The Way I See It #141

printed on my starbucks cup this morning:

The Way I See It # 141:

I used to feel so alone in the city.
All those gazillions of people and
then me, on the outside. Because
how do you meet a new person?
I was very stumped by this for many
years. And then I realized, you just
say, Hi. They may ignore you. Or
you may marry them. And that
possibility is worth that one word.

the irony was to be found in the fine print, just underneath

This is the author’s opinion, not necessarily that of Starbucks.

Breathtaking isn’t it? Starbucks is an interesting contradiction a mega-corporation based on hipsters. I mean, obviously Starbucks brought the barista into the mainstream and now not just hipsters buy espressos. but just one look at these cups and these blurbs and short poems you can see Starbucks pretending to push to the left while capping every paragraph with legal disclaimers, circle-Rs. and the like.

It’s a lot like the new Volkswagen beetle. comes with a flower-pot built right into the dashboard so instead of being a flower child who looks for something gas-efficient to drive, now even the average consumer-whore can own a beetle OH here’s where the flower goes! how cute! Maybe can find a little plastic flower that never goes bad to stick in there!

Amazing how many hippies turned into yuppies when the acid wore off Amazing how quickly the pressures of society and of keeping up with the joneses sets back in.

Once upon a time I was taking a 3-D rendering and animation class and for my final i decided to create a virtual model of a Starbucks franchise I walked into a Starbucks near my house and took about 12 pictures. 3 or 4 just to see what all goes into a Starbucks (there’s a lot of crap in there! lemme tell ya!) and the others were close-ups of wallpaper and tabletops and paintings so that I could make image-maps of them and adhere them to the flat walls of my 3-D model.

Sounds like fun eh? Yeah I was enjoying myself until the angry floor-manager came running out of the back room and got right up in my face.

HEY you can’t take pictures in here! Get that camera out of here!

But. i asked your employee for permission and she said it was OK.

Which employee?!?

Nevermind I’m not trying to get your employees in trouble. Look this is a school project. I thought starbucks was trying to encourage creativity you got that guy in the corner doing a charcoal sketch for chirssakes.

just get out

fine i don’t see why you have to be such a dick about it though I’m just sayin

WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?

forget it I’m leaving

HEY COME BACK HERE (following me to my car)

I’m sorry did you just follow me out into the parking lot? I’m sure that’s against policy.

I DON’T EVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!

And he never did. But I DID end up getting an A on my project and I DID end up getting 5 free drink coupons from Starbucks after I sent them an email about the incident. Do I have any sympathy for the guy for probably getting reprimanded because of me? No. Sorry anyone who takes their starbucks jobs THAT seriously needs a wake up call anyway.

The Way Swami Sees It #141:

A good Starbucks Employee
should steal the little sampler cups
so that when he/she hosts a house
party, they can serve jello-shots in
them and laugh about it with all
of their friends.

Tags: art, design, marketing, sacramento, swami