Grubstakers - Episode 13: Howard Schultz

Episode Date: April 30, 2018

This week's episode is about Howard Schultz, but this description is about you the listener. If you have been enjoying the pod let us know by DMing Andy and telling him how the clips he played this episode were too long and didn't represent fair use but were in fact wholesale content plagiarism. We discuss the Philadelphia incident, Starbucks' labor practices (firing people for unionizing), Schultz's rather questionable compensation package and the apartheid state he chooses to share it with.

Hey listener, this is Yogi Poliwal. Thanks for checking out Grubstakers, a podcast about billionaires where we ask the question, is there a such thing as a good billionaire? This week in the scalding hot seat is Howard Schultz, the venti giant of coffee. We talk about his upbringing, his tenure as the owner of the Seattle Supersonics, and the Philadelphia arrest incident. All this and some more shenanigans this week on Grub Stakers. me what it was like growing up feeling targeted for your race. I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. You know, I went to a tough school in Queens and they used to beat up the little Jewish boys.

You know, I love having the support of real billionaires. Hey everybody, welcome back to Grubstakers. Sean McCarthy here, as always, joined by my good friends. Steve Jeffries. Yogi Poliwal. Andy Palmer. And this week we're going to be talking about, you know, Mr. Starbucks. Mr. Howard Schultz.

It was a bit of a story. April 12th of this year, 2018, Starbucks in Philadelphia, a manager called 911 on two black customers, or they weren't customers, two black people who were sitting in the store. Loiterers, if you will, Sean. Right. As Dave Rubin said, you know,

they loitered, they didn't buy anything, so obviously police officers should remove them by force and then have them sit in the precinct without being charged for nine hours yeah um frankly not long enough if you ask me uh just like uh you know people don't talk about in those nine hours how many crimes they could have committed were those two black gentlemen on the streets the real estate they're talking about could have been a crack house you don't know these things. Isn't gang busted for loitering is like on par with gang busted for jaywalking?

That's right. Yeah. Basically never. But they really were like in the station for like nine hours after they were. This is nuts to me. But so anyway. They should have been arrested for loitering in that station. Buy something or get out.

I just imagine the police like oh yeah you like uh hanging around somewhere not doing anything maybe you could do it for nine hours they uh they if you if you but in all fairness uh loitering laws were put into place after uh slavery was abolished in order to basically criminalize being black and uh exploit the loophole in the 13th amendment it says that you can be yeah punished for uh or you can be put into slavery as punishment for a crime and so laws okay we know you've seen a netflix documentary i didn't know that yeah the auntie seen a netflix documentary i like the idea though is like you're in the minimum security prison and then they make you buy something from the civil forfeiture or they send you to the maximum security prison.

This prison's for customers only, all right? No, you cannot use our bathroom. The one toilet is for people who buy things. But anyways, so this week we're going to be talking about Howard Schultz. He's the king of coffee. The king of coffees. According to Forbes, as of April 2018, he's worth about $2.8 billion. Though I guess one more thing on the Philadelphia incident,

we should mention that the Starbucks, they've responded. CEO Kevin Johnson has met with the two men that they ejected and apologized. Starbucks is going to close their stores for a few hours on May 29th to have racial sensitivity training. Some of our audience members may not know what Starbucks is. That's true. Fortunately, we did research. Yeah, we did some research,

and we found someone who is perfectly equipped to explain Starbucks for us. Let me ask you this. Is it impossible to get a cup of coffee flavored coffee anymore in this country? He goes on to say. What happened with coffee? Did I miss a fucking meeting with the coffee? You can get every other flavor except coffee flavored coffee.

They got mochaccino, they got chocaccino, frappuccino, cappuccino, rapaccino, alpaccino, what the fuck? It's funny because it's true. www.whatthefuck.com Keep that applause going. Keep it going. Keep it, don't stop. We got 12 full seconds

of applause for plugging Mark Maron. That was probably the most... You walk in there now, there's people wearing berets. They're writing poetry on computers. There's a kid behind the counter, would you like a cafe coolada? Fuck no! www.blowme.com Cafe coolada.

It's an early documentary on Starbucks. It was one of Bill Hicks' last projects. That was the most controversial TED Talk I've ever heard. But yeah, no, that was one Dennis Leary explaining Starbucks' impact on our culture as of 1997. Still rings true today, 20 years later. Huge surge in traffic to www.blowme.com which was a glass artistry website run by Dale Juhuly

go fuck yourself do you think Dennis Leary disclosed the payment he had taken from a pornography website to plug them in his special alas today, we are speaking about the king of coffee, Howard Schultz. Howard Schultz. The man, the myth,

the clearly legendary douchebag who killed the Sonics. Yeah. And so we'll get to all of that, but it should be noted that I think we've done, this will be, what, our 14th billionaire? Something like that. But basically, except for Oprah, none of them, I don't know, 13th? Look, I don't know, 13th?

Look, I don't know. We can edit you, and you can say this correctly if you want to, Sean. This will be our 12th billionaire. We've done two special episodes. Yeah, but we talked about the Sackler family. They're billionaires. All right, that's fair, yeah. All right.

Maybe you're right. Yes. The point is- This is the content people crave. Bickering with Sean, Andy, Steven, and Yogi. About how many episodes we've done. Easily verifiable in our own site. Especially when it's in front of them on their device. I love that we're acting like experts on economics and these kinds of things.

And we just have no idea how many episodes we've actually done just the most like obvious facts we're just completely incorrect on but the point is of all the billionaires we've done uh thus far i would say oprah is the only one that you could verifiably say is self-made all of the rest had uh pretty privileged upbringings and you know got friends and family loans of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to start their companies. If not more. Yes.

But Howard Schultz is, as far as can be considered, self-made. He's a self-made man. He was born in 1953 in Brooklyn in the Canarsie Housing Projects. Where in Brooklyn? Which is a... www.whatthefuck.com Well, Dennis Leary, the Canarsie housing projects were reflected a time in New York City and in America in general in which public housing was a priority for the government

in the wake of the New Deal. It has since no longer been that. It's the old deal now. Now, there have been a lot of people who have grown up in Queens housing projects, and Howard Schultz is probably the most successful one to have not had a stellar rap career. He grew up down the street from Big Ian Tupac and was like, you know what? I'm going into coffee. In a different direction. There's still time for him. grew up down the street from like Big Ian Tupac and was like, you know what? I'm going into coffee. You know, in a different direction.

There's still, there's still time for him. Yeah. He did just retire as CEO of Starbucks. He could put out an album. He's got a hardship. When I bought the Sonics. But so as we mentioned,

Howard Schultz is, as of April, 2018, Forbes has him worth $2.8 billion. And just some quick facts about Starbucks itself. Starbucks has about 175,000 U.S. employees. They call them partners, euphemistically. Wow.

Yeah, I know, right? It's like a polyamory relationship. I know. The corporate speak is really annoying in some of these companies. But they have 175,000 US partners according to Glassdoor. And they all fuck each other. Starbucks is the biggest poly organization

in the world. That's why the logo is the leg spread. It's not a tail. It's letting the world know, hey, open up. But Starbucks pays, according to Glassdoor, as of 2016, Starbucks pays an average of $9.43 an hour. And Howard Schultz himself, he owns somewhere between 3% and 4%.

He's the largest single shareholder of Starbucks. He owns about 29 million shares, and that fluctuates between about 3% and 4%. 29 million shares as of November 2017. So he has a lot of money. And again, he grew up, his dad was a World War II veteran and later a delivery and a truck driver. His mother was a receptionist. They grew up in the Canarsie housing projects in the 50s, 60s.

And he was the first person in his family to go to college. So he's legitimately self-made, but also in the sense that he grew up in a U.S. economy that was heavily unionized and much more mobile, economically mobile than it is today. Right. He saw all that deprivation and labor exploitation around him, and he was like, you know what?

