How Starbucks Defines You
Image by lepiaf.geo
I spend a lot of time in Starbucks. In between client meetings I tend to locate the nearest coffee shop to check email or catch up on other work.
One thing I notice in just about all Starbucks is the state of the condiment bars.
I don’t actually use the condiment bars, as I prefer a black cup of coffee to the multi-syllabic, linguistically confusing creations that have become the norm.
Who knew, by the way, that so many are lactose intolerant. Crazy.
Anyway, Irritable Bowel Syndrome aside, the point of the condiment bar observation has little to do with what you are, or aren’t, putting in your coffee. My issue is the way people leave the bar after they’ve used it.
As I see it, there are two types of people.
1.) Those who leave the bar as it was, or better, than when they arrived
2.) And those that contribute to what I would call, condiment bar entropy
Entropy is defined as “inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society.”
Look, we all know that at some point the barrista will have to come over and clean the bar. Fair enough… that’s part of their job.
But how some people scatter cinnamon and Equal and half and half all over the bar and then just walk away, is totally beyond me.
What goes through these people’s minds? They just too busy? Or maybe they just don’t care. Maybe they believe the $8 they spent on their tome-titled beverage entitles them to act like petulant children refusing to clean-up a spill.
As I see it, this is a real dividing line in society. It has parallels in the way people treat servers in restaurants, service people in hotels and manual laborers like janitors and housekeepers.
And quite frankly, you can tell a lot about someone by observing these types of behavior.
I know this is a social media and marketing blog, and I could go on and make a half-ass analogy (although I typically try to use my whole ass) about how the same type of people affect the new media marketing world. And there may be some validity in those comparisons.
But for now, just clean-up after yourself when you fix your coffee. Or maybe even, I don’t know, clean-up after those that don’t.
Might feel good to leave the bar a better place than you found it.
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