Tag Archives: Starbucks

Charlie Stole My Tiger

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Tigers have always been “my thing.” For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with them. They represent strength and beauty, cunning and intelligence. In my 9th grade art class, I created a tiger batik that hangs on my bedroom wall to this day. Furthermore, my friends can testify that Survivor’s “Eye Of The Tiger” (from Rocky III) has always been my personal anthem. Whenever I feel like my back is to the wall and life is overwhelmingly difficult, I play this song really loud, and it enables me to find my inner strength and come out swinging. I find the lyrics inspirational, and the driving beat makes me feel like I’m winning.

So many times, it happens too fast
You trade your passion for glory
Don’t lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive

It’s the eye of the tiger, it’s the thrill of the fight
Rising up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night
And he’s watching us all with the eye of the tiger

I am so enamored with tigers that there’s a key scene in my hopefully-soon-to-be-published novel involving a tiger. And my favorite aquarium fish (I currently have six of these guys swimming around in my tank)? That’s right: tiger barbs. So, when Charlie Sheen started talking to the media about how he possesses “tiger blood,” I was annoyed. How dare he sully the reputation of the mighty tiger by comparing his inner strength and fortitude, nay, his very blood to that of the tiger. That’s my line! Charlie stole my tiger. And I want it back.

tiger batik

My 9th-grade art project. Eye of the tiger, baby!

Charlie can have all his other quotes. I don’t care about “Adonis DNA” or “rockstar from Mars” or “warlock.” I’ve never uttered any of those lines. But tigers…c’mon, man. They’re mine. Cease and desist already.

But enough about Charlie Sheen. His 5 minutes are over. Well…his twenty-five years and five minutes, anyway. I regret even mentioning him again in my blog, but I felt I had to reclaim ownership of tigers once and for all.

There. I’m done.

In other news, it appears I’ve discovered a great way to save money: receive bad service or an inferior product, and then complain about it. This works like a charm! Last week, I stopped by Starbucks while driving Audrey to school. I pulled into the drive-through lane, ordered a vanilla latte, and drove away. One minute and a mile later I took a sip and discovered, to my chagrin, that the barista had forgotten to add vanilla syrup, making it a plain latte. I still drank it – gotta have my coffee fix, don’tcha know – but I didn’t enjoy it as much, and besides, it was the principle of the matter. I ordered a vanilla latte, and they screwed up. To make matters worse, they didn’t give me one of those cardboard sleeves that protects your fingers from the scalding cup. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to drink and drive without a proper sleeve? Err…you know what I mean. Disappointed with my Starbucks experience, when I got home I went to their website and gave them feedback about my visit. Within twenty-four hours, I’d received an e-mail from their customer relations department apologizing for the mishap, and they mailed me coupons for two free drinks, any size.

Score!

Then, earlier this week, I met up with my parents for dinner at Sweet Tomatoes, a soup-and-salad-bar casual dining chain. They have rotating specials every month, and in March they were advertising grilled cheese focaccia dippers and creamy tomato soup, a classic and delicious combination. Eager to get my dunk on, after grazing on salad I returned to the table with the dippers and the soup. While the grilled cheese was awesome, the soup was horrible. It had a sort of “metallic” taste to it, and I couldn’t eat more than a spoonful. Fearing it might be a trick of my taste buds, both my parents tried it, and agreed. The soup was definitely “off.”

This made me very happy. Learning from my Starbucks experience, I was off to the races! I went to the Sweet Tomatoes website and lodged a similar complaint. Don’t get me wrong, I was polite and tempered my negative comments with positive ones. I then sat back and waited. Sure enough, the store manager called me personally the next day to apologize, and he is sending me vouchers for three free meals.

Score, part deux! At this rate, I may never have to pay for food again.

I am now hoping for something to go wrong every time I go out. Ideally, in the best case scenario, my waitress would trip and spill food all over me. A mishap like that would likely result in not only a free meal or two, but a new wardrobe to boot. I should be so lucky! Barring that, I’d love to find a fly in my soup or a hair in my mashed potatoes. Undercook or overcook my burger – please! Serve me barbecue sauce when I ask for sweet ‘n sour. Give me onion rings when I order fries. I won’t hold any of these things against you. I’m unemployed over here. Your mistakes are like money in the bank.

