RANT…. Put on your fire proof pants I am in a mood. This is going to be offensive and make you think so if you are opposed to that stop reading NOW!
So a few days ago Starbucks decided to tell their 9 dollar an hour employees to start conversations about race relations.
WHAT?
What possibly qualifies a Starbucks server to talk to me about race relations?
Okay let’s break this down.
1. I don’t go to Starbucks because I think their coffee sucks. It sucks so badly that they have to add all kinds of sugar, flavors and other crap to cover how bad it sucks. Then they charge 4 bucks for it.
2. If you are working at Starbucks after the age of 25 you screwed up somewhere in your life and are not in a position to advise me on anything. Your only position in my life is to take my order and hand me coffee. BTW a good percentage of the time they don’t even do that correctly.
3. If you are younger than 25 and working at starbucks you have not been alive long enough to have an opinion. You are still in the gullible stage of your life and have no real clue. You still think Facebook is the best place to get your news. Your brain is just now fully formed or… of you are under 21 it is still not fully formed. Frankly you still are under the influence of whatever propaganda you were fed and are too gullible to have any credibility.
4. If I were going to go into a Starbucks and got one of these ‘great thinkers’ trying to get me into a conversation my response would be simple,
“I will tell you about what I think of race after you explain to me how you screwed your life up so badly that you are working at Starbucks.”
So I have a few other ideas that actually might be useful messages to start a conversation that they could put on a Starbuck cup...
1. THINK for yourself
2. Work your ass off
3. Question all you think you know
4. Education begins when you LEAVE SCHOOL.
5. What did I do to get where I am?
6. Lost??? Get help now.
7. When you are done working your ass off… work some more.
8. Society owes you NOTHING.
9. Charity is from caring people who give freely to help you. Welfare was taken from people with guns pointed at them.
10. Life is not fair… get over it.
11. Your past has nothing to do with your future.
12. Stop Whining and start Winning.
Will these messages ever get printed on a cup? NO. Why is that? Because independant people who think and achieve for themselves do not make loyal followers. They are hard to control. They are unpredictable. Most of all…. they don’t need you.
So yes Starbucks CEO wants to ‘educate you’ because you are obviously to stupid to have your own thoughts OR you are not having the RIGHT thoughts…
Scared yet?
THINKING is freedom.
The problem most people have is that they think that as long as they are in the middle of a herd of like minded people that they are safe. It is easier to be told what to do instead of deciding what to do. It is easier to follow than lead.
Why?
The reason is simple. When you stand out and think for yourself it is uncomfortable. We studied many things and went to many seminars. What we did that was different is that we tested everything that people were claiming. We did not allow bias to sway the opinion of our results. The result was that we were disappointed.
Stating the the emperor has no clothes is not a popular thing to do. To say that this time honored process that people spent thousands of dollars to learn was ineffective and possibly damaging was not met with happiness and smiles. The truth is we could have been a whole lot more successful if we had kept our mouths shut but…. we are creative, smart and damn it… ethical!
Was it scary? Yes at first it was. Did we get attacked for our point of view? Yes we did but we lived through it. Are people offended when we state our opinion? Yes they are.
The result is that we have created some of the most innovative techniques for persuasion that there are while the ‘followers’ are still stuck parroting the same stuff from 30 years ago.
The point is that thinking for yourself is always going to piss people off. It should. If you are not doing that then you are not really trying you are just following and might be a good candidate for a job as Starbucks.