You may have read my previous article regarding Starbucks Chain of Fools, the alleged outpouring of goodwill that is occurring at (only at) Starbucks drive through locations around the country.
We received a comment this morning from an anonymous supporter of Starbucks named “WhyTheHate” on this topic, as shown below:
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. :-/
Again, an anonymous outpouring of support for big green — anonymous, that is, to anyone that does not see the IP address of this poster. Want to see where the message came from?
Me too!
A new comment on the post #116 “Starbucks Chain of Fools Promotion” is waiting for your approval
Author : WhyTheHate? (IP: 199.233.178.253 , sbuxhost204.starbucks.com)
E-mail : mentalosophy@hotmail.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=199.233.178.253
What a coincidence! He or she is sending the message from a Starbucks network.
So, “WhyTheHate?,” do you really want to know Why the Hate? Anonymously sending messages in favor of your own company under false pseudonyms is a form of deception; the intentional manipulation of information, presumably for financial gain.
Why did you not just come right out and admit that you work for the company and can verify that the events are unique and legitimate… perhaps adding that your PR department decided to contact the media and spread the news?
By taking the sleazy approach of withholding your true identity when making comments favorable to your company, the average reader can only assume that you also faked the “pay it forward” events… now, that’s something that the media should pay attention to.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Billy // Dec 21, 2007 at 8:05 am
Awww SNAP bitches!!
2 Collective Sarah // Dec 22, 2007 at 9:07 pm
SENSE is the in the nose of the coffee drinker.
From the get go… Perhaps Starbucks should pay their employees more instead of all of this BS. Imagine a world without BS… but then what would we do?
3 Kellie // Feb 7, 2008 at 7:19 am
Regardless of who started this, wouldn’t it be amazing if we took an appreciative stance instead of cynicism? Someone bought my order at Starbucks this morning and it truly made my day. If more people were considerate of others the world would have a lot less “BS”.
4 Bryan // Aug 12, 2011 at 4:48 pm
On the one hand, I agree it is suspicious. On the other hand, I can easily imagine one of their employees just trying to post a blog entry without a big disclaimer like ‘I work for starbucks, but this statement is on my own without their approval and will probably get me fired if my boss knew.”
I try to be charitable for those sorts of things. When you have a company with many thousands of people in corporate offices, then hear about a few wikipedia edits or someone posting on a forums, most of me hopes it is just a random worker who is trying to support a company they love, not an intentional attack by PR drones.
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