Taylor Trice's tale of persecution was actually an admission of her own prejudice

Taylor Trice is making headlines in conservative media after insisting she was fired from a Starbucks in Apex, North Carolina in 2022 because of her Christian faith.

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Your alarm bells should already be going off since that’s not a thing that ever happens. The real story, of course, is that she was fired for being a bigot. She’s just using her faith as an excuse to get away with her actions.

In a TikTok video posted last week—which has since been taken down—Trice explained that she had been working at Starbucks for two years and never had a problem with their Pride displays… until 2022, when there was a glass wall with various terms (like “demisexual&rdquo and their definitions. FOX News Digital included a picture that Trice gave them of the controversial wall:

“Demisexual” isn’t on there. But it does include pronouns that some people might not be as familiar with, like “ze/zim” and “xe/xem,” along with a note that some baristas may wear pins with their pronouns on them “to help others respect their preference.”

Pretty harmless!

Trice said (to managers, presumably) that “you guys gotta be careful… we got families walking in here and kids are going to read that.”

Even if they saw that, what’s the problem? What would happen? Who knows.

She then said company policy is that you must use the pronouns your customers request. She admits she didn’t want to go along with that because, “if I see that you are a man, and I call you a woman, that is lying.” And she’s no liar, goddammit. She described going along with such a lie as satanic.

Elsewhere in the video, she said sin exists because “someone ate the wrong piece of fruit” and that the Holocaust began with “small little propaganda,” too. And that’s why she refuses to acknowledge trans identities. To prevent another Holocaust, I guess.

And then she was fired.

While the TikTok was removed, copies are easily found online:

There’s no specific indications from that video of what else she may have said or done that led to her firing. Her managers cited complaints from co-workers, she said, but viewers weren’t told the nature of them.

So was she fired because she’s Christian? Or because she refused to use certain pronouns? Or was it because of other incidents that she didn’t tell the public about?

For what it’s worth, I can’t recall ever ordering anything from Starbucks and being asked about my pronouns at all. I give them my fake non-Indian name. They write it down. I get my drink. We all move on. No pronouns come into that conversation.

Since Trice posted that video, though, right-wing media has latched onto it as a story of alleged persecution and Trice has slipped up in her retelling of the story. In an interview with FOX News Digital, for example, she admitted she refused to call her colleague by their preferred pronoun and that there were multiple complaints from customers.

It’s hard to get another side of the story here because we don’t know who she worked with to verify the details, and Starbucks isn’t about to release private information:

When Fox News Digital reached out to Starbucks, the multinational chain said it "will not comment on this private employment matter."

"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," a Starbucks spokesperson said.

"We expect all partners (employees) to abide by company policies and standards, including our anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies."

Seems pretty standard. If you’re discriminating against other people, you don’t get to use your religion as some sort of shield. The bottom line is that she fucked around, found out, and is only now whining about it while pretending to be a victim. If you contribute to a toxic environment in the workplace, you deserve to be fired. It’s not that complicated.

It’s telling that we’re only hearing about this story two years after it occurred. Trice never filed any kind of religious discrimination lawsuit against the company. She wouldn’t have succeeded if she tried. She writes in the comments underneath her video, “my friends said it could [be a lawsuit] but I was tryna be nice.”

This isn’t even about Starbucks, which gets cast as the bad guy in her telling of the story. (There are legitimate reasons to criticize the company! This isn’t of them.) This would’ve happened at plenty of other companies, too. They have every right to enforce their anti-discrimination policies and she can choose not to work for them if she believes Christianity requires her to be a bigot.

It’s also worth mentioning that it’s not like Trice said she refused to serve or work with people who were divorced, gluttons, had an abortion, etc. She doesn’t really care about “sinners.” She’s just a transphobe who thinks she gets to decide someone else’s gender at a glance. If your pronoun doesn’t match her first impression, then she feels like she has a God-given right to disrespect you.

She may have thought she was telling people about how she’s a victim of a faith-based attack, but she inadvertently told on herself and made it clear why companies shouldn’t hire anyone who makes the lives of their colleagues and customers worse.

If that person happens to be a Christian, well, too damn bad.