Starbucks has adopted a new dress code policy which bans baristas from wearing watches, bracelets and engagement rings. The company enacted the ban, they say, “to meet federal food safety guidelines.”
The exact wording of this rule:
“There are food safety rules we have to live by. Here’s the fine print — wearing a ring is okay if it’s a plain band, no stones. Unfortunately, no watches, bracelets or wristbands are allowed. Simple necklaces can be worn under your clothes.”
Interestingly enough, the official dress code policy does not even include the word “engagement,” even though all the major news coverage of the ban does. The rule isn’t about the intent of the ring; its about the ring’s composition. Wedding bands, sans stones, are acceptable. (A person so inclined to wear a stoneless engagement ring would also be in the clear.) Technically speaking, there is no engagement ring ban.
Federal food safety guidelines be damned; the people are not pleased:
https://twitter.com/K_Ryds68/status/529989450722725888
https://twitter.com/CaliPoliticz/status/528264266692841472
https://twitter.com/scott_towler/status/528211937083916288
And, my personal favorite:
https://twitter.com/BillingsLorrie/status/528184334339944449
I mean have you noticed the first THREE letters of “engagement” are all, in order, in the word “BENGHAZI”?
As for the “people will hit on a woman without an engagement ring to protect her,” well, bros, I have a shocking announcement for you: men hit on clearly uninterested and/or unavailable women all the time. If what you’re really afraid of is that your bride-to-be is going to run off with the guy who orders a pumpkin spice latte, may I humbly suggest you have bigger things to worry about than a change in a corporate dress code policy.
There’s also been some buzz about how Starbucks is okay with most tattoos, so long as they aren’t profane or on the neck/facial area, as if this is somehow relevant regarding the ban on certain types of jewelry. This makes zero sense, as tattoos are not separate from your body; they don’t collect dirt independently from the dirt collected on your skin, and to my knowledge there is no chance of a tattoo sliding off your flesh and into someone’s cappuccino.
Some have speculated that the ban is a sign Starbucks wants to add something to its food options beyond those sad-looking prepackaged offerings you can grab out of the cooler. For people who enjoy sandwiches that don’t taste like flat rubber stuck between two pieces cold, damp cardboard, I’d consider this a positive sign.
Treating this dress code news like it’s “news” is just patently ridiculous: Starbucks is in the food and beverage service industry. People in the food and beverage service industry handle food and beverages that other people consume. You will take the things they touch and put them IN YOUR MOUTH. Think about that for a second. Just ruminate on all the germy possibilities. Let the thought… germinate.
This isn’t Starbucks taking some trendy stance against the wedding industrial complex — although, that would be interesting! — so much as Starbucks taking a stance against the bacteria that finds its way in between the stones and settings on engagement rings, or any other jewelry with gems.
Besides, Starbucks isn’t enforcing any rules that other chains don’t already have. Dunkin’ Donuts, already way ahead of Starbucks on the “would you like food with your coffee” track, has an almost identical policy, and it’s from all the way back in 2009:
“No artificial fingernails. No nail polish if handling food. Chipped polish must be removed… No excessive tattoos or facial/ear piercings — existing tattoos should be covered and piercings should be removed or covered while on duty. Only post earrings are permitted to be worn while on duty… Dyeing the hair in extreme colors is not permitted. No excessive jewelry.”
I don’t know their damage about “extreme” colors of hair dye, though it seems like the sort of deliberately vague phrasing that allows the company to enforce slightly different rules in different regions of the country, where people have different standards of what constitutes “extreme.” Policing something like, say, the artistic or lazy choice to have chipped nail polish, isn’t corporate fascism; it’s sanitation. I don’t want to bite into a donut and realize what I thought was a sprinkle was actually some peeled-off Essie that got lodged the icing.
Naturally the element of the dress code on which people fixate is this specific piece of the jewelry policy: nobody cares that you can’t wear bluejeans, only that you can’t wear a ring with a stone in it. Why is the idea of an engagement ring ban so powerful?
Now that engagement has become an industry unto itself — elaborate, expensive proposals; photo shoots; dedicated Facebook statuses — people feel more tied to the imagery and perceived significance of the ring than ever before. If you have an engagement ring, you’re probably stoked about it and don’t like the idea of having to remove a physical signifier of a new, important part of your identity.
The outrage is, in hindsight, inevitable, because an attachment to an engagement ring is at ideological odds with the purpose of the policy. It’s romance versus reason.