I got to get on that train. It is. So, yeah, I mean, we'll get to kind of like Howard's story later as far as union abuses and these kinds of things at his shop. But we should talk about just how he actually made his money to go chronologically. So as we mentioned, he was born in the Canarsie Housing Projects. He's an athlete. Actually, when he's younger, he was born in the Canarsie housing projects. He's an athlete. Actually, when he's younger,

he gets a football scholarship, believe it or not. Yeah. He gets a football scholarship to go to Northern Michigan University. He goes to Northern Michigan University. He gets hurt shortly into his football playing career, but he still has this athletic scholarship. So he graduates, again, first person in his family to go to college.

Graduates with a BA in communications in 1975. And then in 1976, he is hired by Xerox as a salesman. That's right. And he talks about that a bit where it's like, essentially for Xerox, he would... This is a great podcasting technique,

by the way. When you're on a roll doing a monologue, just take a drink from your iced coffee. Your jumbo. Oh, is that what this... I was about to complain

about the sound and then I realized I was making it. Like, what's this? What's this? You guys are creaking the... Guys, be professional. and then I realized I was making it. What's the answer? Creaking the... Guys, be professional.

100 people listen. You also stopped like you expected us to say something, but it was in the middle of a sentence. Yeah, right. It was like... Anyway, so what I was doing the other... Someone got to deal with that. All right.

Okay, so anyways. So, Howard Schultz, he gets this job at xerox in 1976 you know what sean says he says before we record this he's like let's go straight to the pistons because i don't like listening to people fuck around right up top that's what editing is for um all right so he goes to xerox 1976 the way he describes this is he makes like 50 cold calls a day in new york city like he goes door to door to different offices and he tries to get them to buy xerox 1976. The way he describes this is he makes like 50 cold calls a day in New York City. Like he goes door to door to different offices and he tries to get them to buy Xerox, you know. And this kind of like gives him his salesman experience. So he learns this way.

And again, it's the 70s. The American dream is not yet dead. You can this is a good job. Like, you know, my father, for example, worked at an airline and with union benefits and was able to travel the world and buy a house and all these things in the 70s and 80s. And then that's just not true anymore. So, again, Schultz is a self-made man, but you do have to put it in context of he came up in a very... That's just not true. He came up in a very different economy than what exists today. But he's a Xerox salesman, and he eventually excels at it. They promote him within Xerox. Hey, do you want to make your papers more papers?

What? I don't know. I'm just imagining a Xerox pitch. Hey, does anyone in the office have, like, a really nice butt that you want multiple photographs of? But when did he create the peanuts, Sean? At what point did he draw cartoons that changed the nation? He went from Xerox and he was like, this is satisfying, but what if a little boy could never kick a football? But so, he gets promoted. Wait, you guys think that the

Charlie Brown not being able to kick the football is a metaphor for how Starbucks treats its employees? I think it's more of a metaphor for how America's being cucked by the feminazis. And how they're taking the ball away from us and the power is in their hands now. What if on his deathbed he was like,

yeah, actually it was a metaphor for immigration from the turd world. I've been listening to a lot of Michael Savage, and I call it the turd world. All right, so he works at Xerox. He gets the salesman skills. He moves up, but he eventually finds a work unsatisfying, and in New York City, the Swedish company opens that manufactures both furniture and drip coffee makers.

Hammerplast. Yeah, there you go. And they were looking for a general manager. So he gets hired in 1980. He leaves Xerox and he goes to work as a GM for them. He's doing all right by this point. But so this is where the Starbucks story begins because while he's working for this Swedish company, he visits Hammerpost. He visits

San Francisco and then Seattle and in 1981 he goes into Starbucks for the first time. The one in Pike Place. Still there. Not at all a tourist trap. Just like the authentic experience. If you want to

know what Starbucks was like back in the day, wait in a 30 minute line for something you can get literally a block away in about five minutes. If you want the authentic

experience of somebody making $9.34 an hour who hates your tourist ass, though I guess the minimum wage in Seattle is $15. Making the same wage as in 1921. You'll get the exact same wage that they were paid when he walked in there the first time.

Do they have overpriced cake pops? Will they spell my name wrong on my cup? Wait, do we have records of him fighting the kshama salon uh 15 an hour in seattle i didn't see anything about it i mean it's like mostly what uh my research has indicated is since the early 2000s starbucks has learned to keep its head fucking down like we'll talk a bit about his Israel support, but he was more vocal about donating prominently to pro-Israel causes, and then sometime around the second Intifada, where Israel murdered 4,000 people,

he kind of hushed up about that a little bit, realizing it might impact his business's bottom line. But again, we'll get to that. We're jumping ahead. Back to when he was working at Hummerplast. In 1981, he's working for this company. He walks into Starbucks in Pike Place for the first time, and he's blown away.

And at this time, Starbucks didn't have actual brew service. They just sold coffee beans. They sold beans that you bring home and you make your own coffee. So he walks in, he gets beans, and he's blown away by the quality of the coffee. And it should be noted that Starbucks was founded in Seattle in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin along with Gordon... Gecko.

Gordon Boker and Zev Zilig. Zilig. I fucked this one up at a trivia during a work event. I thought it was the 60s. And everyone else thought it was the 90s. But basically, they learned coffee brewing from Alfred Peet, who founded Peet's Coffee, which they later went on to buy. That's right. So in 1981, Howard Schultz walks in for the first time, and he's blown away.

And he gets the inspiration that he really wants to be a part of this company. So he spends a year lobbying them, and eventually they hire him as, I believe, their marketing director. Director of marketing. Yeah, director of marketing. So in 1982, he's hired by Starbucks as director of marketing, and during this time, he goes to Italy on a company trip in 1983. He visits Milan, and he's so impressed by all the outdoor cafes, how these are places where people congregate

and what he calls a third home between work and your home is like this place that you go to to hang out and do all these things. And so he really gets inspired by that and by the brew service and all this stuff. And he has a real uphill battle trying to convince the founders of Starbucks to go along with this because they didn't want to be in what they considered the restaurant business. Right.

Which is crazy that they weren't into it, especially looking back on it now. But the reality is they wanted to sell beans. They're all about that bean game. And it kind of makes sense because what he was impressed with when he worked at Hammerplast was the fact that Starbucks was buying

so many the plastic cones, the plastic cone filters, and that's why he was so intrigued with them, because they gave a shit about good coffee. Right, yeah. No, they were very much dedicated to the bean, as it were. But so anyways, so he lobbies them for a bit and eventually in 1985 they open up another store i think eventually in the 80s starbucks even before he took over

had like four stores in seattle but then in 1985 starbucks opens up a store that's still there on fourth and spring street uh and they let schultz essentially open a full service italian coffee bar within the store you, with the cafe latte and all that. And it becomes incredibly popular and eventually, like, overtakes the other side of their business. And the founders actually didn't really like this because, again, they wanted to just sell beans. They didn't want to be in the restaurant business.

So, at this point, Schultz goes out and starts his own company. I believe it's a lg or something journal journal um and again uh so schultz starts his own business he has to get 400k to start to open the first shop uh the founders of starbucks actually invest about half of that money in him like they're actually totally cool with him leaving uh they just want him to use starbucks coffee and all the shops. So they invest about half of that. He raises $100,000 from a doctor,

$100,000 from his wife's friend, interestingly enough. Oh, so he did have friend and family donations. Only after he successfully built himself up. He was a part of the Friends and Family Trust Fund. Yeah, we've talked about this. Essentially, he started from working class poverty roots

in the Canarsie housing projects. Then he gets a job at Xerox. And eventually, at Xerox, he's middle and then upper middle class, you know? Yeah. During some of this part, at one point, he talks about wanting to give up. One of these pieces of advice he gave to his son later on,

he talks about, like, he didn't think that this would work, and his wife was like, no, you should do this. You should pursue this. And I mean, like, the reality is, you know, at this time, the amount of coffee that America consumes was unheard of. Like, it wasn't a coffee culture society at that time. I mean, people drank coffee, but it was instant. It wasn't a high...

