A now-former Starbucks employee is claiming the Seattle-based coffee café fired her after she openly objected to the company’s Pride month display.
Taylor Trice opened up about her ouster in a viral TikTok video, explaining she was cut from the Starbucks store in Apex, North Carolina, because she took issue with an LGBT display as well as a policy requiring her to use a transgender-identifying employee’s “preferred pronouns.”
@edbl22 Replying to @Juniper Cove #christiantiktok #selfcare #growth #lgbt #starbucks ♬ original sound – edbl22
The display and policy, she said, doesn’t “go along with God’s Word.”
“Prior to working at Starbucks, I knew nothing about it except that it was considered a bougie coffee shop,” she said in an interview with Fox News. “So I didn’t know that it was a very liberal company.”
Trice, who worked for Starbucks for two years, said she started working at the café because the company offered tuition assistance for Arizona State University’s online program. She was fired from her job in 2022, she said in the video.
Listen to them on the latest episode of “Quick Start” 👇
The ex-employee said she was willing to call the transgender-identifying staffer by name and avoid the use of pronouns altogether, because her Christian faith didn’t allow her to lie.
“That means, if I see you are a man, and I call you a woman, that is lying,” she explained. “That is identifying you as something that God did not create you to be. And it’s identifying you as something that Satan wants to identify you as, and Satan’s ultimate goal is to confuse you and deceive you about your identity.”
While some might dismiss that as a “small sin,” Trice argued that kind of dishonesty shouldn’t be taken lightly.
“With all those factors combined,” she reflected, “I say, respectfully, hey, ‘I’m willing to call you by your name; I’m willing to avoid using pronouns, but it’s against my faith to lie and say that you are a woman if I know that you are a man.'”
Looking back, Trice said she felt God prepared her for what was to come. The night before her boss fired her, she said she had a dream she was called into a meeting during which Trice’s employers told her people had accused her of “homophobia.”
The very next day, she lost her job.
“As predicted, I got fired,” she said. “I’m not saying this to bash my old coworkers or my old manager. I actually had a lot of fun with them, and I love them, and all I want to see is for them to be in heaven.”
A Starbucks spokesperson told The Christian Post the company won’t comment on the “private employee matter,” referring to Trice’s case.
“However, Starbucks has no tolerance for discrimination or harassment of any kind in our stores, and we’re committed to fostering an environment where everyone is welcome, respected, and valued,” the representative said. “We expect all partners [employees] to abide by company policies and standards, including our anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies.”
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