edditt: Just saw Quirt's post on the previous page, and I say +1)

The facts I'm looking for aren't going to be found in news articles because they're boring. But they might help us understand the people, the imperfect humans, behind the story.

Is the barista a shy, retiring type who shies away from confrontation, and who got jangled and simply reacted?

Did the barista know the customer who made the request? Was there a sense of obligation to do *something*?

Was the customer forceful and did the barista react to that?

Is the barista young (and by extension, inexperienced), and simply didn't have the life toolkit to deal with a "situation"? I laugh now at how I struggled with things in my youth that I wouldn't bat an eyelash at now. I'd like to think we we come up with better solutions the more opportunities we have to deal with challenging problems.

The barista knew one of the cops. Did the barista think they were asking a favor of friend to help him/her get out of an awkward moment?

What made the federation post this to the world rather than letting it pass? Are they tired of taking the rap for the bad cops and being blamed for things they themselves would never consider doing? Did they take advantage of an unfortunate incident to promote their own agenda?

Every person in this morality play is a human being, full of flaws and insecurities and stressed out by the world. Each one could have done things differently. But I'm not sure "better", because that is relative to the perspective of the outside observers, who themselves have their own flaws and insecurities and history. It's a no-win situation.

We now live in a world where every step can become a misstep, where every bit of flawed judgment has the potential to become part of a national discussion.

Any one of us could be the centerpiece of the next national dissection.

I'm with jodi:

quote:

We have lost our minds.

My 2c: We (eta: by this I mean the nation) need to take a collective deep breath.

quote:

Originally posted by Qaanaaq-Liaaq:
It’s the customer’s own personal problem to deal with if he feels uneasy being in a coffee shop with cops present. It’s a privately owned store that’s open to the general public including police officers. That customer didn’t have a valid reason for his request to ask that the police officers should leave. The barista should have denied his request.

Employees in the fast food and drink business are quickly trained. The training is OJT (On the Job Training) and customer ejection is probably not a topic in the training guide. If anyone, it’s the store’s manager who is better trained than the baristas, should decide if and when a customer should be ejected.

Well said.

This is what happens when we teach people that feeling “unsafe” is a reasonable excuse for whatever they want:

https://slate.com/news-and-pol..._socialflow_facebook

Pure evil. How awful for that boy's family.