I do, oh yeah, I do. I can count on one hand the number of times I have been dragged into one of its plethora of locations, always by my wife. Every second in there is another second of me wanting to get out of the place. Luckily I don’t work in a normal office environment so there is no pressure to go there in that half of my life. So, why the hate?
I don’t like coffee. I don’t like it for no other reason than I hate the taste. Sometimes I feel like I am the only adult on the planet that hates coffee. Give me hot chocolate or tea, but I can’t take a sip of coffee without my tongue hating me. I think that many people have trained themselves to enjoy it, mostly after drenching it with good tasting stuff like milk, sugar, or syrups to cover up the nasty taste of the coffee itself. Drinking it has become a way to show you are “part of the group”, like a ritual to fit in. I’ve always been too independent to do things I don’t want to fit into a group, so I’ve never trained myself to like it. I’ve had one drink from Starbucks, a hot chocolate, and it wasn’t anything special.
Just because I hate coffee isn’t the reason I hate the company though. That would be ridiculous. Let me explain why an outsider, like me, hates Starbucks.
OVERPRICED CRAP
You are paying $5 for 50 cents of materials. Give or take. The more you add to hide the disgusting coffee flavor the more it costs you.
Even after all the other expenses they have, the customer is getting ripped off! As they are taking your money, they are taking your time. Most people trade their time performing their skills for a certain amount of money. So when you overpay for something you are actually trading the time it took you to earn it.
Starbucks is a master of marketing though, so people happily line up to grab a 'harmless' $5 'luxury treat'. In fact, I think their whole business is just marketing, coffee has just become the thing the marketing revolves around, but it could have been nearly anything. They have sold the idea that Starbucks is the thing to have and people have fallen for it. Pure social conditioning.
EVERYWHERE
Since they are bringing in huge profit margins, they can afford to have a location everywhere. In some places you can’t even WALK 5 minutes down the street without passing 2 or 3 of them.
They are a plague. They are to coffee what McDonald’s is to hamburgers.
Certainly having stores that close takes business from the others, but they don’t care. They have so much money and they use it to destroy any other challenger. Say goodbye to anyone that stands in its way. It’s a scorched earth policy, let no competitor survive.
GENERIC
The entire thing is fake. They have killed the old school culture of nonconformity that used to be the local coffee shop and replaced it with a generic, faux, one-size fits all mold that attempts to look like a small business. A coffee stained prefabricated box that they can replicate, like Star Trek’s Borg. They are a global chain, it’s how things are done but Starbucks tries to act like they aren't.
Many coffee places used to be different, like what you can see on old Friends reruns. Things would happen there, different art would be up on the wall, at night people would read poetry. That’s all been lost.
We have this corporate giant that is promoting the sameness you see everywhere now. Our world is becoming bland – one note. It is the price you pay to be able to have the same drink anywhere in the world. I hate our rapidly dwindling differences. It’s like the American that travels to Europe but ends up eating fast food because it’s what they know, it’s safe.
RIDICULOUS NAMES
First we have their size chart which is some blatantly fake Italian naming system – Tall – Grande – Venti – Trenta. Why don’t they just call them small – medium- large – extra large? Because it is a trick, it makes them seem exotic or foreign, something special that you can treat yourself to. Who would spend $5 on a small drink? But when you can have a ‘tall’ one it subconsciously flips it around. Stop it, you are from Seattle not Italy.
Secondly they perform the same trick by calling their servers ‘baristas’. It is just another word trick to make them feel better about their low paying job and reinforce the exotic ‘specialness’ of being in a Starbucks.
The biggest thing is the ridiculous names of the drinks. No one goes to Starbucks for a regular coffee, so they have all these ways to feed you a coffee drink that is much more like a shake than anything else. Seriously, look at the calorie count on some of the drinks there – 400, 600, 800+ calories. If you really liked coffee that much you could drink a cup which has something like 10 calories in it, black.
But noooo, you need to pretend that you do and so order something like Triple, Venti, Half Sweet, Non-Fat, Caramel Macchiato a Venti Iced Hazelnut Macchiato, Sugar-Free Syrup, Light Ice, Extra Whip or a White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino. Stop pretending you like coffee and just get a hot chocolate.
PRETENTIOUS PEOPLE
Since pretty much everyone is ordering a ‘coffee’ that is so far from actually being one you end up with hordes of fake people that swarm over to it. People that want to be part of the “in” crowd. You end up with a denser concentration of beard growing, scarf wearing, hipster men and dog-in-purse, fake nails and everything else women. You end up with a bunch of entitled brats.
These men are the same type of people that complain about capitalism while wearing American Apparel, Levi jeans, and Vans below their scarves and beanies. Simultaneously tapping away on their Apple products and drinking this swill from Starbucks. All of them expressing their uniqueness while looking nearly identical.
These spray tanned women are all about status, so for them its all about their clothes and accessories (A Starbucks cup is just an accessory too). Gucci/Hermes/Luis Vuitton/Jimmy Choo... – basically how they can spend the most money on something just for that precious tag to show off. A tag that says “I am better than you”, but more like “I fall for this shit” as they photo it and post it to instagram.
Then you got these teens that think they need a coffee to get through their obviously stressful lives of texting and worrying about the next math test. It's a hard subject when you can't even. Why do 15 year old people need to drink cofffe? Hint: they don't. At least I think the Uggs thing has passed, or has it - I dunno for sure.
As they fork over their money to obtain the precious status symbol that is a Starbucks cup, they are so happy to patronize a company that cares for the environment and its workers. Free trade coffee and cardboard cups. Healthcare and schooling assistance for its workers. So kind of them. It is easy to be that way when you overcharge for a simple product. Where do you think they get the money to do all that from? If you didn’t figure it out, it is from gouging their customers – you probably. They can do these things because of the crazy profit margins and the marketing message that it promotes for their image.
THERE YOU HAVE IT
I know pretty much everyone has been assimilated by the Borg known as Starbucks so I expect a bunch of hate for it. "How could you hate Starbucks, OMG!!!1!1!!
If you are still free from the addiction that it is, let me know I am not the only one because it seems to me that way. Everyone loves Starbucks, I am the odd person. Just the way I have always been. Give me a hot chocolate or an English breakfast tea with a splash of milk.
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