Cry me a river about not PIFFING

Wow.

Crying over someone not wanting to participate in their scheme.

http://news.yahoo.com/grande-goodwi...rs--pay-it-forward--in-florida-151640283.html

Yeah I'll take my free coffee that the some stranger bought for me, but how dare you ask me to do the same!

Ulricus said:

Yeah I'll take my free coffee that the some stranger bought for me, but how dare you ask me to do the same!

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I can understand if the one behind me is more than mine, and all I had was the $$$ to cover my own.

kevdogg329 said:

I can understand if the one behind me is more than mine, and all I had was the $$$ to cover my own.

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I'll concede your point. We are talking about people who buy coffee at Starbucks though, it's overpriced anyway.

Some people just don't know about paying it forward, but you'd think they would catch on pretty quick! But I agree that if I only had enough money to pay for my drink I would give what I could!

+1 about the Starbucks being overpriced....I don't have one locally.

Why do they care? It's like they think another PIF chain isn't going to start in 15 minutes anyway.

Perhaps she only had enough $$$ for the regular coffee she ordered, not the triple-double-mochachino-chocachino-frappucino-cappucino-rappacino-alpacino super grande espresso delight with extra whipped cream that the car behind her ordered. Trying to identify her? "A woman in a white Jeep Commander"? For what, to get her put on blast on social media?

jrp316 said:

Why do they care? It's like they think another PIF chain isn't going to start in 15 minutes anyway.

Perhaps she only had enough $$$ for the regular coffee she ordered, not the triple-double-mochachino-chocachino-frappucino-cappucino-rappacino-alpacino super grande espresso delight with extra whipped cream that the car behind her ordered. Trying to identify her? "A woman in a white Jeep Commander"? For what, to get her put on blast on social media?

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I was surprised to see it be newsworthy, not for 300+ that did it, but for them to single out the one that ended their chain.

"it appeared the woman didn't understand the concept of paying it forward"- it would appear the barista doesn't, either. If you are expected to do it, rather than doing of your own free accord, then it is coercion.

I would object to being made to feel like I had to participate lest I be labeled an a**hole. When I'm in a drive-up, I want whatever I'm there to buy and I shouldn't have to feel pressured into participating in some kind of social experiment. I would have offered to pay for my own order and asked them to offer the PIF to the car behind me.

Slagging your customer off for not excepting a PIF is poor form. The persons PIF could have just been handed to the next person behind with no issue.
It appears to me that the stores record was more important to them than customer service.

So I'm not sure exactly how this works. You go through the line and the person in front of you pays your exact bill for whatever you order. So this continues until someone goes through the line looking to purchase a (as cheap as you can get at starbucks) coffee for $2.25 and the car behind them orders 4 $8 mocha frapa chino things with extra this and that for a $32 bill. If you notice in the article they made sure to include the price of her order but didn't state the cost of the order in the car behind her.

Then they berate the lady and hunt her down because she doesn't want to pay $32 for her $2 coffee? I get that it's an act of kindness, but it's not mandatory and maybe she does something else to be kind to others. Something that might really make a difference. She might donate 30 hours a week at the local homeless shelter for all we know, which to me would be a much greater contribution to society than buying someone an overpriced coffee that nobody really needs anyway.

I'm sure starbucks would like nothing more than to get a record number of people doing this so that it hits the news and generates even more sales, but you can't really call someone out for not wanting to be a part of it. I'm sure that this lady just wanted to pay for her overpriced coffee and quickly move on to the things that really matter to her in life.

On a separate note, I didn't know that starbucks sold any drinks that were under five bucks.

The only person in that story who was out of line was the Starbucks employee who identified just about everything except the lady's name. The lady wanted a $2 coffee, so let her have her plain black coffee and go her way without telling the news about her. Those games all eventually end--bad form calling the person out.

AZBronco said:

The only person in that story who was out of line was the Starbucks employee who identified just about everything except the lady's name. The lady wanted a $2 coffee, so let her have her plain black coffee and go her way without telling the news about her. Those games all eventually end--bad form calling the person out.

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Agreed. Charity comes from the heart and demeaning another person because they don't love up to your standards sort of flies in the face of the spirit of charity in the first place.

When ordering at Starbucks, I grab a menu and point.

I commend the White Jeep Cherokee. With the cashier asking it they wanted to PIF for the next person it does appear the store was going for a record, which is an ulterior motive and undermines any type of charity involved.

Ulricus said:

Yeah I'll take my free coffee that the some stranger bought for me, but how dare you ask me to do the same!

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She wanted to pay for her coffee and not someone else's, not take it for free.

This reminds me of being forced, publicly, at nearly every grocery store checkout to state whether I'd like to donate to whatever their choice of charity might be. I resent it deeply.

Nonetheless, I think if someone paid for my coffee, I'd have paid for the person behind me, but I never would have expected someone to do it.

kevdogg329 said:

+1 about the Starbucks being overpriced....I don't have one locally.

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That's the truth! I can buy a bag of coffee for what one cup costs at SB.

You can't "pay it forward" if you are paying for the guy behind you. That's "paying it backward", and PIBBING is not socially mandated.