I wonder what would happen if I called my local Mercedes dealership and complained that some guy driving one of their products cut me off in traffic, and I was therefore unsatisfied with my overall driving experience? Hmm. Food for thought. The ol’ Hyundai is getting a bit long in the tooth, after all…

The Perfect Sayonara

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13

I wake up this morning at 6:00 sharp, the predawn darkness enveloping me in a cocoon, thick and heavy.  My stomach gives a little lurch as I realize that today is The Day.  6 years, 4 months, and 22 days ago I walked through the front doors of KNA as an employee.  Today, I will leave there jobless, forced to say goodbye to a bevy of friends and coworkers, and step out into a cloudy future.  I would like to skip this part, just stay in bed, warm and toasty beneath the covers.  As long as I am there, I am safe and secure.  I am still employed.  But of course, I can’t.

I stop at Starbucks for a latte.  It is packed inside, full of people with destinations.  They are all going somewhere.  To work, to school.  I envy them.  Already, I feel like I am a separate entity, adrift on a sea of uncertainty.  The coffee shop is my lifeline, my tether.

Sink or swim.  Must keep moving.

I pull into the parking lot.  Back into a space, of course, because that is what I do.  Bag slung over my shoulder, coffee in my hand.  Through the door, swipe my timecard, climb the stairs.  This is the last time, I keep thinking.  The last time I walk past the conference room.  The last time I log onto my computer.  The last time I stick my lunch in the refrigerator.  Thinking of the lasts makes me think of the firsts.  There was such an air of excitement then; the world was fresh and new.  And different.  I’d left a job I despised, on my own terms, to come work for KNA.  It felt sort of like destiny; I’d once worked across the street from them in Portland, and was curious enough to research the company.  Then they moved to Camas, five minutes from my house.  I interviewed there, in 2002, but the timing wasn’t right.  Two years later, it was.  I am not a believer in astrology, but the day of my interview, I check my horoscope.  This day is flavored with that most unusual spice, deja vu.  This revisiting of the past gives you a chance to do better.  You’re now more mature, after all, and have the self-possession required to calmly finish any incomplete business. I cut it out of the newspaper even before it turns out to be true.  Post it on my cubicle wall as a reminder: things that are meant to be, will be.

Even if they aren’t meant to be forever…

I boot up my e-mail.  Immediately, there are problems.  Incoming messages bounce back to their senders as undeliverable.  My outgoing messages disappear into the ether.  I attempt to print a document.  I have access to none of my printers.  My files are unreachable, the paths to them cut.  Unlinked links.  I am here on my last day, completely willing to work…and completely unable to do so.

The perfect way to use up a few last business cards.

It doesn’t matter.  There are doughnuts in the warehouse, courtesy of my good friends in the Print Shop.  They have gone out of their way for me these past few weeks, and remain true to the very end.  There is an impromptu get-together, a gathering of folks from various departments.  They are all optimistic that I’ll land on my feet and end up better off somewhere else.  I think I have been feeding off this confidence for weeks, and it has made me stronger.  The business of business aside, I ask how I can go out in a blaze of glory.  ”Streak through the warehouse,” somebody suggests, and I laugh.  I have to do this delicately, without burning any bridges.  I have been thinking about the intercom.  It can be, and once was, a source of hilarity, until management clamped down on that years ago.  But on this, my final day, can’t the good times be resurrected once more?  Someone comes up with the brilliant idea of paging employees who are no longer with the company.  It’s a gem of a plan, and I am on board.  Harmless, inoffensive, and funny.  Perhaps annoying to some, but I see it as the perfect sayonara.

I page the ghosts of employees past periodically through the morning.  Brad, once in IT.  Chuck, our long-departed purchasing guy.  Rick, the man who hired me and later moved on.  My coworkers laugh every time a new old name is mentioned.  This, it appears, has been a great plan.

The HR Manager meets me at my cubicle.  She apologizes for “jumping the gun” and inadvertently turning off my access to everything a day early.  Instead of meeting at 1:30 to go over final paperwork, she suggests 10:30.  ”Then you can go home.”  I say that I want to be paid for the entire day.  ”Of course,” she replies.  This sounds like a pretty good deal to me.  We meet, and it feels surreal, signing my name to my Notification Of Position Elimination paperwork.  She hugs me, a nice gesture that feels more Personal than Corporate.  I am given time to make my rounds and say my final goodbyes.  There are more hugs and handshakes.  People liked me, I realize.  Even people that I barely knew.  They all think I got a raw deal.  I am both humbled and strengthened by this show of solidarity.

All too soon, I have run out of goodbyes.  I couldn’t squeeze everybody in – some were gone, some were on the phones, some (a few) I just didn’t want to bother with.

