It’s only a matter of time before Leftists lose the “woke” generation. Because “woke” requires a person to enter a death spiral.
That’s exactly what happened to one outstanding Starbucks manager. She woke up one day and realized she could no longer allow the leftist corporation to rule the world with their political indoctrination. In a choice between her values and her job, she made the choice that left her without a paycheck. And when a mama does that, it’s time we all pay attention.
As the Epoch Times explains:
Amanda Wannagat was an exemplary Starbucks store manager. She repeatedly received accolades from the global coffee shop chain for her performance. New store managers would get sent to her store in Salt Lake City to learn how to do the job properly. Despite solid career prospects and reasonable pay that supported her three children, this June she quit a over toxic work environment that, she said, was the result of political indoctrination masked as “anti-racism” and other employee trainings.
“I felt like I was in cult and I was drinking the Kool-Aid,” she told The Epoch Times via email.
A Little Background
The superstar employee joined Starbucks in 2015. It didn’t take long before she was promoted to a manager trainer.
She said she recognized that most of the employees were left-leaning, if not “political activists.” But she thought that had nothing to do with the workplace. She thought the company was admirable in many regards.
The atmosphere started to change around 2017, she said, and especially in 2018 after an incident in Philadelphia where a manager called the police on two black men who refused to order anything and refused to leave when asked to.
The company issued an apology, its CEO arranged a meeting with the two men, and the manager, reportedly, was to undergo “unconscious bias” training.
At the time, the company had just started a new initiative called “The Third Place.”
It was to make Starbucks a “warm, welcoming environment where anyone who crosses the threshold feels like they’re a part of, like they’re welcome,” one executive said in a video that’s part of the program’s training materials obtained by The Epoch Times.
The company produced sophisticated quarterly training routines, with videos, slides, and work sheets. It would invite speakers who would record talks on various subjects related to improvement of company culture and professionalism. A group of managers would undergo the training and then go through it with their staff in small groups or individually.
It all started innocently enough. Then the politics set in.
Rolling Stone continues:
In the fall of 2018, one training explained that Starbucks staff need to learn a special way to deal with “LGBTQIA+” people, Wannagat said.
Rather than getting on with their job, the training encouraged employees to “lean into discomfort” and start a conversation with such customers, such as on issues of their sex, particularly when a misunderstanding causes a tense situation.
Engaging strangers on personal aspects of their sex seemed to Wannagat inappropriate for a company to be involved in.
Another training, in 2019, asked employees to understand their “hidden biases,” which in her view also waded into personal territory that’s inappropriate for a corporation to pry into.
Next year, the company allowed staff to wear “Black Lives Matter” t-shirts after protests and riots following the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by a police officer during arrest. Starbucks didn’t allow any other apparel donning political slogans. The Black Lives Matter movement and organization was started by self-described Marxist organizers with the aim to press for political change as a solution to incidents where police officers killed black persons.
Wannagat said she was required to distribute Black Lives Matter T-shirts to her staff, but she never wore it herself and continued to try to steer clear of politics at her job.
From there, it gets worse.
An employee with the WuFlu decided to say “all lives matter.” In return, she was bullied in and out of the workplace. And do you think these “WOKE” souls were receptive to corrective actions?
Of course not. But Starbucks continued to spark wokeism. They brought in speakers to counter “racism.” And believe me, everything is racist. Covid deaths, police brutality, and the popularity of Unicorn Frappuccino’s. It’s all related to black and white.
“When people in today’s time say that they’re not racist, they’re connecting with white supremacists who say that they’re not racist. They’re connecting with Jim Crow segregationists who are like, ‘It’s perfectly separate but equal in Mississippi. We’re not racist.’ They’re connecting with people who lynched black people by the thousands who were like, ‘We’re not racist. These people broke the law. And we’re just following through with the law.’ They’re connecting with slaveholders, who said, ‘We’re not racist. This slavery is God’s law. Slavery is nature’s law. Slavery is an American law. We’re just following the law. Or we’re just following nature. You know, indeed, black people are the cursed descendants of Ham. So, we’re not doing anything wrong,’” Ibram X. Kendi, a history professor at Boston University, said.
Kendi founded the Center for Antiracist Research.
Yep, the man is a self-proclaimed expert on race relations. One of his “bright ideas” is to enact anti-racist policies to put “different folks in positions of power.”
As such, Kendi suggested Starbucks consider making it easier to be “anti-racist.”
So, while Wannagat sought ways to unify her staff, Kendi argued that people needed incentives to be anti-racist.
But, as Rolling Stone points out, “Kendi’s ideas have been rejected by both conservative and classical liberal scholars.” Still, Starbucks put their faith in the progressive guru.
“The major issue with what Kendi says is that it is an either/or fallacy. He presents the problem as either a matter of culture or a matter of policy. This takes the onus off of people of color completely, which I think is a mistake,” Eric Smith, associate professor of Rhetoric and Composition at York College of Pennsylvania, told The Epoch Times.
“Another issue is that he never gives an example of a racist policy relevant to Starbucks or beyond. This is because that explanation would surely echo one of his most famous sentiments that he doesn’t seem to share in these videos: the only solution to past discrimination is present discrimination.”
Maybe Kendi just needs a little time to hang out with Little Wayne. Then he would get a front row seat to a color-blind world. Because Kendi failed to help Starbucks. Instead, he made things worse.
Bad Coffee
According to Wannagot, things continued to spiral. Employees remained rude. Belligerent. They refused any type of intervention. These woke workers even sabotaged the coffee. Eventually, Wannagot couldn’t wake up for one more woke day.
She quit. For Wannagot the nightmare is over. But expect more stories just like Wannagot’s to surface. Because wokeism is exhausting, even for the most seasoned liberal.