Latte wasn't in the common jargon. Coffee was black. Yeah. I think Dennis Leary had something to say about this. This was the golden age of America for Dennis Leary. And another thing. Remember when the police would just shoot somebody and people wouldn't complain?

Whatever happened to free sucker? Now it's just bang, bang, bang. Later in that same bit. Alright, we can't just play the entire thing. Dennis Leary. Mochino, Al Pacino. What is this yet play the entire Dennis Leary. A cup of coffee flavored coffee. Mochino, frappuccino, alpacino. What is this yet? I just like the mouth noises.

40% Dennis Leary. I want to put in the drop, which is the Slap Chop guy going. Frettuccine, linguine, martini, bikini. I'll put it in post. All right. So in 86, Howard Schultz opens up his own coffee store. He eventually opens, I believe, three of these stores. And then Starbucks, actually, the founders want to sell to him.

So what happens is they want to... Two years later, the original Starbucks management decided to focus on Pete's Coffee and Tea and sold its Starbucks retail unit to Schultz. Right. So they wanted to take over Pete's Coffee from their mentor and focus on just selling beans. So they sell Starbucks to him for $3.8 million. He raises money from various sources, including, I don't want to say, he mentions a story about bill gates senior but i don't think bill gates senior actually invested but uh bill gates senior was a major lawyer like a senior partner in a law firm in seattle at the time and schultz met with him oh really i didn't know yeah

yeah he tells the story about it but it's basically like bill gates senior goes to some other guy who was thinking about buying starbucks one of schultz's investors kind of like went behind his back and tried to like buy it. And then Bill Gates Sr. went to him and was like, no, you knock that shit out. It's crazy how the blood of the Gates family runs through Seattle.

No money in that city is not touched by Gates. He gave my fucking commencement address. Bill Gates Sr.? Sr., yeah. And when we talk about Jr., I'll maybe get some clips from it, because it was the least inspiring thing I've ever heard. Because he was like, the most important thing

is giving back to your community. And it's like, dude, you're only here because you jizzed the richest man in the world at this time. Did he tell you the time he uh dangled one of howard schultz's competitor out of a window made him sign over the rights yeah no that would

have been a fun that would have been a much more interesting so i listened to like this npr podcast called uh how i built that with howard schultz which first of all what a disgusting bootlicking title uh how i built that you know my store with 175 000 employees right how i did that um but so anyways so uh uh but that's where the bill gates senior story comes from and uh it's just kind of cute like because he describes like how bill gates senior was like six four and like really intimidating and i just like imagine bill gates senior is like this nerdy shug night being like yeah vanilla ice you're gonna sign over your royalties and that's how we're gonna make the frappuccinos well there's this clip from it oh yes so what is your wait wait wait we got to set this up so this is an interview npr does with howard schultz how i built that in seattle so they ask him and,

and see if you can recognize that this takes place in Seattle. And what, what is your preferred coffee drink? A French press of age. Sumatra would be my number one choice. All right. Okay. Okay.

Good. What I, what I like about that too is like, so we've been talking about Howard Schultz in comparison to rappers who came out of the projects. And you got Jay-Z being like, you escaped what I escaped. You'd be embarrassed getting fucked up, too.

This is the Schultz version of that. He's like, in the projects. I couldn't get that French press simantra. Love the piece of shit in the audience. Like, ooh, ooh, French press. I like to imagine there were a few people in the audience with their arms crossed shaking their hands. Like, Sumatra is trash. What an entry-level drink.

French press. It's also great how much this host is trying to sound like Ira Glass like he studied Ira Glass and what is your preferred coffee drink French press of age Sumatra would be my number one choice

alright okay good it's like a cross it's a cross between Ira Glass and like the Jad Oppenrod that guy it's very like you know i get cucked every morning before i brush my teeth it's actually like there's a school where they make ira glass type reporters and what they do is they get someone from middle america maybe a coal miner or a factory worker and they just sit them in the room with a person wearing glasses and they have to keep doing the voice until this middle american involuntarily punches them in the face and as

soon as you get that involuntary punch reaction you are at ira glass sound right the other test is they have a tea kettle and they want you to get the pitchness of when the kettle is boiling that's what they want your voice to sound like at all times. Yeah, you're ready to be an NPR reporter as soon as people just want to hit you as soon as they hear your voice. But so anyways, so yes, in 87, he buys Starbucks from the original founders. At this point, he has six stores in total.

And from 87, he just grows it pretty spectacularly. You know, like... Was there something that kind of put Seattle on the map at that point? Would you say? Seattle? Map? I don't know. All right, let's... The FCC copyright rule.

Nothing comes to mind, really. Poor Courtney Love. Oh, oh, oh. Sues us into oblivion. Sir Mix-a-Lot. My podcast is on Broadway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we're talking about.

That's actually... He paid Kurt Cobain to mention Starbucks in the note. He's like, God, I had this mocha chai latte today, and I know nothing will ever compare to it. I will never be as happy as I was at that moment, drinking that perfectly crafted beverage. And you know, I know there's multiple locations,

but each Starbucks treats every individual drink and customer like they were their own child. It's, you know, Starbucks, it's better than sex. Not heroin, but definitely sex. Guys, guys. That's actually, Starbucks, to appeal to the grunge scene, had a pro-needles-in-bathrooms policy throughout the 90s. Guys, I've got a remix on Smells Like Teen Spirit.

We're going to call it Smells Like Starbucks. Here we are now, baristas. But so anyway, so in 87, he buys Starbucks at six shops. Here we are now. Grows exponentially. Then tea half caff. It grows exponentially in. I'm not decaf.

I'm caffeinated. Oh, man. We would have been stars of the internet in the 90s. You're right. Too bad everybody already did all our ideas. We're late to the podcast game, late to the song parody game. All right. Okay.

Okay. Good. Late to the Flash animation game. But so anyways, in 96, they opened their first store in Tokyo. And it's wildly popular. All right. Okay. Okay.

Good. This is Tokyo, Japan. In 97, Dennis Leary. Wait, wait. Can we backtrack a bit? Sure. They had their initial public offering in 1992. Yeah.

92. Okay. That's when Wu-Tang Clan dropped their first LP. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. 17. No, it happened in 1992. 92, okay. That's when Wu-Tang Clan dropped their first LP. Oh, interesting. 17 dollars a share. No. We don't know. Alright.

We're going to get sued. Yeah, 17 dollars a share. I love Nirvana too much. Yeah, you love Nirvana so much that you get the date wrong. You're not a real fan. I did like, the one time I made Andy most angry in a leftist Facebook group was I said Nirvana is cultural appropriation that stole black music, and I got everyone in there to agree with me

that you're a bad person if you listen to Nirvana. But so anyways, so yes, they go public in 92. At this point, Schultz is, you know, multimillionaire, and they just keep growing from there. 96, first store in Tokyo. All right, Andy, goddammit. All right. I just want the listeners to know, I usually wear my headphones during the entire podcast.

Oh, yeah. I take them off now, because I have to listen to this shit twice. That's a good idea. All right, so... I was just going to add in, if you've invested $1,000 in Starbucks in its IPO, it would be worth $224,000 now.

Ooh, not bad. Yeah. Good return on investment. And so you can understand how Schultz's money has really grown exponentially since that time. Again, he's the largest individual shareholder. He owns more than 29 million shares as of November 2017. But so interesting thing about Starbucks' growth is it doesn't franchise its shops. It's not like McDonald's.

They just own all of the stores. And so what happens from the 90s all the way up to the recession in 2007 is Starbucks just keeps growing at an unsustainable rate. So Schultz leaves as the CEO in the year 2000. He steps down but interesting thing and i'll put a link to this in our tumblr which you can uh check out for you know the research that we look at and just any corrections we have to make but uh fortune magazine did an interesting article where they show a graph of how between 2000 between 1999 and 2016 uh schultz was actually not ce for about 10 of those years, eight of those years. Uh, but his pay in terms of total compensation never goes down.