I pick up the phone.  Page one last person over the intercom.  Andy, our former CEO.  I never did receive a memo announcing his departure, come to think of it…

I walk into the warehouse.  Down the stairs.  Glance back once.  The hustle and bustle are in full swing.  Will I never really see the inside of this place again?

I am outside.  The fall air is crisp, the sun peeking out from behind the clouds.

I start my car.  The CD that had been playing on my way in picks up from where it left off earlier.  A band called The Cinematics.  ”A Strange Education.”  The lyrics are frighteningly apt.

I’ll walk this long road ’til I find my way home; to somewhere familiar, to lay down my bones.

As KNA dwindles to a speck in my rearview mirror, I think, that is exactly what I am doing…

2 B Or Not 2 B

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I was thinking recently, it’s a good thing that some of our more renowned historical figures weren’t around in modern times.  I suspect these folks wouldn’t be quite so revered today if they were making their mark in the 21st century.

Think about it.  Patrick Henry made quite a stir with his whole “give me liberty or give me death!” rally cry to the Virginia Convention in 1775, possibly swaying the outcome of the Revolutionary War in the process. Those delegates might not have been so impassioned had he shown up wearing a Homer Simpson t-shirt and a pair of Crocs rather than the powdered wig and flowing robe common in that era.  It’s hard to take a guy wearing perforated, brightly colored rubber shoes seriously.  Likewise, would George Washington have been elected President had he wintered through Valley Forge in a Goretex microfleece jacket with polyfill-lined sleeves, a detachable hood and zippered pockets?  I don’t know.  That look hardly screams “leader” to me.

"The British Are Coming! I'd like a cheesy gordita, please."

Would anybody remember the midnight ride of Paul Revere had it taken place in a Smart Car, with a detour through the Taco Bell drive-through for a late night Gordita?  (Hey, even patriots get hungry!).  Come to think of it, the ride wouldn’t even have been necessary.  Paul could’ve gotten the word out easier via a simple Twitter update.  ”The British are coming!” #1_if_by_land.

Benjamin Franklin would surely never have flown a kite in a thunderstorm, as a simple Google search would have alerted him to the danger of such an act…and Doppler radar would have shown him any approaching storm cells, anyway.  Other tragedies might have been averted, as well.  The Donner Party would never have taken the Hastings Cutoff and fallen behind schedule, because the emigrants would have had at least one GPS unit guiding them step-by-step over the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  

It pains me to think how different some of our classic works of literature would read. Take William Shakespeare, for instance.  What if The Bard had been a typical teenager in 2010?  Not only would he have traded in the quill for a laptop, but his plays and sonnets would be written in a different language entirely, to appeal to today’s text-happy generation. Can you imagine what Hamlet would look like?

2 B or not 2 B: that is the ?
Whether itz nobler n the mind 2 suffer the slings & arrows of outrageous fortune,
or 2 take arms against a C of troubles + by opposing end them?

Let’s suppose Edgar Allan Poe also came of age in the era of smart phones and emoticons.  One of his most famous poems might start out like this:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`OMG,’ I muttered, `WTF is that tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more. :( ‘

"I should have made that grande latte a venti this morning!"

Words aren’t the only things that would change; entire plots would differ quite a bit from the originals.  William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies, for example, would still center around a group of British schoolboys marooned on a deserted island…but while there, they would be subjected to “immunity challenges” and every week, would vote one of their “tribe members” off the island.  The pig on a stick?  That’s called dinner.  In Moby Dick, Captain Ahab would still be obsessed with chasing the great white whale, but instead of a first mate named Starbuck, he’d be drinking lattes from Starbucks whenever he reached port.  And ol’ Humbert Humbert wouldn’t even have reached first base with Lolita because the Feds would have nabbed his perverted ass after finding photos of underage girls on his hard drive. 

As much fun as it is to rewrite history, I’m glad all these guys lived when they did.  Maybe someday our 22nd-century counterparts will look back on our culture and add jetpacks to the Twilight saga.  

That would be a real travesty, huh, Team Edward?

Backing In Will Save My Life

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I have a confession to make: I am a backer-inner.  

In other words, when it comes to parking my car, 9 times out of 10 I will back into a parking space, rather than pulling in hood first. Whenever anybody asks me why I insist on parking this way, I rattle off the same stock answer every time: When the shit goes down, I say, I want to be ready.

It’s only when pressed further that I come up empty.  What “shit”, for instance, do I fear so much?  And will being able to pull out of a parking spot quickly, without wasting precious seconds by glancing over my shoulder first, really be enough to make a difference?  

