How to screw the Mermaid

'Starbucks' now equates with coffee in the same way 'Tylenol' equates with painkillers or 'The Bush Administration' equates with evil. Somehow over the past couple of decades, the caffeinated corporate colossus has pulled a sort of reverse Wal-Mart: somehow they can run over the neighbourhood coffee shop and do it with a more expensive product.

The secret is in the branding: the Starbucks faithful believe their patronage gives them an urban hipster cache in the same way Starbucks' Seattle home evokes Kelsey Grammar's swanky TV apartment or Tom Hanks late night phone calls to Meg Ryan. This page spends a lot of time in Seattle, and the real Seattle has perpetual traffic jams, an army of panhandlers, a broken monorail, and an NBA franchise packing its bags for Oklahoma.

The real Starbucks equates not as much with coffee as they do with hypocrisy. No wonder the original store at Pike Place Market never joined the chain (the mermaid in their window is topless). For all of their progressive/liberal trappings, Starbucks only pays lip service to offering organic and fair trade coffee. The company may offer slightly higher wages and benefits than other service industry behemoths, but only as a last-ditch attempt to fight off organizing drives like those seen in Vancouver with the Canadian Auto Workers or in Chicago and New York with the IWW. If the Wobblies are coming back to sign up the baristas, the Mermaid seriously needs to surface and look at her reflection.

Which brings this page to the title paragraph of this piece. Starbucks management, through their more syncophantic employees, are complaining about customers cheating them by purchasing cheaper items (like espresso shots) and building their own versions of more expensive items (like lattes) using the free milk. This page applauds this kind of innovation: it saves money for the consumer and takes money from Starbucks. In Canada, Starbucks has a number of locations in Chapters bookstores, a retailer which also has a reputation for screwing over its employees and crushing mom and pop competition. After a five-finger discount latte, why not read a few best sellers and put them back on the shelf?