Runninghead: POLITICAL FRAME 1

Olivia Brookshire

Dr. Scholar

OGL 481 Pro Seminar l PCA Political Frame

June 14, 2020

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Situation Restatement

The event I have chosen to analyze is an overdose resulting in a death in my Starbucks

store in Atlanta, Georgia in the winter of 2016. In this situation I was a shift leader. The heroin

epidemic had a major impact in my community, which already was classified as a high-crime

area with a consistent homeless population. In addition, it was wintertime and we always

experienced an influx of problems as the weather got colder and more homeless who suffered

from addiction would use our facilities. Our store experienced increased loitering and robbery

because of this. It was not until the overdose resulting in a death that preventative changes were

made but piled on to hourly workers. Our experience with the homeless and drug addicts in our

community became out of hand and required us to make significant changes.

Political Influence

The recognized people of power in my Starbucks community in Atlanta, Georgia, were

the shift leaders, the store manager, my district manager, and the regional manager. The power

and strategic order is centralized through corporate. The power does not apply across issues, but

rather is restricted to specific issues and areas. For example, there are certain things that baristas

are not allowed to do that shift managers and store managers are allowed to do that Starbucks has

plainly written out. In addition, most store workers must request permission to invoke change

and implement their own creativity from their district and regional managers. Regional and

district managers are just local extensions of corporate, so everything is very black and white

when it comes to power and strategic order.

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The primary basis of power is tenure and access to resources when it comes to Starbucks. For

example, when there is an issue, baristas always look to partners who have been there the longest

regardless of their position title. In addition, since our work is very central, we do not have the

resources for many problems, requiring us to work along with other people in authority. For

example, every time there was an incident, such as a robbery, theft, or vandalism, we had to file

a report with the police. People who had been victims in the incident would come to us to solve

the problem, yet we had to redirect them to the police, as we could not give out things such as

video recordings without police authorization. Issues that often-produced conflict in our store

were customers who were unhappy and caused scenes. Things that would cause customers to act

irrationally were customers who were unpleased with their purchase and customers who were

upset with our homeless community taking up most of our café space. External factors that

caused customers to be unhappy were the fact that a car booter would place boots on people’s

cars if they walked off from the lot. Starbucks had no affiliation with them seeing as we shared

the lot with other businesses, yet almost all of the spaces were used by our customers

exclusively. In addition, there were instances when there was a car wreck, right outside of our

store making it hard for people to come get their orders for hours, and people were upset. Once

there was a shooting that took place one block away from our store. The entire road was taped

off by investigators, which made coming to work, and coming to the store as a customer, very

difficult and upset some people. When these conflicts occurred, it is best in my experience to use

the power of understanding to validate that person’s feelings. It is then default to use the power

that I had as a shift leader, to counter the understanding with reason, and offer the customer a

free drink, or give them one of my manager’s business cards so they could take the issue up with

them, if they couldn’t be solaced by me.

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Course of Action

The death in my store understandably caused a multitude of conflicts. Mostly, every

conflict we had was centralized around Starbucks and within our community. Yet now, we had

to work together with authorities such as Police, Corporate Starbucks, and had to address the

issue amongst our local community. Since this had never happened at our store or any

neighboring stores, we were a bit in shock, as was our district manager. Fearing that this would

happen again, our district manager created a meeting for all of the shift supervisors and store

managers located in high crime areas. Starbucks issued out guidelines for specifically high crime

areas for how to deal with asking a loiter to leave, how and when to call the police, and how to

keep ourselves and our customers safe in a multitude of situations. Viewing this situation

through the political frame, I see that the rush of the training was a political factor rooted in

ethics. A conflict had occurred, and Starbucks had to make sure that they addressed it timely and

responsibly, as not to tarnish their good name. At the meeting we acted out likely scenarios and

practiced the different scripts for different problems. We were given worksheets and packets to

take back to our stores with us. In addition, my store specifically was granted to keep Narcan, a

drug administered to prevent overdose and drug related death, so that if another overdose

happened, we would not feel so helpless. Unsurprisingly, another overdose did happen just a few

months later, and my coworker Noelle successfully administered the Narcan to the man. His life

was saved. The day after this, the man came back to the store to talk to her. He cried and thanked

her over and over. This cultivated a better relationship amongst us and our homeless community,

as well as shifted the homeless people’s point of views on life. Other precautions included

limiting our store hours. Our district manager and store manager looked through our sales, our

history of crimes and incidents, and concluded that opening at 6am, and closing at 8pm would
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help to keep ourselves and our community safer. This limited incidents, however, caused a lot of

conflicts for partners who now did not have as many hours as before and whose availability was

impacted. This resulted in several partners leaving to work at other stores who offered more

hours of the day for work and guaranteed them the freedom of not dealing with high crime area

events.

Do Different

If I had it to do over again, I would have used my team to create a coalition, to reveal our true

power to my district manager and regional manager. I wanted, as did many of my coworkers, an

in-store police officer. There were businesses nearby that had them, and we certainly needed one

seeing as we often had to call them anyhow, and it made ourselves and our customers feel safer.

When I suggested this to my store manager, he was unsure of asking our district manager. He

argued to me that in-store officers are hard to get because we must work alongside the police

department and the state, and they are very costly. It sounded like it was too much of a hassle for

him to secure one. If my team and I had leveraged our power to strike against my managers, I

believe they would have been forced to listen to us, and out of fear of looking poor from a

political stance, would have granted us the in-store police officer. As it seems clear that politics

are rooted in ethics, this would have been the best way to handle this situation, rather than just

preparing hourly workers for more problems that they were not initially prepared to deal with. In

addition, if I had it to do over again, I would have used my power and resources as a local

college student, to work with organizations that attempt to resolve homelessness and spread drug

awareness. After witnessing the conversation between the man who overdosed and my coworker

who saved his life, I realized that something can be done about this, but we have to use our
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privileges as non-addicts to allocate resources, support, and actively help to change the

conditions these people are confined by.

All in all, the political frame has redefined what “political” means to me, and has taught

me that while often a negatively charged word, politics are rooted in ethics. By observing the

political frame of environments whether it be in the workplace, at home, or any setting, we can

recognize how to navigate problems, leverage power, and design necessary responses to better

our community.
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References

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership

(6th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass (Perusall Version Only)