Starbucks sued over Washington restroom camera (secret toilet cam)

[ZombieHorde]

WASHINGTON | Tue Sep 20, 2011 4:59pm EDT

Reuters) - A Virginia man is suing Starbucks Coffee Co after his 5-year-old daughter allegedly found a video camera in a Washington cafe bathroom pointed at the toilet.

William Yockey, of Norfolk, is asking for $1 million in the civil suit on four counts, including breach of privacy, his lawyer, Hank Schlosberg, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Yockey and his daughter went into a Starbucks in downtown Washington to use the restroom during an April sightseeing trip, he said.

After using the unisex toilet, the girl discovered a digital video camera hidden in the U-shaped drain pipe under the sink. The camera was aimed at the toilet and recording, Schlosberg said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/20/us-starbucks-camera-idUSTRE78J63W20110920

[gateley]

1. If this is at least the third incident, I'd go for more than

a million dollars. The statement says they their their responsibility very seriously -- you'd think after two previous problems they would make checking for cameras part of the daily cleaning procedure. Or something.

[Me.]

2. She Was Searching The Drain Pipe?

[ThomCat]

5. Small children have a perspective that is lower to the ground.

She may have simply seen that "something" was down there and got curious to see what it was. Even a child knows that there isn't usually something tucked into the bend of a pipe under a sink.

Good for her, finding that. An adult probably would never have seen that camera.

[ChandlerJr]

3. Why sue Starbucks?

Is it any wonder potential employers feel the need to run background checks on everyone, including social media and credit checks. You can't even hire a coffee jerk without putting your business at risk.

[ThomCat]

6. Because the Starbucks should be cleaning that bathroom

often enough, and thoroughly enough that something like this simply can't happen.

If that bathroom was being cleaned well on a routine basis then the staff that clean that restroom would have found that camera and called the police, unless it had only just been put there.

But the person who put that there must have felt that there was a very good chance that the employees wouldn't clean well enough to find the camera, and that the camera would remain undiscovered long enough to be able to come back to retrieve it too.

How long does would the bathroom have to go without a thorough cleaning for that to be possible? I guess that depends on how many pictures that peeper was hoping to get.

Regardless, this little girl found something that Starbucks should have found first.

[ChandlerJr]

8. Or the person who planted the camera was a Starbucks employee

who should have been screened more closely and Starbucks needs to be more intrusive in it's hiring background checks to prevent this type of thing.

[Bandit]

9. Where does the buck stop?

:shrug:

[Chan790]

11. You'd think so...but you'd be wrong.

I used to manage a 'bux, I've talked about it at length. We were recognized for having the cleanest bathrooms in the entire company in my store, I was complemented on the cleanliness of them by a hospital sanitarian. I used to stick post-it notes in odd places to insure my staff was cleaning every surface of the shitter and not just the public-visible ones. To company standard the bathroom is checked once a half-hour and cleaned once every two hours whether it needs it or not. I maintained at-least that rate and usually double it if a slow day.

That camera would have gone undetected...there is simply nothing under there that need be or should be cleaned, except the floor-sweep and that wouldn't have discovered that camera. People who place these cameras are not idiots, those locations are chosen because they will not be discovered pretty much ever because they're in places that nobody ever has a reason to look or clean.

We don't polish the undersink pipes...that'd be idiotic.

[pintobean]

4. Does anyone know where Chuck Berry was at the time?

[dana_b]

7. that happened at my daughter's last job too

(also a coffee place). They found the camera after the pipes started leaking. I don't know if the cops ever figured out who did it but my daughter is still afraid that she, her co-workers and customers may be somewhere online now.

[Liberal_in_LA]

10. omg

[dana_b]

12. yeah - that was our thought(s) too n/t