Essentially he leaves the CEO in the year 2000. He comes back in the year 2007 and then he left again last year in 2017. Um, last year in 2017 he made about 18 million. The year before that, 2016, he made, I think, $23 million. So his pay never decreases because he has an understanding with the board that he will never make less than the actual CEO of Starbucks. So it's just kind of an interesting question where it's like, what is he doing that generates any value? Innovating. Yes.

Building it. This guy is worth $3 billion, and for some reason he needs to be one of the highest paid CEOs, making $25, $23 million. The stock went up when he came back in 2008. Right. The thing is that all he did was shut Starbucks down and then retrain to put an emphasis on coffee instead of the convenience of it. Well, I'll talk. God, it's so infuriating to listen to that NPR thing. So just to give the background. So they grow exponentially.

They keep opening stores. I think CNN said in 2007 they were opening an average of six stores a day. Wow. You know? I will say my first time studying. I studied abroad And I left What was her name?

The continent That's what you do to get the Patreon money people That we do not get The classic Study abroad joke Once we do Sign up, pay us some money to get more of that The study abroad joke is so good

That not even Dennis Leary would use it in that 97 special he was like all right okay okay good let's just have a venmo account for the podcast for every good every good every good we get a dollar yeah yeah so i i'm leaving the continent for the first time. I'm flying out of Seattle where we all had our formative years on this podcast. I land in the Vienna airport, walk out of the terminal, and right in front of me is a Starbucks.

Hell yes. I can't escape this. Anyways, I'm sure there are this is new territory that hasn't been plowed by... Have you noticed there are a lot of Starbucks stores? But no, there really were. So what happens, again, they're opening all these stores,

and he leaves and... www.blowme.com! It was like they weren't even making money anymore. He just wanted to see how angry he could make Dennis Leary. He was like, you know, if we open like 14 stores, weren't even making money anymore he just wanted to see how angry he could make dennis leary yeah he was like you know if we open like 14 stores this guy will surely stroke out in the middle of a comedy special he was a big bill hicks fan the stark price goes up with leary's blood pressure but so okay so he leaves the ceo in 2000 2000, and they keep growing at an unsustainable rate, opening all these stores.

And interestingly enough, he's not CEO, but his pay between 2006 and 2007 more than doubles. 2007 is their worst year on record. Their stock price falls 48%. They're like, he claims they were like on the verge of bankruptcy. But interestingly enough, his pay still doubles from $5 to $10 million, more than $10 million in total compensation, for their worst year on record when he's not the CEO and not apparently doing anything. All right, okay, okay, good.

But, okay, so he comes back in 2008, early 2008, and, God, he gives this quote that's so infuriating in that npr interview he says he went back for two reasons quote what it means to love something and the responsibility that goes with it and i'm sure a 25 million dollar a year paycheck had nothing to do with it right you mean when you quit a job and then also go back but you don't have the job and make other people's jobs worse you don't get a job and make other people's jobs worse, you don't get a pay raise like a normal person. You know when you

quit a job but do not receive any cut whatsoever in your salary and in fact have your salary double six years after you quit the job when you're not apparently doing anything for the company? Quitting a job isn't cool, guys. You know what's cool? Quitting a job and then making more money when You know what's cool? Quitting a job

and then making more money when you come back. It's like Howard Schultz is a senator. He does. Actually, there are rumors that he wants to run for president. Yeah, there's an interview

with Schultz and Jack Ma and the interviewer goes, hey, Jack, you think Schultz should run for president? And Howard just looks at him and is like, speak carefully here, Jack. Schultz got married in president. And Howard just looks at him and is like, speak carefully here, Jack. Schultz got married in 82, and they got two kids.

Addison Schultz, born in 1989, and Jordan Schultz, born in 1986. Jordan's a sports writer for Huffington Post and married some blonde chick named Brianna Hawes in September. Big fan of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Yeah, right. And Brianna also married some dude. I don't know what the fuck his name is. Anyway, they're boring. They suck. Jordan is a sports writer for Huffington Post, which I think says more about Jordan than we all wish to admit.

His kids are boring. They kind of suck. They live in New York. For Jordan's wedding gift, um their kids his kids are boring they kind of suck they live in new york uh for jordan's uh wedding gift uh schultz bought him like a 4.6 condo in the village and uh it's like a three bedroom two bath and they have a whole bunch of pets they just live boring lives they suck anyway that's all i gotta say about their kids 4.6 million dollar condo as a wedding gift um not as good as the parents my condo my parents bought me for my 18th. But so, yeah, no, I mean, he's boring kids. But, you know, he's been with his wife since, I think, 78.

And, again, he's not allowed any press stories about affairs to come out. So good for him. He's probably not cheated on her all right okay okay good um but so we were talking about starbucks says this massive unsustainable growth in the 90s 2000s howard schultz comes back as ceo in 2008 and his strategy uh what he does is he closed 900 stores 90 of them had been open less than a year. But interesting, this is massive layoffs. Because one of the things the Starbucks union, which we'll get to in a bit, fights for is the right for workers at closed down stores to be reassigned.

Whereas Starbucks, of course, does not want to do that. They just want to throw these people out. But he closes down 900 stores. 90% of them were open less than a year. He closes all the stores for daily retraining, but then he does this really disgusting vanity thing that he talks about in the NPR interview. He spends $30 million of company money

flying out all 10,000 district managers out to an auditorium to hear a speech by him. And he actually gives himself credit for the turnaround for spending $30 million to fly these people out to listen to an auditorium speech by him, where he talks about how they'll be insolvent in seven months if the current course continues and how important individual customer focus is. And he talks about this like, you know, like he just imparted on them like how important it was that they all be in this together. And, of course, like this is not a cooperative situation

where like another thing we'll get to later is the district managers, they're paid and they are disciplined by how they utilize costs, particularly labor. Oh, wow. So essentially the district managers or the store managers will get from their higher ups x number of hours a week and if they exceed that they get reprimanded written up etc so what happens is the incentive is always to give the employees fucked up schedules not enough hours short notice uh clopins where they both close a store and then open it the next

morning which i had to do a couple times at Whole Foods. It's a fucked up practice. You know, it makes it impossible. Starbucks says they don't do it anymore, but of course it still happens. But the bottom line is what's most important. I mean, even though Starbucks is a corporation that provides college education and healthcare,

the reality is they're selling sugar water to idiots to make money so that they can profit. And they don't even use organic milk. Come on, people. But so, yeah. They pay for college? They do the Arizona State

partnership. So, like, if you work 20 or more hours a week at Starbucks, they will pay your tuition for Arizona State University, like online classes and shit. And they also offer healthcare. Oh, quality education. Yes. Healthcare for employees at 20

hours or more a week. Wait, is Noam Chomsky at Arizona State now? Equity in the form of stock options. It's like, again, it's actually, it reminds me a lot of Whole Foods, where I worked for a year, but like, Whole Foods calls all their employees team members, Starbucks calls them all partners all this euphemist euphemism euphemistic corporate bullshit it's just morale boosting terms that don't actually boost morale yeah but it's like

the kind of the same thing where it's like both starbucks and whole foods though i would imagine whole foods is a lot worse now that amazon owns it but they used kind of a carrot and stick approach to avoid unionization where it's like starbucks offers it, but they used kind of a carrot and stick approach to avoid unionization, where it's like Starbucks offers these benefits, but they will fire you if you unionize, or if you try to unionize. And again, we'll get to that. And you don't even get to go to the university in Arizona

that has Noam Chomsky, which is the U of A. Schultz talks about in an interview why he did a few of these things and it was about his dad at one point was working a job where like

basically the way he described it was like there weren't diapers and so he was cleaning you know baby shit and was just exhausted

because he got fired because there was no union for it and he was like this would be a good Frappuccino flavor basically Schultz was like I want to make a company that if my dad had i he we would

have benefited us as a family yeah and uh which i i think is is the thing that we should mention about how like because he came from because he's actually a fairly self-made he put in a few of these things to make it a easier life for his employees but if he didn't have that he wouldn't give a fuck about any of this shit well maybe but it's like the other thing is like the benefits for the employees again starbucks is about a 3.8 on glass door uh average out of five rating you know so it's like uh it's it's generous enough for low-wage work but we should mention these people make an average of $9.43 an hour, according to the IWW, based on a public... Howard Schultz warned that an increase in the minimum wage in Seattle's $15 an hour increase could result in a reduction in the company's famously generous employee benefits.

