The Uppity Chalkboards and Starbucks’ Revenge

A long time ago, I lived in New York. Most mornings I would walk to a little diner for breakfast. Inside the diner, waiting for me behind the counter, was a woman named Ruby.

Ruby owned and operated the place. She was large and loud. Ruby had a nickname for each of her regular customers, and mine was “The Youngster.” As I say, this was a long time ago.

“Soooooo . . . it’s The Youngster,” Ruby would croon when I walked in. “You gonna interview the president today?”

Ruby knew I was a reporter. She also knew that I was not going to interview the president that day or any day. It was her way of needling me, and encouraging me, at the same time. Ruby had hopes for my future.

Anyone who’s lived in New York or Philadelphia or Boston knows a place like Ruby’s. Places that seem more like home than your own apartment. Somehow they capture you, especially when you’re young, and you end up spending many dollars there.

In Los Angeles, we don’t have many Ruby’s. Never have. It’s one reason why Los Angeles doesn’t feel like a real city. Our streets are devoid of those small niches where people go for human contact.

And that gets us to the sad case of Tony Davis. For the last six years Davis worked as a shift supervisor at Starbucks, the last two at the store underneath the Arco towers downtown. In fact, Davis was one of the most senior Starbucks employees in Los Angeles.

No more. Last week he was cashiered.

What was his crime? Down there in the bowels of the Arco towers, Davis tried to offer a little humanity to Starbucks customers. He entertained. He asked about your weekend. He was different.

I’m not saying that Davis tried to make a Ruby’s out of Starbucks. Nothing that ambitious. A few days before the opening of “Godzilla,” for example, Davis glued gigantic lizard prints to the floor of the store and wore a Godzilla suit as he poured nonfat lattes. Another time he celebrated the end of “Seinfeld” with a contest to pick the best story line for the last episode.

But mainly he made maximum use of a lowly chalkboard normally used to promote new Starbucks concoctions.

Davis turned the chalkboard into a running commentary on life in L.A. Instead of the standard chalkboard promo--”How About a Power Frappuccino Today?”--he began writing more elaborate presentations. On one Monday, for instance, he wrote a “Monday Checklist” that went like this:

* Let cat out of closet.

* Find children.

* For you single men, clean beer spills and pretzel bits off of TV remote control.

* For you married men, clean beer spills and pretzel bits off of TV remote control.

* Get name of stranger who came home with you Saturday night.

* Start looking for stranger to bring home with you next Saturday night.

* Restock beer and pretzels.

* Stop by Starbucks before work.

Notice that the checklist ended with a Starbucks promo. I met Davis about an hour after Starbucks had kicked him out, and we talked about the way that commerce and humanity aided and abetted each other in the big city.

We sat in a small restaurant near the Arco towers and he described how, in the beginning, his goal was simply to make people feel more human as they exchanged cash for coffee.

But then he realized that his approach was also increasing the store’s business.

“No one likes to feel like a robot. Starbucks is always making people stand in line,” Davis said. “I started to understand that if customers are treated like real people with real lives, they will feel more connected to you and they will come back.

“I mean, you’ve got to give people a reason to spend $4 on coffee.”

Sometimes, he said, his chalkboards featured two cartoon characters named Mo and Jib who discussed the ups and downs of life in Los Angeles. Mo and Jib argued with each other, professed mutual love, but always ended by drinking some Starbucks coffee.

Occasionally the commentaries drifted toward the danger zone of sex. One of the suggested final episodes for “Seinfeld” went like this:

“They (Jerry and the Gang of Three) all get mind-numbing corporate jobs downtown, stop having sex, and hang out at the Starbucks downstairs.”

Hardly enough to get you arrested, eh? That’s what Davis thought, and apparently that’s what many of his customers thought. Business increased as lawyers and bankers began coming down from their tower offices to see what was happening at Starbucks.

We are not merely taking Davis’ word on this. Marilyn Morrisey was the manager of the store until a few months ago. Morrisey says business did, indeed, increase, and she gives the credit to Davis.

“Tony created a sense of community,” she said. “The Arco towers store has this limited clientele--everyone works in the towers upstairs--and Tony made them feel like they had something in common. People started hanging out at Starbucks.”

But even as Davis humanized Starbucks, the company’s higher management noticed that the store was not hewing to the corporate script. The managers began to pounce.

First, district supervisors began checking the chalkboard for offensive items. Any reference to sex was offensive. Any commentary that poked fun at Starbucks was offensive.

Sometimes the supervisors would erase the offensive items themselves. Other times they would demand that Davis do the censoring. Either way, the spirit of the store began to flag.

Then, last week, the company served Davis with this notice: “After repeated discussions, Mr. Davis continues to display inappropriate messages and images on the Starbucks Coffee Co. Chalkboard.”

Davis was ordered to stop all chalkboard activities other than direct messages promoting Starbucks products. Davis complied but wrote a leaflet asking for support from customers and started handing it out.

At that point Davis was ushered out the door. I called the store’s new manager, who did the ushering-out at the direction of higher officials, to ask about the impact of Davis’ departure on the store’s business.

The manager said he could not comment. He instructed me to call an 800 number in Seattle, where, he said, answers would be provided.

So that’s how it goes these days, no? A guy gets booted out of his food service job in Los Angeles, and you have to call someone in Seattle to find out why.

It turns out Seattle didn’t do much better. The Starbucks people there issued another statement that more or less repeated the reprimand given to Davis.

So we don’t know how customers responded to Davis’ leaflet. Starbucks won’t say. We don’t know exactly which chalkboards offended management. Starbucks won’t say.

We do know that no customer ever complained about any of Davis’ actions. Davis and Morrisey both say that is the case, and Starbucks does not contradict it.

For his part, Davis is not planning to sit around and wait for Starbucks to change its mind. He has moonlighted for years as a stage dancer for Disney and other companies, and now he will pursue dancing full time.

So, most likely, the story ends there. Tony Davis’ attempt to bring a small measure of big-city life to Los Angeles failed. When we parted after lunch, I walked over to the Arco towers Starbucks to see if a new style in chalkboarding had emerged. It had. The chalkboard read:

“How About a Power Frappuccino Today?”