Dear Caribou Coffee:
It's all your fault. I had a 9am meeting to be at on Saturday, and I'll be damned if I was going to be late, 'cause when you're late to meetings at work, you have to donate "a buck" to the "Buck Jar". The contents of the Buck Jar are donated to a notable charity of the company's choice at the end of the fiscal year.
(Why is a dollar referred to as "a buck" anyhow? I've always found that to be a little irritating. When looking up the definition of the word buck, one can clearly see that any mention of a federal note is absent. One of the definitions in particular caught my eye: Offensive. A Native American or Black man. I've never heard of such a thing, but I feel the need to mention that seeing how part of this meeting was dedicated to appropriate behavior in the workplace, we seem to have a bit of an issue here. When I arrived at 9:04am, you were throwing that word around at me like it was going out of style. This boy is all honkey, mind you, but still. If you're going to be preaching about not using inappropriate language and then turn around by starting the meeting off doing just the opposite, what kind of example do you think that sets for your employees?)
I digress.
Okay, back to you, Caribou. You know you've got me in the palm of your hand, as you're conveniently located right on the way to my workplace. It's all part of your plan being one of the Big Guys - location, location, location. After getting my ass handed to me on a silver platter the night before playing Extreme Uno (thankyouverymuch Jess), I was definitely in need of some caffeine to stay awake for this 3 hour meeting. It was 8:45am and I figured time would allow me to make that pit stop.
So I ordered my mocha and the kind lady behind the register asked if I'd like to fill out a brief survey and have this mocha on the house today. Sure! Why not? Free is good. Free is way better than $4. And alls I have to do is fill in little check boxes? Psssht... Bring it on. So I left a $1 tip, took a survey form and headed to a table.
It took me 10 minutes. I was blinded by the prospect of a free mocha and for a brief moment of time, the excitement of it all caused me to forget that I was supposed to be somewhere. Oh, and nice survey, by the way. You tried to fool me by asking how likely I would be to order soup if you carried it, and then asked again a few questions later to see if I was being consistent and paying attention. Yes, I was, thank you. If I say I'm not going to buy soup once, what makes you think that 3 seconds later I might change my mind and check a different box? Oh yes, now that you've given me space and time to think it out, my heart has now changed direction on this issue. Bring on the muthafukkin' soups!
I know where you get this trick from: the border patrol. Our cabin is right up by the Canadian border and I crossed over into Canada once (I heard the candy is really good over there so had to check it out.) They were constantly asking the same questions in different ways to try and catch me in a fib, but failed miserably: No Sir, I am not harboring any potatoes or firewood in my car. No Sir, I am still not harboring any potatoes or firewood in my car.
Alas, I filled out your silly survey, collected my "free" mocha, and remembered oh yeah, I'm supposed to be at work in 3 minutes. 7 minutes and a lot of scurrying later, I arrived in the office to everyone greeting me with "There's Krenner! That's a buck! That's a buck!"
Mmm HM! No, you didn't hold a gun to my head and make me take that survey. But offering me a free mocha is almost worse than that, for free is more often than not an irresistible term - particularly when it's pertaining to something rather overpriced that I spend too much money on in the first place.
That said, come Monday morning I'll be at your establishment and have a survey ready for your employees to take before they go into work. I will not be offering any free stuff, I'm sorry to say. Well.. maybe I'll let them keep the dull No.2 pencils. As part of the payback, I'll make sure they're the kind with hardened erasers that leave dark oily smudges on the paper rather than erase.
And I'm going to cap that survey's ass off with an essay question, so warn them ahead of time to have their thinking caps on. The main topic at hand will be as follows: How Micycle should simply get out of bed 15 minutes earlier, use his French press, and maybe actually start getting to work on time for once.
Discuss.
