{"id":2445685,"date":"2019-06-24T22:40:01","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T04:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/aspen-ideas-reporters-notebook-a-starbucks-crisis-and-churchill-by-the-numbers\/"},"modified":"2019-06-24T22:40:01","modified_gmt":"2019-06-25T04:40:01","slug":"aspen-ideas-reporters-notebook-a-starbucks-crisis-and-churchill-by-the-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-ideas-reporters-notebook-a-starbucks-crisis-and-churchill-by-the-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen Ideas Reporters Notebook: A Starbucks crisis and Churchill by the numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Aspen Ideas Festival 2019 runs from June 23 to 29.<\/strong>
Ian Wagreich\/Aspen Institute<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The No. 2 person for Starbucks had both a personal and professional response to an incident last year that tarnished the company\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n

As the chief operating officer of Starbucks, Rosalind Brewer was on the front lines addressing a viral story about two black men, both age 23, being arrested at a Starbucks store located in an upscale Philadelphia neighborhood.<\/p>\n

And as the black mother to two children, one a young man, the issue\u2019s closeness to home was indisputable.<\/p>\n

Police officers, ultimately eight of them, arrived at the Starbucks after its store manager called authorities to ask for the removal of two black men who had been there 10 minutes but had not ordered anything. Police arrested the two men for trespassing; they had been waiting for a third person to join them for a business meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we realized that we had a breakdown in leadership and we knew that our policies weren\u2019t in place, we knew we had a lot of work to do,\u201d Brewer told interviewer Jonathan Capehart, an opinion writer at The Washington Post. \u201cAnd we knew that in order to maintain a place in our stores where you can come to think, read and have a great conversation and coffee \u2014 we knew that that was all at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starbucks didn\u2019t exactly get ahead of the issue, however. That\u2019s because it was nearly impossible given the immediacy of social media, she said. Company executives were spread over the country when the news broke on a Thursday afternoon, while the social-media engine cranked up after a Starbucks patron posted a video of the incident and arrest.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo everything immediately went to social media,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then the rest of the world showed up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard Schultz, then no longer the company\u2019s CEO but its board\u2019s executive chairman, told the brass \u201cto be bold in order to get this right,\u201d Brewer recalled.<\/p>\n

On May 29 after the incident, the Seattle-based company closed all 8,000 stores it owns in the U.S. so its employees could undergo racial-bias training.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarbucks was very serious about getting it right,\u201d she said, later adding: \u201cIt was our fault. It was not those two gentlemen\u2019s fault; we were not going to make it their fault. We were not going to make it the fault of the local police officers, or the mayor, or anyone else. Starbucks made that issue happen. Our store manager caused that to happen. So own it. When you mess up, own it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Brewer also was getting an earful from her son.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe called me right away, \u2026 he was like, \u2018Mom, I don\u2019t know where you are or what you\u2019re doing, but you\u2019ve got to address to this. You\u2019ve got to get this under control.\u2019 He was livid. \u2026 But he really wanted me to get after it. But he gave me confidence to do everything I could possibly do, because I could tell in his voice. I heard the fear in his voice. He was scared. He thought about himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brewer said she and her husband regularly talk with their son, who lives in Brooklyn, about what to do when he has a police encounter, telling him \u201cwhen you get pulled over by an officer, you call us right away. And you also call some friends of the police that we\u2019ve introduced you to, and you be ready to take action. We\u2019ve been very clear with (our son) about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

While she has a high-ranking position with a major American company, Brewer has spoken often about her insecurities, such as going home to change after a workout before she goes shopping. A better-dressed appearance, she said, lessens the chance for someone to single her out because of her race, as opposed to if she were wearing gym clothes, she said.<\/p>\n

Brewer \u2014 a former CEO and president of Sam\u2019s Club, and a current member of Amazon\u2019s board of directors \u2014 mentors young women and \u201cI always tell them to be prideful,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

CHURCHILL: HIS VIRTUES AND STRUGGLES<\/p>\n

British historian and biographer Andrew Roberts has a new book out, \u201cChurchill: Walking with Destiny,\u201d a near 1,000-page offering about the man who was the U.K.\u2019s two-time prime minister, including from 1940 to 1945 during most of World War II.<\/p>\n

Roberts enjoyed access to King George VI\u2019s private correspondence with Churchill during WWII, which might separate it from the 1,009 other books written about the British Bulldog.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been in the last six to 10 years an absolute avalanche of new sources that have been coming out on Winston Churchill,\u201d he told the audience Monday at Paepcke Auditorium, where he delivered professor-like lecture on Churchill\u2019s virtues and struggles.<\/p>\n

Brewer also had fun with numbers, pointing out that Churchill, who was not a Christian but believed in a lord almighty, not once mentioned the name \u201cJesus Christ\u201d in the 5.2 million words he wrote and the 6.2 million words he spoke, Roberts said.<\/p>\n

During his first six months of life, Churchill only saw his mother for a total of 61\/2 hours, Roberts noted. Churchill, known for his heavy drinking, also was not an alcoholic, Roberts said, maintaining that during the 2,194 days of World War II, he got drunk just once. He also \u201cburst into tears\u201d 50 times during the war, Roberts said.<\/p>\n

Churchill lived in debt and wrote 37 books and numerous articles to pay his bills, Roberts said.<\/p>\n

Above all of that, Churchill was the first prominent politician to sound the alarm about Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t actually save London and England, but he actually saved civilization itself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aspen Ideas Festival 2019 runs from June 23 to 29.Ian Wagreich\/Aspen Institute The No. 2 person for Starbucks had both a personal and professional response to an incident last year that tarnished the company\u2019s reputation. As the chief operating officer of Starbucks, Rosalind Brewer was on the front lines addressing a viral story about two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2445685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 07:22:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2445685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2445685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2445685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2445685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}