ve had to tell customers to stop watching porn, it’s super awkward, but they actually were so clueless as to not realize it wasn’t appropriate for a public location with children. They need to know, and just shutting it down doesn’t let them know it’s not ok. It’s still SUPER AWKWARD THOUGH!!
I heard some Starbucks employees were using their pay to buy drugs. Quick, lets stop paying all of them. Oh wait, that’s moronic…
So kick them from the store or call the cops if the porn publicaly visible. Here in Chicago the cops would arrest these guys really fast, from some kind of public indecency to child related sex charges (if children are present or possibly near a school).
stay classy starbucks
i used to work at starbucks and we were not able to kick anybody out, even if they were drugged up and sleeping on our floors.
but watching porn in a public area where kids and families can see is just pushing it. I would have stepped in and told those pervs to leave immediately and threaten to call the cops
I have to say I am a little disheartened with all the people that agree he was in the wrong by turning off the wifi. No matter what you say, a simple “He should have asked them to leave” does not work in this particular situation.
It sounds like this employee went through every possible measure to verify that he was in the wrong and couldn’t so he was willing to STEP UP and make a judgement call. Unlike so many people out there who would rather avert their eyes and pretend nothing is going on so they don’t have to get involved.
From the article it doesn’t sound like one single lonely man, it sounds like several over a long time frame. Think about how much time it takes to ask all the supervisors, then call managers, and then read an employee handbook. And in that time frame there are STILL men who are in a public place watching porn. It obviously wasn’t a one-time thing and would still be going on if this employee hadn’t of done something about it. Not to mention that these aren’t the kind of people that have the social understanding to “be asked politely to leave” They are watching porn for HOURS ON END in a coffee shop for fucks’ sake. (literally! lol)
And if it IS several men as the article suggest then why run the gamut of being porn patrol with every single customer? Sure you catch the first two guys looking at porn, but what about a third that was just looking up something like say information on STDs, or another customer that wanted to find what time the local theater was showing their production of Equus. The employee would have eventually been fired for invading privacy for people that weren’t looking at porn and then everyone would want to hate him for being a blowhard that doesn’t know the difference between DVDA and Web MD. Which, btw means he would have to do all of this – patrol, monitor, ask each and every customer guilty of looking at porn to leave, waiting for them to leave, possibly calling the cops – ALL WHILE HAVING TO RUN A STORE.
Now those who said he didn’t have the right, well by asking all the sups and managers what the proper response should have been means… he TOLD THE MANAGERS THAT PEOPLE WERE WATCHING PORN IN THE STORE. Which again, means that the managers did nothing. If an employee comes to you as the manager and says “Is it okay for me to turn off the wifi to stop people from watching porn” then wouldn’t you tell them employee that YOU would handle it from here? That obviously didn’t happen. The intentional lack of involvement by any higher authority means they elected him sheriff of the Starbucks. He had the authority to do what he needed to do.
This kid stepped up to the plate, took control of a situation and had the balls to make a legitimate call. This kid should’ve been promoted to manager, not fired.
I think he has a wrongful termination on his hands. His manager and supervisor (who are responsible for their employees) told him it was okay. Were the managers also fired? I doubt it.
Policy books are only meant to be general overviews and it cannot take into account every single situation that occurs. Saying that it “isn’t against policy” is the most gawd awful and moronic thing that any manager says these days. I call it being “stupid and incompetent and abdicating their responsibility” when using this excuse.
Viewing porn should not be condoned period. I hope this employee gets a better company to work for quickly because Starbucks just lost my respect and business.
This is soo funny… first its just porn big deal ask them to stop, second OMG no wifi in one starbucks for a few hours nooooo!!! its a tragedy! -2 points to everyone
Starbucks, rather than turfing staff, should have pointed the finger at themselves. After all, a mother with a child is going to have a pretty strong legal case against Starbucks if they’re enabling the surfing of porn in their stores. Rather than fire this good guy, they should have put blocks on as many questionable adult websites as they can, and put up a sign in the store that states that accessing such material is against Starbucks policies and you will be banned from the location.
I am not a lawyer or other legal professional.
File a wrongful termination claim and contact your local unemployment office Since you were explicitly given permission to do so by your supervisor and the employee handbook not only does not ban such, but actually instructs you on how to do it, it is considered to be a part of your job to disable wi-fi when needed. This is about as classic wrongful termination as you could get. “Hire at will” is a term they would probably throw around, most states’ and federal anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation laws override absolute “at-will” employment (wikipedia has a list).
