Posted on 12/27/2012 8:26:28 AM PST by US Navy Vet
“Room for smarm in your latte?” Isn’t there something creepy about Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz having [in Politico's words] “asked his Washington-area employees to write ‘Come Together’ on each customer cup today, tomorrow and Friday, as a gesture to urge leaders to resolve the fiscal cliff”? Did Schultz take a poll of his employees–sorry, “partners,” he calls them–before ordering pressuring asking them to join in this lobbying effort? What if he were, say, the CEO of Chick-fil-A and he “asked” his “partners” to write “Preserve the Family” on the outside of cups and containers.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Cult/Clique/addiction/the in thing like the Apple/IPhone/IPad/IMac cult/clique/addiction and/or addiction to Starbuck products.
We have a young relative couple with the above. He has the Starbuck problem and she has the Apple/IPhone/IPad/IMac cult/clique/ problem. Both are in their forties, with good degrees, good workers and good parents. They have two great kids, a great credit rating and have no debt besides their mortgage.
I posted about her Apple/IPhone/IPad/IMac cult/clique/addiction problem recently. She has the latest Iphone, IPad and IMac, and she can’t leave them alone. I offered her a hundred $’s if she would not use her Apple/IPhone/IPad/IMac for 24 hours. She got red faced and refused the easy $100. Her husband offered a $100 if she didn’t use her Apple/IPhone/IPad/IMac for the next 6 hours. She refused that and refused a 4 hour offer.
The husband is addicted to Starbucks. He stops each morning before work at a Starbuck Drive thru. He buys the SB large coffee to go. Then, he has a bottle of Frapicino at 10:30, 12:30 and 3:30. He avoids going into a Starbucks as he doesn’t care for the crowd inside. So he uses the Drive Thru lane to feed his addiction and buys the SB Frapicino by the case at grocery stores.
This past week he was still kidding her about her Apple problem. I offered him $200 if during the work week, he didn’t feed his Starbucks addiction. He shook his head no. His wife made the same offer if he didn’t feed the Starbuck addiction for a single work day. He refused.
The truly afflicted are those with the Apple/IPhone/IPad/IMac cult/clique/addiction problem er products coupled with a Starbucks problem. They are like zombies/the living dead going to their local Starbucks to buy SB’s products to drink while using SB’s WiFi with their Apple/IPhone/IPad/IMac cult/clique/addiction problem er products.
Never been to a Barsucks for their coffee. We did have it at a conference several years ago. I drank part of one cup and poured the rest down the bathroom sink.
Starbucks sells more than coffee. Starbucks sells pseudo-relationshps. People who work at Starbucks are chosen for their people skills and interesting qualities. Customers get to know the associates and over time form bonds that encourage the customer's to come back again and again. Most baristas have a fan base.
In this relationship-hungry society, this works and works well. I saw this in action when having a few meals with my barista relative in the city she works in. No matter where she went, Starbuck customers stop at her table to “catch up” to say hello, to check in and introduce the wife or husband to her, to ask her when she will be on next and so on. Not just one time each meal. It was a constant.
Starbucks baristas get asked home for Christmas dinner with families, and occasionally to the beach with a needy mother. They do not go, and some are puzzled at the fervor of their customers.
Most of the baristas would not phrase it this way, but they are actors. They offer a illusion of friendship in a friendship-hungry world.
“Starbucks sells pseudo-relationshps” sure sounds like a CULT to me.
There’s certainly nothing pretentious about sitting there laughing at pretentious people...
That's exactly what I have every morning. My husband doesn't drink coffee, and I don't want to make a pot just for my one cup a day so I drive up the street to our one and only SB, go through their drive through and order a "tall, black, bold". My only problem is it now costs $1.65 instead of the former $1.56 in our area.
Must confess, sometimes as a special treat I'll also get their sausage egg breakfast sandwich .