Let’s just say I’d prefer to err on the side of caution and be done with it.  

Still think I’m a paranoid, delusional fool and that backing in is a useless waste of time?  Let’s play a little game I like to call What If and see who’s the crazy one now…

Scenario # 1: A Devastating Earthquake Strikes

Let’s say you’re wandering through Costco, your shopping cart overflowing with mega-size this and maxi-size that, drooling over the idea of a $1.50 hot dog and soda (with a free refill, even!), when a tremor hits.  You abandon your cart, leaving behind the 100-pack of Top Ramen, the $7.00 denim shirt, and the bucket of pimento-stuffed green olives and make a mad dash through the aisles, weaving among throngs of people while avoiding 50-gallon drums of soy sauce and crates of Ultra Soft Charmin (they’d still leave quite a bump on your head!) tumbling from the overhead shelves.  Maybe you’re lucky and your fellow shoppers are slow because they’ve stuffed themselves with free samples of chicken alfredo and microwavable Philly cheese steaks and yogurt, so you’re first out the door, bypassing the harried greeters still clutching fluorescent highlighters in their hands, waiting to make a slash mark through your receipt (why??) even though there is no way they can possibly confirm that everything in your cart has been paid for properly.  You are first to the parking lot, reach your car in record time, fumble for the ignition, start it up, throw it into reverse…and are swallowed by the giant fissure that has opened up in the earth, a la Superman: The Movie.  Lois Lane never saw it, either.  Unlike the film, don’t think some guy in a cape and tights is going to be able to fly so fast he’ll make the earth spin backwards and go back in time to save your sorry ass, either. 

Tsk, tsk.  If only you’d backed in…

Scenario # 2: Zombies Attack

So you’re at the nearest Starbucks, approximately 1.5 miles from the next nearest Starbucks (just across the street from the Safeway with a Starbucks kiosk inside), idly looking at the track listing on the CD for sale by the Once Huge Star Whose Sales Have Dropped So Precipitously He Has Been Fired From His Label And Can Only Release New Music Through A Coffee Chain. Your eyes barely scan the menu, for you always order the same drink with the vaguely Italian-sounding name, adding a shot of vanilla or caramel or an extra dose of espresso simply because you feel cool doing it.  You have long ago stopped questioning why a “tall” is actually a “small,” and fool yourself into believing that “venti” has been a part of your vocabulary since kindergarten.  You don’t even bat an eye at the fancy breakfast sandwiches that are four times the cost of an Egg McMuffin simply because the bacon is “applewood smoked” and the cheese is “asiago.”  Next thing you know, the barista is shuffling toward you with a vacant stare, bloody saliva dribbling down his chin, and you realize the entire staff is undead.  You scramble for the exit, knocking down the sign that says Now Serving Oatmeal (since when?!) in your haste, finally reaching the safety of your automobile, back out of your spot…and run over the soccer mom sprawled in the parking lot whose throat is torn open, your tires spinning helplessly as a horde of caffeinated zombies descends upon you.

If you’d backed in, you would have seen her lying there and steered around her…

Scenario # 3: A Nuclear Bomb Explodes

You’ve had a hard day at work, your fingers sore from minimizing the computer screen every time a coworker walks by your cubicle, pretending to be working on the same exact chart on your Excel spreadsheet seven and a half hours later when really you were clicking the LIKE button on your friend-you-must-surely-know-from-somewhere-but-can’t-quite-place’s Facebook status update because you are too lazy to think of a witty comment.  When quitting time rolls around, you hurry for the exit, nodding and smiling at the guy you think works in engineering (or maybe accounting?) but don’t know and can’t ask because you’ve seen him every day for five years now and only a moron would still be clueless about this guy’s job title, let alone his name.  You push through the doors, settle into your car, and then there’s a blinding flash of light on the horizon, followed by a mushroom cloud.  Oh, crap.  You have a bomb shelter stocked with enough Campbell’s soup and Twinkies to last ten years, though, so it’s alright.  You slip the gearshift into reverse, step on the gas pedal…and back into the UPS truck, whose slack-jawed, brown shorts-clad driver has slammed on the brakes and is staring through his doorless door at the approaching Armageddon.  Your fender is dragging on the ground now, your tire is flat, and your car immobile.  

If you’d backed in, you’d have been safely locked away in your fallout shelter long before the first radioactive shock wave turned your bones to dust.  

See?  With so much that can potentially go wrong, why put yourself at risk and not back into a parking space?  Frankly, I’d rather not take that chance.

I’ll bet you’re not scoffing any longer…