Piece of shit. So, well, I guess we can get into Starbucks and unionization because it's a pretty interesting story. So the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, is one of the oldest unions in America. And their goal is to, they're an international union. They want to organize everybody. And they started a union campaign at various Starbucks stores dating back to 2004. And they've had various degrees of success, but I did just want to highlight something they did.

In 2014, they published a study based on public disclosures of Starbucks showing that Starbucks earns $11,000 in profit for every single employee. What? So, you know, it's like there is plenty of money to go back to the employees. And again, you know, Schultz is spending $30 million flying these people out for his prep talk, pep talk, which of course he attributes

much of the turnaround to. Like these people were walking into an auditorium so inspired to make money for this fucking asshole. Now when you say $1,000 in profit per employee, that's annual. $11,000 per employee annually. Gross profit for each of them?

Yes. And that's after salaries for everyone in the corporate level and managerial level and Schultz's salary itself. I don't know exactly how IWW did the math on it but you can go to

starbucksworkersunion.org. It'll be in our Tumblr. It'll be in the Tumblr. I would assume profit is revenue after overhead. Right. So, like, according to New York Magazine, per worker store revenue is $68,900. I believe this is as of 2015, wait it's 68 000 that's the total revenue the profit per worker is 11 000 oh annually um and that's after that's after the

like multi-million dollar salaries yeah so we should clarify this in the tumblr yeah we'll clarify this in the tumblr but uh the point is according to iww maybe that you believe them maybe you don't starbucks is making about eleven thousand dollars profit per worker and according to new york magazine store revenue per worker is at about sixty eight thousand dollars per worker um which you know is revenue minus cost equals profit which is i took an economics class not at all consistent with um little-known book called Das Kapital, which is German for that capital. But so, yeah, Schultz comes back. He closed down 900 stores,

and I think that's mainly what caused the turnaround, not his $30 million pep talk. And so Starbucks goes through a massive rebound, and today they are crazy profitable. I think they were down a little bit on the stock this year. Here's a picture of their stock price. Oh, that's a nice little bounce. Because essentially they hit a skid during 2007,

and then around 2009 they're just going all the way back up. Now they did engage in some social media campaigns. I was going to say stock buybacks. Oh, yes. We should mention that. So the interesting thing about stock buybacks, and you hear about these a lot, is they were actually outlawed during the New Deal because what happened, and you saw this both in the lead-up to the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis, is that financial firms that were insolvent or heavily in the red

to try and keep themselves going would buy back their own stock to push up the price. And this was, in my opinion, correctly regarded as an illegal price manipulation. So it was outlawed in the New Deal, but then Ronald Reaganald reagan in 1982 uh took this away and now companies are allowed to buy back their own stocks which many of them have been doing since the trump uh tax cut right and last year in march and then also again in

november they so they basically did this they issued corporate bonds and then used the proceeds from that to buy back stock yeah and so the like the earnings estimates that analysts use to basically say hey the stock is worthwhile to buy were inflated by that yeah i mean it's wait so they took out basically a loan and then they bought back their own stock where did the stock... Who gained ownership of that stock? Like the Starbucks corporate entity? The insiders. Yeah.

Headquarters? But ultimately, a stock is the corporate entity. Right, but they probably redistribute it to the board and these kinds of things.

I mean... Okay, so they just redistribute it to the top stock owners. Yeah, I mean... So they buy it at a premium above the spot price in the market. It's like Robin Hood. You steal from the rich and give back to the top stock owners. Yeah, I mean... So you buy it at a premium above the spot price in the market.

It's like Robin Hood. You steal from the rich and give back to the rich. Look, all I'm saying is that obviously this is not illegal behavior and should not be regarded as illegal behavior, and we had very good reason to make it legal again in 1982. Should not or should not legal behavior. Yeah, where the stock went was Bill Gates Sr. went up to them and shook them down for the stock. He hung Schultz out of a window. Later, someone questioned them about the stock and Bill Gates ran them over outside of a burger place.

All the computers started malfunctioning for no reason. But yes, so we mentioned his pay. According to Fortune magazine, the company disclosed in a proxy filing that the board has agreed to continue paying Schultz at least as much as the CEO who replaces

him. I think we mentioned Kevin Johnson at the beginning. Because efficiency. Yes, because value and shareholders. And again, this should be noted, is that these stock buybacks are giveaways to shareholders. So again, they're making $11,000 profit per worker according to Glassdoor.

Average employees making $9.43 an hour. They could very easily raise pay, but instead they're giving it back to the shareholders because these are the incentives that we have all decided work in this system. But I did just want to talk a little bit. So the average employee makes $68,000 worth of revenue. At $9 an hour, they're making a little less than $20,000 a year. Hell yes.

So that means that there's $40,000 that goes of that $11,000 is profit. Wait, no, $68,000. That means there's about $48,000 above what the employee is making, $11,000 of which goes into pure profit. The rest of it is redistributed amongst the higher level employees. Right. Well, some of that's health care and I guess education and these kinds of things. Which would probably be about $10,000 max. But and also when that's not cheap enough, Starbucks uses prison labor.

According to News 1, Starbucks used contractors signature packing solutions to hire Washington state prisoners to package holiday coffees, as did Nintendo with their Game Boys. Oh. So that's why they called the police on those people for loitering. Put those people to work. Refresh the labor force. Yeah, right.

Oh, here you go. The free labor force. The quarterly profit margin for Starbucks right now is 37%. Hell yes. Guys, they're just not racing together enough, you know? In 2015, Starbucks said, let's race together. On their coffee cups, they wrote race together. And in little boxes, they wrote, when it comes to race, we are all human.

And humans got the X in it. You know why? Because of Malcolm X. It should be noted that CNN reported in March 2018 that in a Starbucks press release, they announced that they have eliminated the gender and wage gap among their employees.

They're paying them all less than $15 an hour. Pack it up, folks. We're done here. That really is the liberal solution to the pay gap. Just pay everybody less. We need to cut salaries only what's legally required yeah right um but so uh uh just a quick overview of the labor situation at starbucks and then we'll hit a couple more things but um they're famously treated very well

yes so the new york times writes a story in uh in 2014 which basically tells about... Do the prison slaves get free access to Arizona State University? The New York Times writes a story in 2014 about, it profiles this woman who's a single mother who essentially, Starbucks is still using this automated scheduling system which schedules people based on you know trends i think it's chronos or something or one of these fucking orwellian companies provides it um so uh this software and her manager is giving

her her schedule three days in advance at which point she has to figure out child care she has to do all these other things to uh coordinate with her never constant or constantly shifting schedule and of course she's also doing clopins where she closes and then opens the store the next day and starbucks of course you know these companies all respond to press starbucks famously sells the new york times in their stores so they had to kind of like uh announce that company policy would be revised and people would get their schedules at least three weeks in advance. However, the New York Times wrote a follow-up story.

