Starbucks reverses its open-door policy after ’18

If you want to hang out or use the restroom at Starbucks, you’re going to have to buy something.

Starbucks on Monday said it was reversing a policy that invited everyone into its stores. A new code of conduct, which will be posted in all company-owned North American stores, bans discrimination or harassment, consumption of outside alcohol, smoking, vaping, drug use and panhandling.

Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson said the new rules are designed to help prioritize paying customers. Anderson said most other retailers already have similar rules.

The code of conduct warns that violators will be asked to leave, and says the store may call law enforcement, if necessary. Starbucks said employees would receive training on enforcing the new policy.

The new rules reverse an open-door policy put in place in 2018, after two Black men were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks where they had gone for a business meeting. The individual store had a policy of asking non-paying customers to leave, and the men hadn’t bought anything. But the arrest, which was caught on video, was a major embarrassment for the company.

The new rule comes as part of a push by Starbucks’ new chairman and CEO, Brian Niccol, to reinvigorate the chain’s sagging sales.

Meta to cut 5% of staff, its lowest performers

Meta Platforms Inc. is cutting roughly 5% of its staff through performance-based terminations and plans to hire new people to fill their roles this year, according to an internal memo sent to all employees.

As of September, Meta employed about 72,000 people, so a 5% reduction could affect roughly 3,600 jobs. “I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in the note posted to an internal message board and reviewed by Bloomberg News.

“We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year,” he said, “but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.”

Affected workers in the US are expected to be notified on Feb. 10.

Southwest pauses hiring, summer internships

Southwest Airlines said Tuesday that it would put the filling of some jobs and summer internships on hold this year as the company looks to lower costs.

The airline said it would honor internship offers already made but pause all “non-contract internal and external hiring.” Southwest said it would evaluate its staffing needs on an ongoing basis to determine when it made the most sense to restart hiring.

As part of the moves to limit “discretionary costs,” the company also does not plan to host the annual rallies where Southwest employees gather to celebrate past accomplishments and hear about future initiatives from corporate executives.

Southwest announced in September that it would revamp its board and that its chairman would retire in 2025, in a partial concession to hedge fund Elliott Investment Management, which has been pushing for changes at the airline.

For the record

The bankruptcy proceedings for Prospect Medical Holdings does not include several subsidiaries of the company, including Foothill Regional Medical Center in Tustin. A Bloomberg story that published on the Business page in the Tuesday edition was not clear about the fate of six Southern California hospitals and the Tustin medical center, which PMH either owns or operates.

Compiled from Associated Press and Bloomberg reports.