Me too. But then I like very strong coffee, I make my coffee at home pretty strong. I haven’t had the bad experiences, the rude or snotty baristas at Starbucks that others have had. Every time I’ve gone to a Starbucks, the people waiting on me have been very friendly and very proficient and I haven’t run into swarms of crazed liberals either, just regular folks like me who want a latte and or a pastry. And I’ve never ordered a drink at Starbucks that wasn’t exactly as I ordered it. I don’t go to Starbucks often or anywhere else for that matter for coffee on the go, not in my budget now days (and even don’t get me started on how horrible McDonald’s coffee is), I usually brew at home and take some in my travel mug. But I got a $15 Starbucks gift card for Christmas and I’m really looking forward to a few Caramel Macchiatos.
“Starbucks sells pseudo-relationshps” sure sounds like a CULT to me.
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You could call it that. Most service providing organizations sell some version of pseudo-relationship. That special hairdresser, stockbroker....on and on.
Starbucks has combined this service aspect with a product.
The wifi, newspapers and comfortable chairs make most SBs a pleasant place to get a cup and relax. I don’t live in a big city, so I don’t know what people here are talking about.
“Here in conservative central Virginia, it looks like the entire liberal/Northeastern transplant population in this area congregates at Starbucks. They all look like pseudo-intellectual leftwingers, right down to the skinny wirerim-bespectacled men with scarves looped jauntily (and might I say, queerly) around their necks. They prominently carry their Starbucks cups, thinking it’s fashionable to be seen toting the logo.”
BOL! We have had the privilege of meeting a great woman in her 40’s. She has both feet on the ground and has more job offers floating aroound than most people ever dream about.
She has been divorced for over a decade, She told us about shortly after she and her husband were married, they lived in a great apartment building in San Francisco with a group of other newly marrieds. In about a year, her new husband had gone through 3 jobs and was unemployed.
Re the lack of employment status for husbands, he turned out to a “norm” for their group. The looking for a more suitable job guys with the wives would meet for morning coffee at a local SBs. Then, the women would go to work. Their looking for the perfect job husbands stayed at the SB’s for more coffee to bemoan their status or maybe enjoying it more after their working wives left.
This group of successful career women started discussing this and a couple of the gals would have a cab drive by the SB’s in good weather. Often their husbands would be outside the SB’s having lunch.
The non pregnant women started filling for divorce. Many were hit with alimony suits and ended up paying including this lady. Recently, judges have been ending the alimony suits after the SB’s losers/guys still were unemployed after a decade.
God Bless my wife she loves them. She and I were out the other day and I knew she was going to want to stop in, so I took a chaw. It was moderately crowded and we went in and while standing in line I asked for an empty cup. When the man (and I use that term loosely) behind the counter handed me one I spit in it and put it in the trash can. I tickled myself and started a low chuckle and went outside. My wife came out, after waiting for her swill about the same amount of time I can order a hamburger, and just looked at me and said, “there is something wrong with you.”
There are many worse things to be addicted to in our culture, and if you bought either or both of those stocks years ago you would have a very handsome profit right now.
Starbucks’ coffee is dark roast which is why many don’t like it. I prefer medium roast.
Also, you have to roll your eyes at a place that replaces “large” with “grahn-day.” Give me a break.
Their product has never appealed to me. It's mediocre at best, but they sure know how to sell it.
It’s a great hang out for laptop people and employs a lot of people. The only time I buy anything other than regular small coffee is when I get a reward for free on my Starbucks card. Otherwise way over priced! I mean a small coffee latte for $3.55..get out of here!
Well, even though they were chronically unemployed, they looked cool sitting there. /s
“Oh thank heaven” for that other store were it costs less and tastes better.
"Burnt" is my first thought. The places smell like a campfire. I believe they sacrifice their coffee beans to the coffee god on a pyre. Their coffee is made from the ashes.
Now you and I would get along fine ... except for me it’s Trung Nguyen #5 ground daily in my french press.
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