What a touching holiday article: some random, unnamed man offers to buy coffee for the patron behind him at - where else - a Starbucks in South Florida.
MIAMI, FL (WIS) - For those of you who complain about never hearing any good news, take a look at this.
A random act of kindness at a Starbucks in Florida caught on, and turned into a story of paying it forward.
It started Friday morning when one man paid for the coffee for the person in line behind him, and it went on all day.
Ironically, this chain of ‘nice’ started with anger.
The customer behind the man who started the whole this was honking and yelling at him. So the man, a tai chi master, responded with a bit of zen.
“It wasn’t an idea to pay anything forward. Of course I didn’t know that all this would happen and nor was it even a random act of kindness. It was something else it was a change of consciousness. It was my desire to take this negative and change it into something positive,” said the man.
The chain of paying for the car behind you lasted all day long.
…and then, the alleged man issues a press release statement on his anonymous act of kindness. Ahhh… what a country!
As the great comedian Yakov Smirnoff would say, “In America, customer in front pays for you at drive thru; in my country, customer in front pays for you at drive thru!”
The story is made even more heartwarming because it happened to at least a half dozen Starbucks across the country the same week last year, including reported events in Huntsville, AL, Riverside, CA, Bloomington, IN.
It also occurred this week in Pittsburgh, PA.
Suspicious? Naw.
Who could possibly question that a some unnamed source would spontaneously use his own hard earned cash to create another ingenious public relations vehicle for your friendly local $15 billion coffee shop. Now drink your free caramel macchiato and be quiet, the reporters are here.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Andrew Hetzel // Dec 18, 2007 at 7:04 pm
A comment pointed out the possibility to me today that the anonymous man that started the Starbucks chain may have, in fact, worked for a newspaper, thus negating the need to distribute a press release on the incident. Good thinking!
2 WhyTheHate? // Dec 20, 2007 at 9:18 am
I know it’s fun to be cynical and bash “Big Bad Starbcks”, but do a google search for “Starbucks pay it forward” and you’ll get multiple stories from all across the US dating back to 2005. Oh, I know, all of the people who started those lines were newspaper employees! Try this: Go to Starbucks, start a “Pay-it-forward” line, and return the next day to see if it panned out. Back up your theories with research. :-/
3 Andrew Hetzel // Dec 20, 2007 at 9:52 am
The poster (or poser as I almost mistyped) above is from Starbucks. Apparently they need to hire people to like them. Check out the latest, here:
Starbucks Deception
4 Lukas // Jan 7, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Paying a coffee in advance for somebody in-the-need has a long term tradition in italy, I just can’t remember the name they have for it …
Leave a Comment