Starbucks Kills Kindness
In recent months it’s become popular for people to “pay it forward” and pay for a stranger’s purchases at coffee shops, grocery stores, and restaurants. In the U.S., we have come to love these random acts of kindness. We love to receive them, give them, and talk about them. Today Starbucks announced that for the next three days, if someone pays for a stranger’s drink of choice in their store, Starbucks will give the giver a free tall coffee—essentially making a random act of generosity and selflessness not random and not kind. When given a reward, the act then becomes contrived and self-serving. Starbucks has essentially institutionalized the random act of kindness, turning a gesture of generosity into a self-serving act.
In a statement on their website Starbucks notes: A customer buys the next person in line their favorite beverage—not as an act of charity or thanks—but an acknowledgement of commonality and humanity. The gesture is small, but the act is endlessly inspiring.
Congratulations, Starbucks, you have just killed the real spirit of the gesture. By getting something in return, the act becomes less inspiring, less human, and less impactful. Think about it: If someone buys my coffee in the next three days, I will be left wondering…did they do it because they wanted to, or because they got something in return? In the same vein, the offer actually makes it more difficult for me to pay for someone’s drink because I would worry they were thinking the same thing.
Starbucks goes on to say:
We’re hoping this small motivation will encourage you to be the spark of connection that helps bring us all a little closer at a time when showing our unity is so important. In reality the tall coffee offer creates suspicion and doubt, two things that decrease connection and unity, they don’t increase it. This offer from Starbucks doesn’t make the gesture more powerful at all; it doesn’t acknowledge the humanity, it dismisses it.
Shame on you, Starbucks, for hijacking something wonderful going on in your stores and turning it to a corporate “promotion” with a self-serving end.
You hit the nail on the head with this post. Starbuck’s should leave the whole thing of random acts of kindness alone. The gesture is no longer random.
Yes! You nailed it, Mattison! So, Starbucks not only hijacks random acts of kindness, they manipulate it so that they still get paid. Ugh!
I agree. In fact when I received the email announcement from Starbucks (I’m an addicted “gold member”) I immediately deleted it and decided not to go to Starbucks for the next 3 days so I wouldn’t be manipulated by this. I am always impressed when a Starbucks barista does a random act of kindness to someone in line. THAT’S what you should be promoting Starbucks! See ya in the coffee line in 4 days.
Thanks Kathi and Camile!
Judy, I was so offended by that email that I sat right down and pounded out this blog post. It was probably the fastest I have ever written and published a post. I will be avoiding Starbucks for the next few days as well. Thanks for your comment.
When I got my email from Starbucks about it I didn’t feel that way at all. If anything I just look at it as Starbucks putting the idea out there, to encourage kindness, probably because that is how I took it. I personally thought to myself that I’d love to treat someone in line behind me and that I’ll definitely do so next time I am there. I also think that most people who chose to treat someone else will probably not even take the free tall coffee (I wouldn’t)- I mean, how many people who go to Starbucks just order a tall coffee as their drink? Probably not many, so I’m guessing they’ll still get their usual order and decline the tall coffee offered to them when they treat someone. I was actually really surprised to see that people think Starbucks is trying to manipulate them with a free tall coffee or killing kindness by by offering the customers something free. That’s such a cynical outlook. The act may be less spontaneous but it’s not less kind, in my opinion.
Rebecca,
I am guessing many people feel as you do, that is cool. You may be right when you say:
I’m guessing they’ll still get their usual order and decline the tall coffee offered to them when they treat someone.
But that brings up the question, why offer the Tall Coffee at all? Why not just send am email saying Oct 9-11 are pay-it-forward days in our stores. It’s not the pay it forward I have a problem with, it’s the incentive to do so. If the aim of Starbucks is to encourage others to pay it forward the email should just have invited people to do that without a bribe.
There is nothing that cannot be spoiled, subverted and manipulated by capitalism. This is promotion and advertising masquerading as human concern and it’s toxic.
Companies (and the people who work there) are mostly trying hard to connect to a purpose while doing things in haste due to the velocity of change in the marketplace. I suppose it was pure, simple organizational stupidity resulting from some group of altruistic young marketers who were given too much authority. Is James inferring that capitalists should stay out of the altruism business? Billions of dollars in this country are given altruistically by businesses and capitalists who have out-earned their need for money, all for a variety of reasons, from tax write-offs, to having buildings named after them, to true and pure kindness. Where shall we draw the line… i don’t like that Starbucks invaded something invented by and for the common folk.