They were teaching that baby to hustle too hard. The New York Times writes a follow-up story in 2015 saying that many employees they interviewed said things have not actually improved. And if I can just kind of quote on the incentive things here, it looks like someone's going to change over to the wall street journal being sold in their stores. Just quoting from the New York times, but there has been a central central obstacle to change the incentives of

store managers who are encouraged by company policies to err on the side of understaffing. This makes it more difficult to build continuity into workers scheduled from week to week. And this is because, as we mentioned, these store managers get set number of hours from the higher-ups, and then if they go over uh they have an incentive to uh save money and uh labor hours uh was kind of really the only place that they can viably cut costs and uh this this results in a lot of people not having consistent hours and getting their schedules uh soon in advance also allows them to have consistent prices instead of consistent wages now you see these employees in a free market are given a choice to work wherever they want

and if they don't like the practices at starbucks they can get a job anywhere else uh god in our economy that's run on the concept that there has to be a minimum level of unemployment uh so unemployment according to the New York Times story, they also say Starbucks employees are often responsible for finding their own replacements when they are sick. They quote a former Starbucks employee who says, a lot of times when I'm sick, it's less work to work the shift than to call around everywhere and try and find a replacement.

This is according to Atlanta Barista. You could end up having a Starbucks rest about. It's just sort of everywhere. Task rabbit. All right. And then so the IWW, which we mentioned, goes on this campaign to unionize workers. And interestingly enough, Patricia Ann Millett,

there's a Salon article about this. Patricia Ann Millett was appointed to the D.C. Circuit Court by Obama in 2013 after Harry Reid pulled apart the filibuster that Republicans were using. But interestingly enough, and I'm quoting from Salon here, she was an assistant to the Solicitor General in the Federal Department of Justice, but then she left to join the, quote, top-flight law firm Akin Gump, and then this is interesting, whose websites describe its, quote, labor relations strategic advice and counseling practice

as including, quote, union avoidance and, quote, the defense of unfair labor practice charges. And her clients while she was there, included Starbucks, which faced a union campaign by IWW, the Starbucks Workers Union affiliate. And IWW accuses her of engaging in very vicious anti-union intimidation, these kinds of tactics. And it's kind of similar when they say that they have a union avoidance consulting to how accounting firms also often have consulting where essentially they'll come on and look at your books and figure out a way to uh make your cooked books look right

and that's where a lot of accounting firms get their money because we've privatized accounting in this country but um it's just kind of uh disturbing what starbucks did uh i just like to say that i uh i met with howard schultz and he's a good man they're uh they're doing a lot of uh good things over at starbucks with their uh environmentalism and uh i i i think that millet uh has done some good work pushing those damn unionists on the streets. And I don't think you have a right to ask for a higher pay because we're in a very, very difficult recovery. Jesus. So at one point, Howard Schultz owns the Seattle Supersonics. Wait, wait, let me just finish this real quick, though.

Stop it. So the IWW sues because they allege at least four employees were fired illegally for unionizing. In a 2012 decision, a judge notes the facts are essentially not disputed that, quote, essentially not disputed that Starbucks mounted, quote, an anti-union campaign aimed at tracking and restricting the growth of pro-union sentiment and, quote, employed a number of restrictive and illegal policies. sides with Starbucks in allowing their policy that employees may only wear one union button, even though they were allowed to wear multiple buttons of other kinds. But basically, Starbucks employees under this judge's ruling may only wear one union button. To union organizers, I want to say you didn't build that. Now, we need you to wear one piece of flair only.

More than one piece of flair only More than one piece of flair Is unacceptable at Starbucks But basically these people are getting like Ground down by like Unpredictable scheduling, long hours Understaffed in the busy rush They're making $9.43 an hour on average And you know and of course

They're busting unions at every opportunity So it's just fucked up that this guy's Making 18 million last year, 23 million the year before. He's worth almost $3 billion and he grew up poor. And for some reason he likes to talk a good game, but he can't empathize or just allow his employees to unionize without retaliating and firing them and driving these anti-union campaigns. Now when you say he likes to talk a good game, would you conclude that... Let's turn to the high point of our consumerism. Let me take a drink.

Some of it, Starbucks coffee. I'm regularly drinking it. I must admit it. But are we aware that when we buy a cappuccino from Starbucks, we also buy quite a lot of ideology? Which ideology? He did the catchphrase. When you enter a Starbucks store,

it's usually always displaced in some posters. They're a message, which is, yes, our cappuccino is more expensive than... Fine. I like how Yogi says we're at an hour, but half of that is just us playing other people's material. We're at an hour. All right, okay.

Okay, good. We're at an hour with 20 minutes Of it being Dennis Leary But so yes, we should talk about We should talk We should talk about the most Egregious thing that Mr. Schultz has done, which is of course Sell the Seattle Supersonics

I would like to give a shout out to our friend Comedian Andrew Slater, who has been... Because of this Philadelphia incident, there's been a movement to boycott Starbucks. Andrew Slater has been boycotting Starbucks for more than a decade because he knew this would happen. He knew that black people would be... He knew!

As soon as they moved the sonics, he was like, this is the first step to harassing people because of their skin color in Starbucks stores. I think you're kind of washing the struggle of other Seattle comic, Chris Brannan, who has been committing his life to dressing up as the superhero known as Sonics Guy and holding up a sign that says Save our sonics all throughout the pacific northwest but when asked about that yeah i did step away you know i was i was the chairman of the company

and as chairman i should have been paying kind of more more attention to the company but i started doing other things one of which was the seattle super supersonics which we can we can talk about or not i don't we're going to leave that one. What a bunch of bitches in that audience. Yeah, I'm not proud of that. He's not proud of it. At least he said he was sorry. I do love that kind of like

hard-hitting interviewer question, which we can talk about or not. Or not. If you don't want to, we don't have to. Yeah, right, right. Please give me money. Save our sonics. which we can talk about or or not or not if you don't want to we don't have to right right please give me money save our sonics you have the ability to uh buy our small media company and you may throw it in the dustbin if you want um but so yogi uh if you can just give us a brief history of the seattle supersonics so basically when howard schultzz purchased the Supersonics, they wanted more money to revamp the Key Arena Stadium.

That was the major point of argument when it came to ownership of the Supersonics. And Howard Schultz basically, according to this one article off of Deadspin, was notoriously cheap. This one article off of stormfront.org that says that Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz, for some reason, has a reputation for being cheap. Yes, right. That's been an article from a former Sonics employee.

It talks about how Barry Ackerley, the owner before Howard Schultz, had bought holiday gifts each year for everyone in the front office. And then when Schultz's group came in, that stopped happening. And it killed morale in the team. And once Schultz realized that he'd fucked up, he started giving everyone Starbucks gift cards.

And one member decided to go to Starbucks to use it, and then he wanted to get a treat and a coffee. And the lady's like, yeah, you owe me some more money. And he was like, how much money was on that card? And she was like, $3.50 um when you first said the gift cards were 350 i thought 350 and then i was like yeah he just had a latte that's how much that cost well here's the thing that's crazy you can only get a gift card minimum that's five dollars so these are specialized gift cards that are at three3.50. I love this shit where it's like he was like,

I have to get a special made cheaper than regular gift card for the Christmas bonus. It's altogether more expensive for me to do this. It's like, and it's like, you know, sometimes you hear people talk about like people who like grew up in a frugal household, how they stay frugal, but it's like, you're worth $3 billion, asshole, and you're giving people $3.50 gift cards? How do you think he got there?

Giving family members gift cards for $3.50 at Christmas? Sean, say you're worth $3 billion, asshole, one more time. You're worth $3 billion, asshole. www.blowme.com So basically, they wanted $500 million for an arena complex with $220 million in public funds.

And that failed. $220 million in public funds. Go fuck yourself. And so, Howard Schultz sold the team to Professional Basketball Club LLC, PBC, an investment group headed by Oklahoma City businessman Clay Bennett. Now, Clay Bennett said that a condition of the sale was that PBC executive a good faith effort to secure a suitable arena in Seattle for the team. Basically, he said, hey, Clay, keep it in Seattle as long as you can.

