Rights Of Convenience
link Starbucks Mutiny Exposes New York’s Reliance on Chain’s Toilets – NYTimes.com.
The secret revealed. It was always a curious but impressive business model that could envisage and execute selling a 10 cent cup of liquid for 3 bucks. If that isn’t capitalism at its best, I can’t think of a better example. It turns out that perhaps the secret to it all was not so much the flavor of the drink but the effectiveness of its….well effectiveness. Rumor has it that the chain was originally to be called Starbucks To Go, but the marketers felt that would have been redundant.
It becomes clear now that having the availability of ‘facilities’ seems to be an unadvertised benefit of consuming Starbucks coffee. Of course every restaurant from McDonalds to Dunkin Donuts serves coffee and they all have facilities, but those restaurants aren’t situated every 100 feet in any urban center as seems to be the case with Starbucks. Now we know why coffee is so expensive at Starbucks…patrons actually subsidize the cost of servicing the washrooms. Someone should do a study on the price charged for a coffee at Starbucks with the price of toilet paper, it may correlate better than it does with the price of beans.
The larger issue is the entrenched entitlement mentality of washroom users. Patrons sure, but now everyone feels entitled to use them as if they were a public facility. We shouldn’t really be surprised by this since this mindset is evident in every aspect of modern life. Gradually, we have come to accept that ‘conveniences’ have transmogrified into rights and entitlements. At the recent ‘occupy’ sit ins here in Vancouver, sympathetic street food vendors initially provided free grub as a gesture of compassion. When it became expensive to do so and they stopped, occupiers railed against the vendors, some even vandalizing their carts. Sort of like having your house egged after you run out of Halloween candy. Probably not even a tip was offered.
We’ve seen this with society’s welfare structure. Originally implemented for all the right reasons as a means to cushion any short period of joblessness by people, it has evolved into a legitimate source of income for many who are content to collect it because they can. Any cuts to welfare entitlements are met with frenzied and passionate protests which no politician will risk. Education has moved into this entitlement tent as well since now there are protests over the costs of higher education and that it should be subsidized heavily if not be altogether free. Why the cost of education is so high is never addressed, since at its core is the ever inflating cost of paying college professors and administrators.
Staying with the recent Occupy theme, there is an accepted principle that these misguided protesters are free to stand anywhere they like to protest in a democratic society. While nominally true, it’s unclear why it is also incumbent upon the general tax paying public to provide washrooms, cleanup and police details to oversee the safety of the group. It’s as if someone was standing outside your front door decrying your policies on some issue but you provide them hot dogs and umbrellas.
Like Starbucks washroom users, the “right” to make society pay for every fringe need will eventually cost the paying customers money. At some point, a cup of coffee will cost $10 bucks and the chain will be rebranded Sawbucks. Or they close all the washrooms.