Thanks goodness for Java chip add-ons
- Post by: Jungpil Hahn
- November 11, 2021
- No Comment
I’ve been a Gold-card carrying loyal customer of Starbucks ever since they started the Starbucks reward.
Recently I got a message from Starbucks saying that my stars will expire soon with 12/11/2021. December 11 — that gives me about a month. OK cool! I have sufficient time to redeem all my free drinks — about 600 stars (or about $70) worth! But it was in dummy format (dd/mm/yyyy) and not muddy (mm/dd/yyyy) format.
So with only a couple of days before expiry, I was a man on a mission to redeem my free drinks.
I went to Starbucks to get my morning coffee and thought “Hey, I should also get one of their breakfast sandwiches!” The breakfast menu there costs SGD $7.50 and the Starbucks rewards allows you to redeem in denominations of SDG $10. So I told the barista to just forget about the $2.50 remaining and just charge me $10 for the breakfast set menu. After pressing lots of buttons on the POS terminal, she said she can’t. 🙁 The system wouldn’t allow her to cash out a $7.50 transaction with a $10 (virtual) voucher.
Why, That’s Fantastic (WTF)!
I tried to reason with her and tell her that I am perfectly fine with losing $2.50 on this transaction. She understood perfectly and agreed that it was a reasonable request, but it was just that the “SYSTEM” wouldn’t allow her to do so. So here comes Java chip add-ons to the rescue.
The Java chip add-on cost 70 cents. So we added 4 servings of Java chip add-ons to make the total $10.30 and I although I had to actually pay 30 cents, I thought it wasn’t too bad for a free breakfast set meal. I just felt bad for the long queue of customers waiting for my transaction to complete 🙁
And “NO”, I did not actually drink my morning coffee with 4 servings of java chips in it! That was just a fake transaction to fool the SYSTEM.
The moral of the story…
- Situational awareness is important! You are in Singapore dummy! (ddmmyyyy) Even after living here for 9 years, I’m still confused with the date format.
- Let’s try to build systems that work for people rather than have people adapt so that the system will work.
- Don’t save up for a rainy day — you may not be able to enjoy what you save up.
Does anyone want a free coffee? My points expire tomorrow so hurry up!