Starbucks Forced To Apologize After Vet Finds 'Chang' Printed on His Order
You’d think that for a company whose CEO so wholeheartedly endorsed Hillary Clinton and her leftist narratives, Starbucks would do a better job of training its employees to be paragons of liberalism and tolerance.
You’d be dead wrong.
Suffice to say, if what a California veteran is reporting is true, Starbucks’ much-ballyhooed anti-discrimination “diversity” training has been an abject failure.
As reported by KCRA-TV, veteran Johncarl Festejo, a Filipino American who served for 18 years in the Air Force before retiring in 2017, is charging he was subjected to disgusting behavior from a Starbucks in Vacaville, California.
Even worse, Festejo was with his 12-year-old daughter, whom he was taking to school that morning.
As many Americans do, Festejo decided to stop by Starbucks en route to dropping his daughter off.
Feeling a bit under the weather, Festejo thought a hot cocoa might make him feel better. Instead, he probably left feeling even sicker than when he had entered the establishment.
Asking for his hot cocoa, as well as banana nut bread and a chocolate frappuccino for his daughter, Festejo went through the normal motions of placing an order at Starbucks. When asked for his name for the order, Festejo gave it.
“I said, ‘my name is John,'” Festejo told KCRA-TV.
Festejo, who used the Starbucks app to pay for the order, also claimed that his full name “Johncarl” was also displayed on the app.
The unnamed barista, perhaps feeling like she should pursue a career in comedy, apparently chose to give Festejo a different name.
“A few minutes later, I was just waiting in that area, and next thing I know, I hear, ‘Is there a Chang here? Is there a Chang? We got a hot cocoa,'” he recalled. “I figured, no big deal. It was probably someone else.”
Unfortunately, the reality of the situation began to dawn on Festejo when “Chang” was called a couple more times.
“Then, I hear again, ‘Banana nut bread for Chang.’ I’m like, OK, probably the same order. Then, followed by that was the chocolate frap,” Festejo recalled.
Realizing that this was, in fact, his order, Festejo wanted to know how “Chang” had become the name on the order.
“I said, ‘Ma’am, is this my order? Because my name is not Chang.’ She responded that could it have been my name on the app,” he explained. “So, I double-checked my Starbucks app. It says my name. I just asked, ‘Is this some kind of joke? For real? Like, come on now.'”
When Festejo turned to the barista who had taken his order, he “saw her just slightly snicker.”
Filipino-American Air Force veteran Johncarl Festejo said he was shocked when he heard his order called at a Vacaville Starbucks counter last week. https://t.co/TaYpF6QM2Q
— KPIX 5 (@KPIXtv) December 2, 2018
While he wanted to press further, Festejo’s daughter wanted to leave because she had to get to school. But it didn’t take long for even Festejo’s daughter to realize that something was amiss.
“When I went to school, I started to think about it. How could they get John and Chang messed up?” Milan told KCRA-TV. “I think it was really mean, because I never went to a place where they called me something else.”
Check out this coverage from KPIX.
When Festejo contacted the Starbucks corporate offices to complain, he received an apology from both the offices and the local district manager.
“At Starbucks, we take great pride in providing a warm and welcoming environment for everyone who enters our stores and expect our partners to uphold our values and follow through on our commitment. We have a zero-tolerance stance on discrimination of any kind, and the experience in question was not reflective of our mission and values,” a Starbucks representative said, according to KCRA.
“We have reached out to the customer and shared our deep regret for their experience, are conducting an investigation into the matter and will take the appropriate actions.”
“We didn’t expect this, especially this day in age,” Festejo said. “Especially what just occurred recently in Starbucks, I didn’t expect this would happen.”
Festejo was referencing the aforementioned “diversity” training Starbucks had just gone through company wide after an allegedly racially motivated event in Philadelphia in May.
To his credit, Festejo didn’t try to instill some sense of victimhood in his daughter.
“All I can advise her is just not to — to move forward, learn from this and press on,” he said.
I’d expect nothing less from an Air Force veteran.
Sadly, these days, I’d expect nothing more from Starbucks.
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