Report, report, report. The store I work in sees a fair amount of homeless people wandering around outside, and on rare occasion we have had to ban a few of those people for trying to panhandle in our store repeatedly, and on guy got banned for throwing a can of pop at our manager (dude is into some really awful drugs and half the time forgets he’s banned). If your a Canada store, use the new Digital Incident Reporting system on your iPad every single time there’s an issue so Starbucks can start getting a better understanding of the troubles your store is facing. You can report every kind of issue on there.

If someone is bringing all their worldly belongings into your store, I’d say that counts as a disruption of the Third Place policy, and I’d consider bringing it up with your shift supervisor or manager. It’s not an unreasonable request to remove their things if they’re blocking the flow of foot traffic.

As for the ones who get water and drinks, sounds like your already doing this but just try and enjoy your interactions with them. Our society is so hostile to homeless people, there’s an intrinsic reaction for a lot of people to be disrespectful or dismissive without giving them any chance. It breaks my heart when I’m just as friendly to a homeless person as anyone else, and they’re genuinely surprised by it.

our store has two now. one just occupies a parking spot, the other borderline violates Third Place standards. bless her heart, she tends to talk loudly to herself a lot and intrude on other guests.