Stealbucks

Originally posted 7/30/2005:

I refuse to drink Starbucks because their coffee tastes like burnt old earthy sock beans and they charge more for a cup than most people live on in one day. Now maybe I am predisposed to despise any large corporation that spreads itself like a pestilence. I don't like to carry a travel cup with me all day, so I prefer to make a boycott of Starbucks products and steal their cups of hot water for my genmaicha green tea with silkscreen bags and precut notch tag every day. I gave up coffee and have since become attached to my morning cup of tea. In a few years, I might actually make up all the money Starbucks took from me in the course of 20 or 30 times ($90-$150) I have patronized them in the last few years. If the cup and water costs them about 2cents each, then after five thousand cups I will have earned enough to replace the modest investment I made in larceny. But in the course of those five thousand cups I will have given them significant advertising. Not that I stand out more than the millions of other lemmings who walk around with their cups, but I am voluntarily participating in the ubiquitous and perpetual cycle of product recognition. So what am I to do? Carry the travel cup (by the way the only one in my cabinet is from Starbucks)? Or do I keep selling out? I can't go into the Starbucks, wait in line, and be forced to think about how I'm going to order it(tall, grande, venti, as opposed to small, medium, large like every other place). I'm looking for an act of defiance while continuing with my customary cup of tea. I'm lost.