Huh
Look, I’m sorry, but that’s an awful lot of presumptions wrapped in a faux Woke™ package and I’m in my feelings enough right now to call it out.
First of all, I’ve never in my life spent anywhere near $8 on a single drink, and looking at their menu, that is almost double the cost of most drinks they sell. I feel like she’s purposefully misrepresenting the price to drive this weird “only rich people go to Starbucks” narrative, which is really…untrue.
There were three Starbucks on my old college’s campus and I can tell you I have never seen a single student there drive a fucking Lexus. Starbucks is a chain. It’s everywhere. You don’t have to be Bill Gates to go to one.
Also I feel like if someone is kind enough to engage in a “pay it forward” thing, especially with any kind of regularity, they’re also likely they type of person to tip too. There’s no need to force some black and white one-or-the-other narrative around it where people who do something nice for someone else are depriving a barista of additional tips.
There’s nothing wrong with reminding people that being a barista is a demanding job paying only minimum wage and that they could certainly use the money, but writing judgmentally about gifting a coffee to another customer is the wrong way to go about it.
Life is hard and doing something nice for anyone is a nice thing to do, and the truth of it is, you don’t know who is in the line behind you or in the car behind you. They might be a millionaire or they might be buying themselves a rare treat, and honestly it doesn’t matter because grilling a stranger on the state of their finances before deciding to do them a favour or not is certainly not in keeping with the spirit of said favour.
So, appreciate and tip your baristas, engage in “pay it forwards” if you want, but above all, don’t be a sanctimonious dick and assume you know the state of other people’s finances or that they don’t tip or give to charity just because you personally don’t see it happen right in front of you.
I’m glad someone translated my incoherent rage about the original posts into real words