Wait, can we be a great deal clearer about the infraction?
Are we talking about two guys watching a Sports Illustrated bodypainting video, or what?
I am thinking that this person whoever it was, was a problem employee. They probably wanted to fire him or her long before this happened, and now was their chance. Obviously he or she did something else before this, and the OP has left out how he was late everyday for the last 3 weeks, or God only knows what else.
I feel an Avenue Q song coming on……
Bad as this might sound, I want to say there should be no problem with looking at porn in a public place. The problem would be indecency. If people can see the screen, or you’re behaving indecently, or the machine (or you) is making indecent or annoying sounds, then you’re doing something wrong. If you’re just sitting there in a corner where others can’t see, smiling away, both hands on the keyboard, then what’s the problem?
Some people are turned on by unusual things; should people not be allowed to look at those things, even if they aren’t considered sexual by most? And on the flip side, some pervert can come in and start behaving inappropriately without porn. It’s not what you’re watching, but how you’re behaving.
The “let’s block everything that could lead to inappropriate behaviour” mentality probably does more harm than good, blocking harmless resources and/or things people have a legitimate reason to look at, failing to actually block what it intends to, slowing down the system, and getting people in trouble for “looking at porn” when they only stumbled across it by accident, didn’t know what they were clicking, got an unexpected erotic message, etc. They could also be downloading something with the intent to watch later in private.
These guys were apparently behaving inappropriately and thus should have been kicked out, or the police could have been called. (Letting people see erotic photos, on a screen or otherwise, in public seems like a form of indecent exposure.) I also wonder, if you have to buy a drink to use the free wifi, it must come with some type of code? Could they not just cancel the code, cutting off that particular user? Or temporarily block the sites they were accessing? Turning it off entirely seems pretty harsh. Either way, there is a big difference between inappropriate behaviour in public (whether involving porn or not) and merely looking at things.
tl;dr: Accessing porn in a public place doesn’t necessarily constitute public indecency (the actual crime), even if it did in this case. So long as you keep it private, it should be fine.
Well, I supposed if they fired people for making uninspired, bland coffee, nobody would be left to take our money.
Well, I supposed if they fired people for making uninspired, bland coffee, nobody would be left to take our money.
This story smells like a 4-day-old fish. The employee could have been jerking off in the store room using a direct connection for all the info we have here. This is a pretty b.s. grounds for dismissal if the person was a decent employee.
Betty’s Oceanview Diner in Berkeley has had to deal with this issue for years already, btw.
I can’t help but chuckle at the method used. Sure, they probably should have asked the customer to stop, or leave… but then we’d have a Consumerist post by the scorned scumbags claiming that their rights to free porn while being caffeinated were heinously violated.
Either way, its a prime example of the naivety of corporations when it comes to providing such access without a clear cut method of dealing with the exceptions to what is acceptable.
The former employee should have been warned (not terminated) but after 3 years of working there if they were terminated for this very minor gaffe – chances are someone was waiting for any reason to let them go.
Wow, I didn’t realize this had made it so far onto the internet.
Well, that’s me in the story.
Just a couple things I want to clear up (much to the chagrin of my attorney) – I did ask the guys to leave. They wouldn’t. I had two options – call the police or turn off the wi-fi. Calling police? Bad for business. I turned off the wi-fi, the guys left, I turned it back on, everything was good for the rest of the shift.
Not only is turning the wi-fi off NOT against policy, but the employee handbook tells you how to do it. “If you want to turn off the wi-fi, here’s how.”
Of course, the hell of it is that my store manager watches the stuff on his breaks and buys stuff from the bootleggers, so he was probably just protecting his own interests.
I love how people act as if they are entitled to free wifi at starbucks and this kid trampled on the constitutional rights of the patrons by temporarily disabling it. Some skeeves were surfing porn in public. The last thing I want to do while some freak is getting his rocks off is walk up and talk to him.
I don’t think what he did was wrong. However, after he turned it off, he should have approached the offender(s) and told them that if they want to watch porn, they need to do so in private (there are laws governing the public display of pornography). Then he should have turned it back on. If they started watching porn again. Turn it off and call the cops. There’s no way he should have been fired for this.