Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/14/denied-at-the-drive-drive-thru-a-woman-and-the-horse-she-rode-in-on.html
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Sorry I’m with her, that’s fucking horseshit. Asshole could have taken their order and everyone could have had a pleasant day. Instead he chose to be an asshole for absolutely no reason.
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Seriously? As a driver I don’t want to have to rely on the horses training, and the rider’s common sense when I go through the drive through. Just no. I say that as someone that spent their childhood in the saddle. I don’t want horses in my drive through experience.
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sorry, i have nothing to add that wasn’t already said in the comments on the reddit thread. i mean, “Ma’am, please get off your high horse” pretty much says everything that needs to be said.
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Can’t tell if sincere belief or trolley
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If there were horses in front of me in the drive thru I would give them some room and think about what a silly day I’m having. I don’t even like horses, and I don’t see what the big deal is here.
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Private businesses can set their own policies on who to serve and how, but it’s still kind of depressing that we have so much public and private infrastructure built around the cult of the automobile that we rarely even take the time to question how things could be different anymore.
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Most drive-thrus where I’m at don’t allow walk-up humans and have a posted policy of allowing vehicles only, so I could see that being extrapolated to walk-up humans on horses (or walk-up horses with humans?)
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I mean, as a driver I don’t want to have to rely on a human’s training behind the wheel, but here we are. I have never had an issue with a horse on the road or shared pathway (and around here we encounter plenty), but I have almost gotten killed by other drivers, both as a driver and pedestrian, more times than I can recall.
As a private business they certainly have a right to determine what happens on their property and the manager probably made the right call as far as what corporate legal would have wanted, but to @Brainspore’s observation, it’s depressing that humanity’s liberty of movement is curtailed by the “cult of the automobile”, and nowhere more so than in the good ol’ US of A.
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She was just along for the ride! The horse was really the one who wanted a frappuccino.
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I’m guessing that, among other things, the manager wasn’t prepared to ask his employees to clean up horseshit, on top of everything else they have to deal with.
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Back in college, I was a bank teller. Our silent alarm went off one day, and the mounted police were the first to respond. One horse left a… deposit… in one of the drive-thru lanes.
I also ride. I didn’t watch the video because work vs. Reddit, so I don’t know how the exchange went down. But, seriously, horse poo isn’t the worst thing in the world. Maybe a sign in the drive-thru that says, “motor vehicles only,” like they have on highway onramps? In the absence of such notice, I don’t see the problem with the non-pedal transportation mode of the customer.
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As somebody who grew up in a tiny town surrounded by farm land, if this Starbucks was in such an area, I would bet you the staff has a background in shit shoveling and it wouldn’t be a big deal.
As somebody who has since lived 20 years in the cores of major cities, I can tell you that my retail industry friends already deal with things much worse than horse shit all too frequently. And it is often times the managers stepping up and doing that extra nasty cleaning anyway.
I don’t personally agree with the horse lady being all “MaH RiGHtS” about it, cause it ain’t her business. And I am willing to bet that this manager was just towing the line on regional or national corporate policy, and that he didn’t even have any personal investment in this issue.
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Drive-thrus won’t take your order if you’re on foot, or on a bicycle so just declaring your horse transportation shouldn’t work either. They will serve you if you’re on a motorcycle though.
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It’s not uncommon to see a horse and buggy in a drive through around here. Maybe the wheels make all the difference and this horse would have better luck if it were on roller skates. Or if it offered to accompany some stray Amish folk to the establishment.
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“Employees have to deal with all sorts of shitty work, so it’s not a big deal to impose additional, unnecessary (literally) shitty work on them” doesn’t seem like a great argument. Starbucks coffee quality already has enough problems that the manager didn’t want customers associating it with horseshit (and thus there would have been an expectation that someone was going to have to go out and clean it up immediately). If a business had a couple customers that dropped a bunch of garbage every time they came, I don’t imagine they’d be too welcome either.
This is on top of any safety/liability issues and the fact that generally only motorized vehicles are allowed in drive-throughs. Which yes, was probably standard corporate policy, but the manager wasn’t going to go against them in order to create more work and problems for the staff.
If dog owners are obligated to pick up their dog poop when they take them for walks, why would horse owners not be obligated to do the same?
Dogs also do a lot of marking their territory when on walks, but the volume is usually minimal. I don’t think that is true of horses.
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I just don’t see why everyone is trying so hard to be an asshole for something so unimportant
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Uh, nope. You kind of sound, I dunno, like someone who has never worked in the service industry.
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As a long-time motorcyclist, the main things you do not want to encounter on a tight bend are either diesel or horseshit.
I’m in the middle of the country, and there are loads of off-road horsey-tracks and country walks aplenty, but most of the riders prefer tarmac because, as we all know, tarmac was invented for hooves, not pneumatic tyres.
I’ve got nothing against horse-riding, honestly. (Plenty of reasons to hate fox-hunting - that’s another story).
But, yeah, clean up after yourselves, you entitled wallies.
As for the drive-thru thing? Meh.
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