Monday

5 November 2018

I spend a lot of time in Starbucks. I have a favorite table, some of the baristas know what I'm going to order before I open my mouth, and I recognize a lot of the regulars. I spend enough that I get a hell of a lot of freebies loaded onto my shiny gold Starbucks card, and I have been known to participate in a star dash or two or twenty.

I don't drink coffee, but I dig their tea and once in a while a Frappucino (with as little roast base as I can get, because I just never learned to like coffee.) (Also, they get a wee bit upset if you order a Frappe. That's McD's.)(Also also, learn the sizes there. It's not cute to refuse to say you want a tall, grande, venti, or trenta. No one cares if you hate the way they do it. Just make their job easier and do it the way their system is laid out. Otherwise you're gonna want a small and you're gonna get a grande.)

Yesterday Starbucks across the U.S. had a promotion: get a free red cup while supplies last, and until the end of the holidays, if you order a holiday drink after 2pm, you get 50 cents off.

People were lined up at opening, waiting to get their free red cup. Some stores received as few as 20 cups, based on (as far as I can tell) their typical sales patterns. Some got 50 or more. But within half an hour of opening, all the free cups had been given out.

Now, most people would have shrugged it off and said that it sucked, but, whatever.

I don't know what happened at the Starbucks I go to, because there's no way I'm getting there at opening. They open in the freaking middle of the night, when I'm usually offering the sleep fairy nasty things to come over and just do me. But as I surfed around online last night and read posts from the poor baristas who had to work during the cup give-away, way too many people lost their shit  when they didn't get a free cup.

We're not talking someone snapping at the poor kid at the cash register and blaming him or her. We're talking full on, meltdown temper tantrums of the unholy terror toddler scale.

One woman posted that there was a meltdown so spectacular at her store that other people in line chipped in to buy the guy a $2.50 red cup that would get him the same deal. A grown-assed man, screaming and yelling so badly that people chipped in cash to shut him the hell up and spare the barista any further abuse.

Over a cup.

A cup that, when the free ones were gone, were available for purchase for $2.50. Any real Starbucks customer realizes the potential for savings there. Five purchases and you've covered the cost. From then out, that 50 cent discount is all yours.

And then came this morning, when a bunch of the people who scored their free red cup wandered into their local Starbucks and demanded their 50 cents off...and threw tantrums because the deal is for after 2pm, not all day. And only for holiday themed drinks.

It was all right there in black and white for anyone to read.

"But y'all can't expect us to read that whole thing." Seriously, that was said, according to one tired barista.

Imagine the mindset of someone who can't be bothered to read literally two sentences. Or those who do and don't grasp that 2pm MEANS 2 pm and not before. Or someone who doesn't get what they want and screams until they damn near have a stroke.

And the thing that keeps crossing my mind: tomorrow the U.S. has midterm elections, and these people probably vote.

God help us all.

6 comments:

Angel Junior, Orion and Sammy said...

Amen sister. Sounds like a bunch of whiny trumpers.

Random Felines said...

Seriously....

karenn said...

I think Can't Be Bothered to Read it Guy is the same millennial who wouldn't vote because mailing stuff gives him anxiety.

Just Ducky said...

If they read the entire promo, they probably only remembered parts of it. Like 50 cents off, didn't remember the after 2 pm part.

These people need to grow up and act like adults. You don't always get what you want!

debzy said...

*sigh* it's just everywhere. People needing to vent about something because they can't really vent about what's bugging them.

There's no changing them. There's no talking to them. They don't hear anything but the sound of their whiny voices. The problem is that sometimes it works and they get what they want just to shut them up. That is how we got into the predicament we're in, I think...

Unknown said...

I don't suppose it would help if you try to explain to them the concept of "First World Problem."