No Such Thing as a Free Iced Coffee

Did you get the e-mail? You know the one I mean. The one that a friend of a friend of a cousin who you rarely see but often get forwards from forwarded to you? It's the one that said you can get a free iced coffee at Starbucks if you brought a printed coupon in. Seems like a swell deal if you can get in on it right? Well apparently a lot more people got in on the deal than even Starbucks anticipated. You see, Starbucks sent out an e-mail to selected employees on August 23rd informing them of the deal for free iced coffee drinks. This was limited to stores in the southeast but the e-mail encouraged the lucky employees to forward and pass on the e-mail to all the friends and family they wanted.

Whoever was the genius behind this idea apparently has more confidence in the discretion of their employees than the employees actually have. If there are two constants in the modern world they are undoubtedly high fuel costs and high coffee costs at Starbucks. In recent days the cost of fuel has been coming down as we approach tail end of summer but the cost of a cup of coffee at Starbucks remains high! Now don't think this to be a rant against Starbucks. On the contrary, I am a fairly common fixture at a couple of my local Starbucks. But I'm not a frequent enough visitor that the baristas and other folks there know my drink before I even walk in. I go in on occasion and have something or the other. I have tried (and quite successfully I might add) not to let things get to the level that they warn you about in those financial articles on the 'art of saving'. I don't but a cup of coffee daily, that would be stupid and expensive to say nothing of the jitters that would eventually start up.

So then what am I trying to say? Well, this concept of rewarding employees by giving them free coffee is a wonderful idea. It's also wonderful that management over at Starbucks felt kind enough to offer to 'share the wealth' with everyone else was a nice one too. But did they really think that the dispersal of this e-mail would stop with friends and family? This is one of those e-mail forwards that you are very tempted to test out given the fact that it can't cost you anything. You present the e-mail and get a free coffee. Nothing wrong with that. It doesn't require you to send it off to forty friends within five minutes or you will have a string of bad luck. Those types of forwards are aggravating to say the least. Here it was something that you could reap the benefits from with little or no effort.

It's a good idea to help boost interest in the company considering the bad times they've been having. I mean back in July the company reported that they were losing revenue due to the fact the cold drinks on their menu were slowing down the time it takes to serve customers. So what do you do? Offer those same cold drinks to your customers as well as your employees. So now not only do you have ticked off customers going to other places for their morning java fix, you now have employees looking for alternate places to get their drinks on as well. Just who are they trying to win with this whole thing anyways?

On a totally unrelated note, I thought it worth noting that this officially marks my 100th blog posting. In the months since I began this thing I have had no less than 1,500 visitors and nearly twice that number of page views. I know that there are many return readers to these pages and to them I wish to express my thanks for encouraging me with your visits and occasional comments. I hope you continue to visit and I hope you continue to enjoy reading my flights of fancy and rants that occasionally pop up here!