Starbucks misses opportunity

Florida isn't an accessible state. I was recently in Naples, Florida and discovered after turning my ankle how many stairs and how few ramps there are in local businesses.  The obstacle course that I had to get through to get to the local Starbucks surprised me. I was a little irked that I had to slip past a white convertible taking up two spots including the handicapped spot. The following post doesn't surprise me.

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Starbucks was serving something, but unfortunately it wasn’t justice.

After asking people who were illegally parking in handicap-only spots to move their vehicles, Rob Rowen was banned from a Starbucks in Tampa, Florida, reports WTSP.

Rowen later received a letter from the massive corporation, which he suspected would be an apology.WTSP reports that it was actually an expulsion from all Starbucks in the country (which has since been reversed) because he was “disrupting business and threatening customers.”

The letter “shocked” the Florida man, whose son-in-law has muscular dystrophy and is in a wheelchair.  

When seeing parking injustices, Rowen took it upon himself to urge people to abide the law.

“I saw someone park, and it was obvious they weren’t handicapped,” Rowen told Bay News 9. “There was no handicapped parking sticker. It wasn’t a handicapped plate. And so I said to him, ‘You’re parked in the one handicapped space, and you need to move your car.’”

Rowen would snap a photo of violations on his phone and then confront the law-breakers inside the coffee shop.

His vigilante lifestyle was halted a few months ago when a customer complained to the manager, resulting in Rowen getting kicked out.

Starbucks spokesperson Laurel Harper told WTSP that Rowen “became confrontational towards customers” which resulted in them asking him to not return.

But once the story gained traction online, the coffee chain took a step back and reversed the ban.

In a statement released to IJReview, Starbucks said: “We understand Mr. Rowen’s concerns. We have been speaking with him about this and have resolved the matter.”

Starbucks vowed to “work with him to improve the parking situation at the store and create additional awareness and understanding of this important topic.”

And although the ban has been lifted, Rowen told Bay News 9 that it is not about that, but about “the way they relate to their handicap patrons.”