Gettin’ WOKE at the coffee shop

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A coffee shop is closing up on the Duke campus. Why is this news?  Ask The N&O:

The owner of Joe Van Gogh Coffee is closing his shop on the Duke University campus, he said Friday, to preserve the company’s “brand independence without conditions.”

Company owner Robbie Roberts said in a statement on the Joe Van Gogh website that the decision would be effective immediately and that all employees of the Duke shop would be offered jobs at other stores or in the production offices.

That includes, he said, two baristas who were fired Monday after Duke’s vice president for student affairs, Larry Moneta, complainedabout rap music that was playing in the store during his stop there for a drink and a snack. While he was in the shop the previous Friday, the song “Get Paid” by Young Dolph came on through an online music streaming service. Lyrics to the song are sexually explicit and include the n-word, references to drug use and to women as “b*****s.” […]

Here are the full lyrics to the “song” in question.

  Was there more to the story?  OF COURSE THERE WAS:

Duke University Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta visited the Joe Van Gogh coffee shop on campus on May 4, as he frequently does.

But while in the shop, ordering his usual hot tea and vegan muffin, he heard and was offended by a rap song baristas were playing, according to Indy Week.

So Moneta and executive director of dining services Robert Coffey complained to the coffee chain, and two baristas at the Duke shop were fired, according to the Indy Week report on May 8.

The baristas told Indy Week they play music over the shop’s speakers using playlists curated by Spotify.

Moneta was allegedly triggered by the song “Get Paid” by Young Dolph, a song that includes the n-word and curse words.

Brown told Indy Week that she turned the music off, apologized and offered Moneta his muffin, free of charge. He insisted on paying, she said.

Days later on May 8, Brown and Simmons were called into the coffee chain’s Hillsborough office and both lost their jobs, they said. 

In an emailed statement to The News & Observer and The Duke Chronicle on Tuesday, Moneta — who did not comment for the Indy Week report — said he was “shocked” to hear lyrics he said were “quite inappropriate for a working environment that serves children among others.”

Moneta was specifically concerned with a line in the song “I f—– her up real good,” he wrote. […]

So, the story has been contorted and inverted into YET another case of “institutional racism.”  The Duke administration is — as expected — groveling before the mob with tails between legs.

Of course, I have some takeaways and some questions:

  1. The customer experience.  Real capitalists are concerned with how their customers feel while patronizing their business, as well as after the fact.  How much business or repeat business has the chain lost because people didn’t enjoy being bombarded with the f—- word and notoriously nasty n—– word while buying coffee?
  2. The high horse.  The owner of this coffee house chain needs to climb off his.  Coffee shops are a dime a dozen.  Heck, my small community is swamped with them.  This coffee shop can be replaced in a New York minute.
  3. Lease?  I am sure these guys had one with Duke.  Are they running out on it?  If so, that would have to be of some discomfort to any future potential landlord for these people.
  4. Duke’s reputation.  I know. After its handling of the lacrosse case, the Duke Chapel Muslim call-to-prayer fiasco, various and sundry attacks on masculinity, and its location in the Third World banana republic of Durham, there is not much more damage to do.  Most visitors and employees at Duke might not recognize the coffee shop in question is an independent contractor.  They reasonably might see it as an extension of the university.  And how would the university’s reputation hold up if patrons have their senses repeatedly and viciously abused with words that could not be aired over network television or the radio?
  5. Hey, let’s protest.   Of course the snowflakes are all up in this Moneta guy’s business in the wake of this “story.”  Would we be getting the same defense of free speech IF, say, “Sweet Home Alabama,”  “Dixie,” or “If The South Woulda Won”  were played in the coffee shop?  *Nosireebob.*

Speaking of leftist crap, how about Starbucks?  Remember all of the hullaballoo involving the two black guys arrested in Philly?  Well, the Starbucks CEO has announced that his stores’ bathrooms are now open to everyone.  And by everyone, he means folks who aren’t buying anything, the homeless, junkies …..

The policy pretty much blows a hole in any anti-loitering policies.  Makes it harder to kick anyone out of a private place of business.  Farewell to private property rights.

I think I’ll stick with my Keurig.  Its end-product is much better than — and is one-eighth the cost of — Starbucks and its ilk.