Winston—I’ll bet your cow-orker refuses to even look at the Snopes refutation, & goes on spreading the nonsense.
I bet he was on the roof of the Iranian Embassy in London too. If every ex-SAS bloke who claimed to be there, had been there, the whole building would have collapsed under the weight.
It’s funny you mention that, Bos. We had a team meeting yesterday after lunch, and I told him about Snopes (which he’d never heard of), and that his Starbucks bit was hogwash. He said “I don’t care. I’m still not gonna drink their coffee. Just in case.” :rolleyes:
Tell him about Caribou being owned by Al Queda. See if you can get him out of all the coffee places.
Why bother fabricating when you can just tell him the truth: the first “coffee house” was built by Muslims in Constantinople in the 15th century. All things considered, Muslims were ultimately responsible for Starbucks – and everyone else, too.
Let’s see how he feels 'bout coffee now.
“Oh, please! If every vampire who said he was at the crucifixion was actually there, it would have been like Woodstock. I was actually at Woodstock. That was a weird gig. I fed off a flowerperson, and I spent the next six hours watching my hand move.” – Spike, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
NinjaChick Yeah, PX’s are crazy fun. What I find even more interesting is that they’re almost entirely-self funded. All the money they spend on running the company (building and maintaining stores, paying employees, purchasing merchandise to sell, etc.) comes from money they made selling merchandise. Practically none (if not none at all) of your tax money goes to running the PX, unless you count the tax money used for paying the troops who shop there. Other companies owned by the US government include the US Postal Service and Amtrak (USPS is also self-sufficient, although Amtrak seems to rely on Federal funding)
As for checking IDs, I remember when they used to have someone checking IDs at the door, but now they just check at the register (I suppose they figure if you somehow got past the MPs at the front gate without an ID, they might as well at least let you look around the store), and even in the stores that did check IDs, you could still go to the food court and the zocalo-thingy (I have no idea that you’d call it, an open area with lots of privately-owned kiosks selling random stuff) and buy things without an ID. Not, like, terribly useful things, but cool nick-nacks and such.
Well I don’t know what Starbucks you’ve been going to, but the last one I’d been to in Great Falls, MT had a “deal” on a “Cafe Americano” (apparently a watered down shot of espresso) for $2.00. After passing through the airport today, they were around $2.75 - $3.00 for a regular size. . . or a “Venti” or “Middie” or whatever goddamned hippie name they call it.
Tripler
Just give me a regular cup ‘o’ joe, damnit!
Dude, you must know that airport prices have very little relation to real prices out under the yellow sun.
Its weird there were never any Starbucks where I lived and the suddenly there were 3 or 4.
Face it “Dirty Hippy” is fun to say. 
Yes, I realize this, quantitatively. I figure airport prices are, at a minimum, 150% higher than “real world” prices. Multiply this to the fact that Starbucks’ prices are roughly 160% (based on my observations in my previous post), you’re talking about a 240% markup for a product they tout as ‘environmentally friendly’ and all that propaganda nonsense about Juan Valdez and his burro.
And oh, if you want coffee in the airport, you have to buy Starbucks–the TSA won’t let you take any more than the 3.0 oz past “security” (because a Mocha is a potential terrorist threat)–who has the only contract in several small regional airports.
So there. Quoth the wise philosopher Michael Jagger in his poem of the Stones that Roll: “You can’t always get what you want. But sometimes, just sometimes you get what you need. . .” I add, “sometimes, at great cost, for no reason.”
Tripler
A wise man, that Jagger.
Yaknow, I’d have to ask my friend in Texas (I haven’t found any good coffee shops in the town I’m in now) to compare the prices between Starbucks and her favorite coffee shop in town, Coffee Station. I don’t recall a Spiced Chai Latte being much different in cost between the two (though I prefer the Chais from Coffee Station).
Actually, it’s a private company serving authorized personnel, to include DOD and certain DOT, State Dept., and other personnel. Not only does the odd pronunciation give me grief when I hear it, but so does their lame advertising slogan: “We save you money…everyday!” The last word’s supposed to be two words! If you want, I can forward you the lame e-mail response I got from AAFES when I politely informed them of that fact.
And if you shop them online, there’s no sales tax either. That’s why I would buy my big ticket items from them when I was back in the US.
The one at Yongsan just opened up within the last two weeks. The big differences between them and the off-post Starbucks here in S. Korea are price, no tax, and the on-post franchise has whatever Starbucks is currently calling their largest size drink.
Regarding the OP: if it’s something bad about something big, then perhaps someone with a chip on their shoulder was the actual originator of the rumor. Thank goodness for Snopes & its cousins on the Internet!
What the hell happened to good old coffee?!
Goddamn Dirty Hippies!™
I still say I own that
If I want a cup of “good old coffee” I’ll make it myself, with my stovetop percolator, thank you very much!
I mean, honestly, BUYING coffee in a SHOP?
Lazy punks. 
Oh, and speaking of Chai, I found out that the Bisbee Coffee Company in Bisbee, Arizona makes pretty darned good chai. Picked up a cup on my way back home.
Also, Bisbee is a strange town, which happens to be 98% stairs by volume.
:rolleyes:
Starbucks has DRIP COFFEE. Y’know, that “regular cup ‘o’ joe” that you want. Just for you, I stopped by one of the (bazillions of) Starbucks in the metro Detroit area. I would’ve taken a picture of the menu board but they don’t allow that for corporate reasons.
Drip coffee, that cup o joe you want, is $1.45 for a Tall (12 oz), $1.65 for a Grande (16 oz) and $1.75 for a Venti (20 oz). Considering a cup of coffee at the corner store will be more around 8oz (mayyyybe 10 or 12), that’s not a rip off.
Stop comparing Starbucks’ espresso drinks to drip coffee. THAT is what makes you disingenuous.
[sub]I don’t even LIKE Starbucks coffee that much and I’m defending them. Sheesh.[/sub]
Starbuck’s drip is pretty bad, IMO. I prefer Caribou’s lighter roast, which is actually stronger than their dark roast.
Oh, I agree (I love the 'bou). I’m just contesting the “Starbucks charges $4-5 for what I can get at my corner shop [ie drip coffee] for $1.25” thing.
The last Starbucks I was at had coffee beans that you could buy and they would send to the troops in Iraq. I don’t know if they do that all over, but there’s at least one Starbucks that’s supporting the troops, with a little help from their customers.
And (as a really delayed afterthought), what you’re doing is the equivalent of saying, “Why would anyone pay $7-8 for a burger at Red Robin’s when you can go to McDonald’s and get one for $1?” Both are burgers, but are worlds apart. Comparing drip coffee to espresso drinks isn’t the same at all.
(And when I say Starbucks in this thread, I"ll generally mean any frou-frou coffee house, like Coffee Beanery, Caribou, local coffee shops that sell espresso drinks, etc. I find that the prices amongst those to be pretty much equal).