Tag Archives: drive-thru

Starbucks: Rules of Engagement

  1. If you are in the drive-thru lane and ordering more drinks than there are people in your vehicle, then you should be inside the store. The drive-thru lane is not for people like you. It is for people who are both in a hurry and able to be served quickly. Practical considerations regarding the interior upholstery of your car and the liquid and often sugary nature of beverages from Starbucks should further dissuade you from abusing the drive-thru lane in this manner.
  2. If you are in the drive-thru lane and ordering drinks for only the people in your vehicle, but there are more than four people in your vehicle, then you should be inside the store. The drive-thru lane is not for people like you. See above. It may also be helpful to note that if there are more than four people in your vehicle, it is likely that at least one of them needs to use the restrooms inside. Why not take the opportunity?
  3. If you are inside the store and ordering more drinks than can fit in one of those stiff paper drink carriers (i.e., more than four) and it is clearly a Starbucks “rush hour” (e.g., any weekday morning between 7:00 and 9:00), then, while you think you are being nice by bringing coffee to everyone in your office, you are clearly oblivious to the presence, needs, and emotions of the people behind you in line. You need to cut back on your generosity or change your timing, or your co-workers need to be getting their own drinks at this or another Starbucks or similar coffeehouse.
  4. No matter the circumstance, you should never be ordering drinks for other people at Starbucks unless you are intimately familiar with both all of the usual options regarding the particular drinks you are ordering and all of the preferences of your absent companions regarding those options.
  5. If you find yourself at Starbucks purchasing drinks for a party not present at the point of purchase or on site, do not, under any circumstances, contact the absent party via mobile telecommunications device. Recognize that if the absent party is so picky about his or her drink that whatever you bring back will be rejected unless absolutely perfect, then that party is either so insufferable that he or she does not deserve to have a drink brought back to him or her, or that party failed in his or her duty to correctly instruct you on how to order his or her drink. The risk of an improperly constructed beverage falls to the party who failed to properly instruct his or her point-of-purchase proxy.
  6. Finally, if you are not going to Starbucks yourself, but are instead sending someone to Starbucks for your drink, so that person will soon find him- or herself in one of the scenarios described above, then your duty as a polite member of civil society is either to be intimately familiar with all of the usual options regarding your drink and to properly instruct your point-of-purchase proxy beforehand, or to recognize that you have assumed the risk of an improperly constructed beverage, or to go get your drink yourself.

Thank you. That is all.