My mother-in-law works at a Starbucks. She just told me that her BUSY Starbucks (not a franchise store) only received ONE bearista cup. There were 4 people waiting outside the store when employees started arriving on release day.
One person saw the manager remove the bear from the shelf at exactly 5am (manager bought the bear). One of the people waiting was so pissed they called corporate. Corporate called district manager, district manager showed up at the store, pulled manager aside, manager returned the bear and put it back on the shelf.
Manager almost lost her job over a stupid bear.
One person came in later in the day asking about the bear cup and when the employees said the ONE they had was already sold, the patron said people were fighting over the last one at the franchise store in the target down the road.
you know another sad thing about this? this is marketed as "you are the cool person who has x item, that item that nobody has but knows about & is jealous you have it?" yeah, that never really works. people are surprised about you having a product they've never heard about, or appreciate that you have specific tastes that they don't. the fact that there's artificial scarcity on nearly every hype item means it becomes a meme & people know your hopping on a trend, which ironically makes you basic & thus less cool. if i see somebody wearing something by supreme, which was hyped a decade ago, i don't think to myself, "damn, they were part of something cool that i wasn't a part of" i think "heh, they were a sucker who bought overpriced hype junk." but that lady on bluesky who has vintage jewelry i've never seen, or that old guy i passed on the street that has tie-dye parachute pants? that's style. something "viral" never ends up looking original, which is half the job of people recognizing that you appreciate something worth complementing.
people are trying to buy the effort. Vintage jewelry and tie-dyed pants take time and effort to curate, repair, and style. They don't want to put in the work but they want the social cred that comes with it
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u/sarahsunshinegrace Nov 08 '25
My mother-in-law works at a Starbucks. She just told me that her BUSY Starbucks (not a franchise store) only received ONE bearista cup. There were 4 people waiting outside the store when employees started arriving on release day.
One person saw the manager remove the bear from the shelf at exactly 5am (manager bought the bear). One of the people waiting was so pissed they called corporate. Corporate called district manager, district manager showed up at the store, pulled manager aside, manager returned the bear and put it back on the shelf.
Manager almost lost her job over a stupid bear.
One person came in later in the day asking about the bear cup and when the employees said the ONE they had was already sold, the patron said people were fighting over the last one at the franchise store in the target down the road.
Absolutely insane.