Starbucks haters, feast on this: Starbucks slaves its poor employees on the day we celebrate our good Lord’s birth. How can they be such careless, soulless, evil human beings as to force poor hourly employees to brew coffee instead of spending precious time with their families?

No other coffee or donut shop in the City was open early on Christmas day except for Starbucks. Further evidence, you haters say, that Starbucks’ corporate evil drives it to do things a locally owned shop wouldn’t even dream of! Right?

WRONG! I believe Starbucks is actually helping its employees by being open on Christmas.

I was getting drowsy on my graveyard shift and stopped by the Starbucks on 18th at Castro. I asked the cashier if he had drawn the short straw to get such a lousy shift. He laughed and said, “Oh no, I WANTED to work today! I didn’t have anything else going on — everyone’s out of town — I might as well make some money.”

There was most definitely demand for coffee on Christmas day. The line snaked out the door at times, just as it does any other early weekday. Face it, haters, some people want (need?) to drink coffee or eat expensive pastries on Christmas day. And, some people want to make money working at Starbucks on Christmas day. That’s right, they WANT to work there.

Some might say: shouldn’t Starbucks offer a paid vacation day on Christmas for its employees? Wouldn’t that be a nicer gift than ‘allowing’ them to work on the 25th?

My answer: if mandated by government, or demanded by the market for jobs of similar type, of course they will offer vacation time as a function of hours worked. But, forcing all employees to take Christmas as a paid holiday is silly. Some people don’t want to do so. Perhaps an atheist would rather take a vacation day when his friends visit next month. It makes more sense to offer no mandated paid holidays. Instead, issue the equivalent number of days for use anytime.

Thanks, Starbucks, for moving us forward, even just a little bit.

UPDATE: Today in Santana Row, a planned outdoor mall, restaurant and residential development in San Jose, the only open restaurant in the main square was Starbucks. About a hundred people lined the square and sat at (closed) competitor restaurants’ outdoor seating areas drinking and eating Starbucks products. Go Starbucks!

When I asked the servers in Santana Row, they also said they volunteered to work today. They get double pay.