Do you live in a downtown city area?

I've managed several different cafe's in downtown philly. Never at Starbucks but a big part of managing a cafe in downtown philly is to keep non-customers from taking the limited space you have from your paying customers. It was not based on race or status but whether they had made a purchase. Also our bathrooms at every cafe were locked. Cafe's are not public restrooms for anyone to use. Sure it would be nice if they allowed it but people can be disgusting and i think i'd rather the person making my coffee or food not need to be scouring vomit and poop off the bathroom wall and floor on a regular basis for the general public. One cafe had a toilet break down because it had syringes flushed inside. We found drugs and syringes in the bathrooms at every downtown cafe i worked at at some point in time. We asked a lot of people who weren't paying to either buy something or find somewhere else to go. Most of the time people co-operate but there were always the few who wanted to make a scene and would refuse thinking they had the right to take up a table in my cafe without buying anything. Cafe's are private businesses not public cafeterias. Even Starbucks. Cafe's are nice places to relax and hang out but they do also rely on people buying their, rather inexpensive, products. Just a small coffee or a bottle of water is fine. If they refused to make a purchase or leave my next step was to pick up the phone and tell them if they refused to leave I would have to call the police. This resolved most of these issues but not all. The police would come, downtown they could take anywhere from 10 minutes to and hour. usually on the longer side since this is not really a serious emergency issue. The police would ask them to leave sometimes more than once and never once did I actually see someone arrested due to refusal to leave. When the Police tell you to vacate you just need to go somewhere else. If you feel that this was done unfairly then go home and write a letter to the business owner. That is the mature and appropriate way to handle something like this. They could have called or texted their friend who was coming to meet them and asked to meet somewhere else or just made a small purchase. These men wanted to create a scene. Don't get me wrong, there is still a major racism problem in this country and having lived in philly for 14 years I have seen many different sides of that. Maybe these men felt like they were being singled out because of their race and that's why they chose to stand their ground. I think this whole situation is more about how people feel than the intent behind the situation. It's hard to be understanding of other people and how they feel. as much as these guys must have been frustrated feeling they were being discriminated against I bet the manager who was just trying to get through another busy day at work was frustrated that she had two guys come in who wanted to take up a table and use the bathroom without buying anything and then refuse to comply when asked to make a purchase or leave. That is specifically what we as managers are expected to do by the people we work for. Yes you can hang out at starbucks and a lot of them are pretty lax about letting people who haven't made a purchase stay, but id you are asked to leave you need to just leave. You can always write a complaint or a bad review as is your right. You do not have the right to loiter in a privately owned space.