And then Clay was like, fuck that noise. I'm going to take it back home. And in an interview with George Stapelopoulos, the CBC's James Corden, that's more of a burden than I wish that wanted it to be. But Schultz says, buying an NBA team was a dream that I never thought would be possible for someone like me. But it also turned out to be a nightmare. It was not the right thing for me at the time of my life. And I just thought the culture of professional sports and athletes who are making that much money, it was just inconsistent with my ability to kind of alter the mentality. And I just got out.

He's talking about Gary Payton not showing up to the first day of practice. Right. And basically realizing that black millionaires don't care about a white billionaire. Yeah, no, all these greedy players making so much money says a billionaire. Right. I'm going to drop their gift cards to $2.50.

So Howard Schultz later says, I tried to sell it to a local person in Seattle. Nobody wanted to buy it. You know that city with a couple of billionaires, one of them that now owns the Los Angeles Clippers. Yeah, wasn't like Steve Ballmer adamant about wanting an NBA team? And that's the thing. It's like, Howard Schultz, you're a lying fucking snake.

Oh, yeah. And the reason Seattle hates Starbucks outside of the notion of its monopoly on coffee is because... They make too good of coffee. It's too much more delicious than the small coffee houses. I tried to sell it to a local person in Seattle. Nobody wanted to buy it. We ended up selling it to someone from Oklahoma, and he ended up moving the team.

They've got a great team now. Schultz, you fucking sold a great team that had Ray Allen to Oklahoma, and they have a good team because you fucked up, you piece of shit. Yeah. And you know why he sold it? Because he couldn't run a basketball team like you run a fucking coffee shop. It's so weird, too, because the entire time he owned the Sonics, when did he buy it again? 2008, I believe.

2008? No, no, no. It's earlier than that. Yeah, it is. Give me a second. But I was just saying, the entire time he owns the Sonics, he's collecting a salary from Starbucks, but not being CEO. Right. Yeah, what's the problem?

It's like he's running a basketball team, but still getting like $5 to $10 million from Starbucks for not really doing anything apparent. Yeah, but those athletes are so overpaid and lazy. He sold the team in 06, and I guess he owned it in 2002. Right. Oh, yeah, no, from 2001 to 2006. There it is, yeah.

So, yes, he leaves as CEO in 2000. He buys the team in 2001, and from 01 to 2006, you have to— Runs into the fucking ground. Exactly. You have to imagine most of his energy is being devoted to destroying this team but he's still picking up a huge salary from Starbucks and then like

the other great thing about giving a $3.50 gift card as a holiday bonus is like yeah I'm gonna funnel money back into my pocket as like a giving way what about the storm does he own them so a storm sold them to a different person yeah yeah so uh dan something i can't remember his name but one of the guys that was a part of the sonic save our sonics team bought the storm as well as uh some other part of like the sonic's nonsense

but you know why he bought that steven because fucking he could pay for it and schultz said fuck it take this shit i want your money because he's a fucking snake you know what i'm gonna say though take a devil's advocate point here would you rather he sold the sonics or the sonic stay in seattle and then slowly over the course of, say, two decades, get sold to, say, some kind of video game company like Nintendo, and slowly just make wrong decision after wrong decision. I mean, this would never happen, though. I don't know. I like this. Have every fan hopefully but completely overly optimistically say this might be their year

and then slowly watch the Sonics decline into a punchline where everyone's just a fan of the 90s version of that team back when they were playing baseball in the kingdom. I mean, do they have a stereotypically Asian player that's really good but is on a terrible team? Is that a thing that would happen? We're pre-recording this, but I would like to say for the record that the Mariners are as of April 22nd three games above 500. This could

be their year. Telling you there's a chance. Alright, so before we stop, I would like to just mention... I will say that the Mariners are very good at spending an entire season being three games above 500. They get $4.25 gift cards for Starbucks. I was going to ask, do the Storm also get the same... They get 75% of it.

They at least get the same value as gift card rate. Yeah, they have pay rate it's gender parity Howard Schultz did a press release that they have pay equity and they're holiday gift cards $3.50 for everybody I once was at a bar Edgar Martinez was at it was this place called Pearl in Bellevue

it's in the bottom of Lincoln Square and he just was sitting at the bar and kept giving people head nods and not paying for drinks. It was the best. It was the best. He should be in the Hall of Fame for that alone. Oh, man, it was so great.

It was like the most interesting man at the end of the commercial where he's just sitting and no one's talking to him. He just gives head nods. It was amazing. It was my favorite thing I've ever seen. Oh, man.

All right, so it should be noted that, like we said... This podcast is pro-Edgar Martinez, by the way. Yeah, we don't care if he took steroids he didn't it was a rumor um allegedly allegedly uh so it's fake news should be noted that as we mentioned howard schultz left as ceo but uh in 2017 he still earned 18 million in compensation and his job there as far as we can figure out is developing a chain of upscale coffee shops known as starbucks reserve rotisseries and these are like bars slash coffee shops where you know if starbucks is not elitist for you if there's a too many people who need to be uh taken away in handcuffs by the police in your local starbucks you can go into one of these

there's one in seattle one in new York. There's a few around here. There might be more than one. I don't know. I only saw one. But anyway, so that's what Howard Schultz is doing right now. And then before we run out of time, I do want to just mention the story of Howard Schultz and a nation called Israel,

which also has been in the news lately for shooting at unarmed protesters. Oh, that's because they like coffee a lot. And also, a video have been released of soldiers laughing as they shot unarmed protesters. All right, okay. Okay, good.

And Natalie Portman boycotted them or did not go to Israel to accept an award because of this. And so, it should be just kind of noted, Howard Schultz... www.whatthefuck.com it should be noted howard schultz's uh experience with israel is um uh in 1998 he was honored by the jerusalem fund of uh aish ha torah with the quote israel 50th anniversary friend of zion

tribute award for his services to the zion state, playing a key role promoting close alliance between the United States and Israel. This is according to ArabNews.com, which... Oh, a biased source. This really happened. But he was given this award and interestingly enough, in 1998 Starbucks

proudly listed on his website that he had been given this award. But then organizations that are against the Israeli apartheid started pointing this out. Who's against that? The Jerusalem Fund of Aish Hatorah that gave him this award also, quote, funds Israeli arms fairs chaired by General Shaul Mofaz, who was the chief of staff of the Israeli army during the second Intifada, when, of course, Israel murdered about 4,000 people as a campaign stunt for Ariel Sharon.

But so they took it off the website. And since then, Schultz has been much more quiet about his support for Israel. But he also does fund, just quoting again from Arab News, he's been praised by the Israeli government for sponsoring pro-Israel anti-Palestinian seminars on college campuses. There's one called, this is from the Jerusalem Report, called Losing the Media Battle. So he's essentially used some of his money to sponsor these pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian college groups and college seminars. His company has sponsored a fundraising event for the Israel Emergency Solidarity Fund, an organization which engages in crass anti-Palestinian propaganda to raise money to support the

families of Israeli soldiers who have died while enforcing Israel's illegal military occupation of Palestinian territories. And when we say illegal, we mean illegal under the United Nations. I just want to jump in and say and remind people that our listeners that this pod is completely BDS compliant. We do not buy Starbucks. We only buy Dunkin' Donuts. Yes, yes.

I'd like to jump in and say that Sean is a virulent anti-Semite. I want to jump in and say when Sean says Arab news, I know he's quoting a source, but it just sounds like he's saying a group of people's news, like that Jew news that we're talking about. I'm quoting Al Jazeera. I just call it Arab news. But so I know this is kind of long-winded but it's it's interesting

because there were boycotts launched against starbucks uh in response to this and then since then howard schultz has been much more quiet about his support for pro-israel causes but um uh one more thing if uh there's a king five story from 2002 where howard Schultz visits a King 5? The Seattle news station. The Seattle news station King 5 has a 2002 story of Howard Schultz visiting a Seattle synagogue in the middle of

the Second Intifada. Again, just to bring you up to speed on the Second Intifada. So you're saying he happened to go to a synagogue and you hate Jews. Yes. I'm going to explain what the second intifada. The second intifada... So you're saying he happened to go to a synagogue, and you hate Jews. Yes. I'm going to explain what he said in the synagogue, but it's important to put it in context.

