Obviously this got escalated more than it should have, but having a policy that people need to buy something or leave isn't a ridiculous policy. I've seen it raised in coffee shops before; I've even seen it involve police gently encouraging someone to leave (at the Memorial/Edmonton Trail Starbucks, I think).
Whether the employee chose to enforce the policy because the guys were black is a question we don't know the answer to, but there's certainly a lot of assumptions being made. If true it is a problem, but I don't think that's something that people should assume. If it only came to his attention because one of these guys came and requested a bathroom key and at that point the employee noticed they were not customers and decided to bring up the policy, that's legitimate.
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