You Know the economy is in trouble when Starbucks resorts to the hard-sell. I was at a Starbucks a week ago and as I was getting ready to pay for my latte, the 'barrista' told me that I could get the coffee "for free" if I bought a pound of coffee. I said no thanks, and then he proceeded to try to hard-sell me the coffee by asking me over and over if I was interested. At one point he even offered to "send the coffee to the troops" if I wasn't interested in using it myself. This is the sort of BS that really annoys me. If Starbucks thinks it would be a good idea to send some free coffee to the troops, then they should do it. They're in a much better position to do so than me. But, oh yeah...this was about increasing their profit, not doing something 'for the troops'. Using 'the troops' to make a sale is just distasteful.
Annoying your customers who want to buy something from you is a really bad idea. Just ask Radio Shack.
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Same exact thing happened to me - so it is clearly some sort of soft "policy." When I asked whether Starbucks would match my contribution in some respect - say, send some Fair Trade coffee to our men and woman in uniform overseas - things got a bit weird. The staff became visibly uncomfortable and said something along the lines of "no, but we give to other causes." Sure, like their bottom line.
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