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I Hate Starbucks – Here’s Five Reasons Why

I Hate Starbucks

Starbucks sucks. 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. 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.

Not to say that everyone there is like this, far from it actually. Just that there ends up being a higher than normal concentration of these types.

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.

 

Fake Fake Fake
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.


 I HATE STARBUCKS

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 to be 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.


This post was originally featured on my Steemit blog.


Pictures: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

9 comments

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  1. DivHut

    The title of this post got me reading. You are not alone. SBUX did not become SBUX because of me. While I have been there literally a handful of times it was to use a gift card I received and sample some of their brews. I drink coffee and enjoy it but cannot understand why people go crazy for the over-roasted, burned flavor of their coffee. 99% of my coffee is consumed at home via French press or Moka pot. I can get better flavor for pennies instead of dollars. It’s funny how you said the SBUX cup was an accessory. I just had the same convo with my wife not long ago. People do like to show off their cups though never will admit to it. Again, great post. I really enjoyed it and agree with everything you wrote.
    DivHut recently posted…February 2017 Stock ConsiderationsMy Profile

    1. MrDD

      Welcome fellow Starbucks hater! I knew there had to be others but every time I talk to someone about the place they make me feel like an outcast. I have spoken to a few people on the internet that also hate it, and they have told me that the brew there is burnt most of the time. It makes sense since regular coffee is rarely asked for in Starbucks. What I figure is that people like the stuff added to it, not the coffee there itself. Newsflash people, cream and sugar taste good! That’s what you are having if you have any of these fancy drinks with caramel and whipped cream in it. Might as well just have an ice cream shake.

  2. Mr Defined Sight

    I agree with your takes here and I am a coffee drinker. They are way over priced, and quite frankly I don’t like the way their coffee tastes. I’d rather go to the local gas station and get a coffee at a fraction of the price. Or better yet, brew my own.
    Mr Defined Sight recently posted…Elevated Cholesterol- An Unexpected Turn of EventsMy Profile

    1. MrDD

      I’ve heard that the coffee actually sucks from many people. I have to guess that is why nobody orders a straight coffee there, just some concoction filled with cream and sugar and caramel drizzle and some whipped cream to top it all off. You know, stuff that actually makes the coffee taste good. At the premium price, of course.

  3. Bill

    I also dislike StarBucks. In a nutshell, it’s overpriced and shitty coffee. I don’t even like their lattes or iced brews. To me, they provide a lousy product and service under a fancy logo and within a contemporary setting. Another thing I loathe about them is their political leanings.

    1. Sigh

      Between opening so many locations within a certain radius of each other that they are their OWN competition and goofy names for all their drinks and drink sizes, I honest don’t blame you for disliking starsucks (as I prefer to call them).
      $tar$uck$: Ruining everything to do with coffee since 1971

  4. samiraCov

    Paper Straws Suck and it’s not good news for people with disabilities, who depend on flexible plastic straws.I never like their coffee shop !

  5. Alethea

    I also hate Starbucks. They act like they invented coffee! The products are overpriced and taste lousy. And all the paper cups! In supposedly environmental Seattle! For what you pay, you should at least be given the option of a proper cup.
    And what makes me really mad – they export the whole bullshit to other countries and Europeans (who have had great coffee for centuries), start buying the stuff and start walking round with coffee the whole time. This drives me crazy! Do they really think they are going die of thirst or caffeine deprivation if they’re cut off from source for five minutes.

  6. greta

    I Googled “I hate Starbucks” this morning because I’m so disgusted over how much one of my friends is such a Starbucks freak. It’s like she gets her sense of self-worth and IMPORTANCE from that stupid “designer” coffee crap. Why the unpronounceable drinks? Why the stupid names for all their products and sizes? It’s so pretentious, bougie and stupid. I feel like I would need to learn to speak Starbucks just to even order an f-ing cup of coffee.
    What is the allure? The name? Yeah, it sounds trendy and somewhat cool…would people flock to it if they called themselves something like … oh I don’t know, let me see—“Tim Horton’s”?
    I doubt it.
    I’m just really disappointed with people who think they are so Precious, so special, that they need a $5 cup of unpronounceable dreck, to prove how special they are

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