Instant coffee karma

Last week I blogged about an incident at Starbucks where a guy I thought was pretty cool turned out to be a complete douchebag when dealing with the servers.

I remarked that you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat workers in the service industry. And because we are known by the company we keep, I made a point to speak with the Starbucks employee before I left.

Fast forward to today. I walk into the Starbucks for my daily dopio and there behind the bar is the intrepid barista from last week. I place the order, pay my two bucks and wait for the dark liquid courage.

When I pick up the demitasse at the counter, it came with a voucher for a free Starbucks beverage of my choice. Those of you who frequent Starbucks know that, depending on what beverage I choose, this voucher could be worth up to $150.

This incident made me think of something my dad used to tell me. My dad is a very wise man, wiser than I could ever hope to be. And he tried to share this wisdom with me and my siblings as we were growing up.

He told us that one of the immutable laws of the universe is that when you do something nice for someone, they feel an obligation to do something nice for you in return.

They may not actually do anything nice. But nonetheless they feel the obligation, however slight. Likewise the converse is true. If you crap on someone, they feel an obligation to crap right back on you.

This is all pretty simple, it's the whole "do unto others" shtick that others have come up with. But it amazes me how easy it is to not be an asshole and the tangible benefits you can get by being decent.

tagged: Starbucks, coffee, dopio, espresso, barrista, karma