The second intifada was provoked by Ariel Sharon visiting the Temple Mount, which is also called the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in September 2000, and then later saying, quote, the Temple is in our hands and will remain in our hands. It is the holiest site in Judaism, and it is the right of every Jew to visit the Temple Mount. So essentially, this guy, Ariel Sharon, should also be noted, was the defense minister during the invasion of Lebanon.

A lot of people blame him for the mass murder of Palestinian refugees by various militias, the Sabra and Shatila massacre. All right, okay. So he goes, Ariel Sharon in September 2000 goes and visits this site as a campaign stunt, essentially, because he's running for prime minister at this point. Is that the Golden Dome? Yeah, yeah. Okay. It's not a mosque, technically.

It's a holy site. It's where Muhammad ascended to heaven. Why would you say that? It says the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Am I wrong? Dome of the Rock? Yeah, Dome of the Rock's not a mosque. Isn't it called the Al-Aqsa Mosque?

It's a holy site. It's the third holiest site in Islam. Yeah, for monotheistics. Our polytheism has been around for a lot longer. They're right. We don't give a fuck about this monotheistic nonsense. Andy's wrong. She's all the way. Okay. Thank you, Stephen. It's mislabeled. See, there's...

Okay, so it's two different places. Yeah. The Temple Mount is not a mosque, Sean. Now the pro-Israel people... I would like to apologize to all of our listeners for Sean mislabeling the Temple Mount as a mosque. Andy, just because you like fucking Jewish girls doesn't mean you've got to apologize to Jewish people on our podcast. I'm apologizing to Arab people. Okay, the point is. I didn't pick that up.

He did not visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque, but the Al-Aqsa Mosque is right next to the Temple Mount. He visited the Temple Mount, this guy who's responsible for butchering all of these Palestinian refugees in 1982 as defense minister. And unsurprisingly, this—and then says the Temple Mount will always be in Israel's hands. We will never relinquish it. You know, unsurprisingly, this provokes riots and backlash. And then this launches the second intifada in which there is lots of killing on both sides. But again, it should be noted that context is important because Howard Schultz's reaction to the second intifada is to in 2002, April, he goes to his synagogue and says, quote, If you leave this synagogue tonight and go back to your home and ignore this, then shame on us. And unfortunately, he is not talking about a pro BDS policy right here. He, quote, warned other Jews against sitting back and doing nothing.

He says, quote, what is going on in the Middle East is not an isolated part of the world. The rise of anti-Semitism is at an all time high since the 1930s. As evidenced by Sean. He says, quote, And, of course, this is in the middle of what has been called the Janine Massacre, launched April 2002, where Israel... What day in April? April 1st. It was April Fool's.

It was a goof massacre. And, again, that's a partisan title. uh april 1st it was april fools he was like surprise you don't get massacre um and again that's a partisan title israel israeli apologists will say this was not a massacre this was a battle of janine whatever this is in the middle of an israeli action uh in territory that they are illegally occupying to clear people out and murder people and bulldoze lands and shoot them. He's saying the Palestinians aren't doing their job stopping terrorism. All right. Okay.

Okay. Good. You know, if you go on Snopes.com and you look up Starbucks in Israel. Oh, yes. There's an anti-Semitic conspiracy. Yeah. Basically, the rumor is Starbucks donates money to the Israeli army but close all their outlets in Israel because the company supports Arab countries.

And the claim is mixture. Kind of true, kind of untrue. It should be noted. So Starbucks did open in Israel, and then they had to close because they weren't making money. And a lot of people started protesting Starbucks because they thought they were giving in to BDS or whatever. So the Anti-Defamation League, the ADL, which Starbucks donates money to, which Schultz donates money to and is a big supporter of, the ADL was kind of the person,

the group that helped smooth this over with the Israeli community. And should be noted, in light of this Philadelphia incident, the ADL, which is an organization that for some of its virtues is also very notorious for calling people anti-semites for opposing Israel. It's a very pro-Israel organization.

And it will be receiving some of these contracts from Starbucks to do this pro-racial sensitivity training that will be taking place in the wake of the Philadelphia incident. Philadelphia, the city of brotherly smug. I think now they're just going to start calling the police on Palestinians. Hello, there's Palestinians loitering outside your Starbucks? Just in general. Yeah, we didn't buy anything. We were just there to have a meeting supporting BDS.

Philadelphia cops are like, what kind of brown person that? Got them big nose, got them curly hairs, got them big beards. What they got? Oh, God. Our guidebook doesn't tell us how to beat up a Palestinian.

We just got black, we got brown, and we got Chinese. So what am I supposed to do with this bulldozer? You want me to destroy their home? I mean, you're going to need a contractor for that. Look, you're going to need a permit to build a house in this territory.

We're not going to give you a permit because you're not Jewish. You got it? Either you're here for BDSM or you're... Listen, this is... Your call is very confusing to me because my neo-Nazi tattoos that people have photographed Philadelphia police actually having are making me very confused about enforcing racism against Palestinians. But you know what? I'll do it. Wow. It's so horrifying to hear Bernie Sanders be so racist.

Well, I guess that kind of sums up Howard Schultz. He is a relatively self-made man who became part of the system, is worth $3 billion, and he won't pay his employees more than $9.43 an hour, won't let them unionize, and is secretly supporting Israeli apartheid. And his kids are boring and they suck. Yeah. And he for damn sure doesn't pay the brown people suffering to get him the cocoa beans. Oh, yeah.

The coffee beans. We didn't even cover the entire point, but it should be noted, another one of IWW's union demands is that Starbucks source at least 5% of their coffee from fair trade sources, which they do not. So, you know, Starbucks loves to talk a good game about what a virtuous person you are shopping there, but their coffee is not fair trade. Their milk is not organic or small farm.

It's all factory farm bullshit. You know, it's fucking trash. It's sugar water for idiots. And if you drink it, you suck too. So in conclusion... I thought you were doing Dennis Leary is this a heart shaped box

this is a heart shaped box available at Starbucks stores near you alright that's enough ladies and gentlemen thanks for listening we'll be back next week come to quicksand

oh yeah this is the one before no let's just do it this week it's more topical come to quickicksand Comedy. It's a show I'm doing at the Brooklyn House of Comedy with Mike Drucker, Shane Torres, Marsha Belsky, Brian Yang,

Kenesha Mobley, Amanda Hurley. I'm hosting with J. Roger Brennan Kelly. $5, 8 p.m. It's in Bed-Stuy, black-owned. If you don't like us, you're a racist. Ladies and gentlemen, that's Grub Stakers. I'm Yogi Poliwag. I'm Andy Palmer.

I'm Sean McCarthy. Steve Jeffries. Not such a sweet finding. A campaign group in the UK claims a Starbucks drink contains as much sugar as three cans of soda. The organization declares the hot mulled fruit drink is the most guilty culprit with an eye-popping 99 grams of sugar. That's more than three times a whole day's worth of the average recommended intake of free sugars. For Starbucks Park, the coffee chain says

it's taking action to reduce added sugar with the goal of cutting back by 25% within the next four years. The bottom line, no way to sugarcoat this. Now, that being said, I do have to admit, as a nervous white guy, sometimes it's nice to see a Starbucks

in a tough neighborhood. If I'm in a shady part of the Bronx and I see those green letters, I relax a little bit. Starbucks are white people embassies. That's what they are. That's why I don't like your Starbucks. I go to Starbucks, and they don't like letting me feel like a badass.

They want me to feel like a... like a pansy ass. That's what they like. Because I don't order these drip coffee or whatever. I get what my mouth likes, even if it is a sugary foo-foo drink, right?