Closed Coffee Drive-thru Lanes: Epic Early Morning Fail

I have a love-hate relationship with Starbuck’s coffee.
A cuppa joe is a necessary evil for people with my work schedule--which spans the wee-hours of the morning all the way until noon. The Scots-Irish tightwad in me rebels against dropping a 5-note and change on a venti coffee creation, even occasionally, but there are some mornings when the need for mental acuity overrules the sphincter on my ATM Card.
Such was today.

It’s not easy finding an all-nite Starbucks.
They exist, but I have to really NEED a coffee fix to go off the beaten trail at 3:30 in the morning.
When I do…and the “over-nite” store is closed, I am doubly-irritated: There are few things worse in the morning than craving coffee, taking the diversion to quell the need, and finding the place closed.

Okay, there’s worse, but it doesn’t help when the Drive Thru light is on, and some clown has placed a table in the lane because it’s really closed. To add insult to urgency, some slack-jawed mouth breather steps out of the store without a care or concern about my de-caffeinated condition and announces, ‘we’re closed’ with a passionless shrug.

Idiot.
Turn off the light.

Great Expectations

The Great Depression.
The Great Recession.

What was so great about these events?

In the Depression in the 1930’s, people lost everything they had, there was this massive dust storm in the Midwest, and it was not a happy time in America.
Great?
I think not.
 

They should have called it the Horrible Depression; or the Devastating Depression—that’s more alliterative.
Great?
Not so much.

Same thing with the most recent economic recession.
What was so great about that?  Jobs were lost, houses were foreclosed, and businesses went broke.We should have called it the Really Bad Recession, or the Awful Recession.
There was nothing great about it.

I went to see “The Great Gatsby” recently, the story of a guy who reinvented himself after the First World War. The movie is based on a great American tragedy. Not that the tragedy was all that grand—it was actually pretty sad. But the story was great, and the movie exceptionally well done, and so aptly named.

They called World War 1 “the Great War” until World War 2 came along.
Then they realized pairing positive adjectives with negatively connotative nouns wasn’t such a “great” idea.
I rest my case.

Something for Nothing = Nothing

There’s an advertisement running on the Radio these days that causes me pause.
If you listen to it critically, you wonder how these people get away with what they’re saying.
There’s nothing illegal, but the message is clearly marketed by someone who does not think much of their potential clientele.

The commercial is a fast-talking pitch about flipping houses, and gives lots of examples of folks making thousands of dollars, buying low and selling high. These guys don’t want you to buy actual houses they’re flipping; oh, no. This is an ad for a ‘program’ you have to get so you can learn their system for buying houses low and selling high. It’s a flipping flipping pitch.

Here’s what rubs me wrong about these people:

1. If this is such a good deal, why aren’t they out there, flipping houses until the cows come home? Are they so totally altruistic in their desire to help mankind that they’re willing to give away their system?

The answer to that is that these guys are marketers.
They’re not really real estate specialists.
If they were really good at what they’re offering, they’d be on a beach in Tahiti.
But they’re not.
They’re running Radio ads with toll free numbers to call and promises of grandeur to fulfill.

2. They‘re offering, for free, a system others “have paid dearly to receive,” according to the ad copy. If I was one of those who’d dearly paid for their package, I’d be highly offended, and would be demanding my money back, yesterday.
Reminds me of that old saying, you get what you pay for.
If you’re not paying anything for this “money-making system,” what’s it really worth?

3. I suspect the only money making that’s going on by this system is probably in some fees associated with the package, either when it’s delivered, or when you try to use it.

Sometimes I will call advertisers I hear on the Radio station, just to test their offer.
I'm not even going to waste my time on this one.