Gaming the System

[octothorpe]

So my office has a little racket going with the local Starbucks. If you get a regular coffee, iced or hot, or an iced tea, you can get refills for 50¢. If you have a Starbucks card, and at least $5 on that card, you can get free refills. This is normal, although many people don't know about it. However, we've found a way around this. In general, we keep our cups, and usually buy a new cup weekly (yes, we wash them during the week). This means, aside from Monday morning, we're not charged for our refills for the rest of the week. This doles out *a lot* of free product. Great for us, not so good for them.

So this morning, we were informed that we'd have to show our receipt from the morning (for a full-priced beverage) if we wanted to get a refill (which would still be free w/ the Starbucks card). This new rule will go into effect tomorrow.

But we've already found a way around this. Each morning, one of us will buy a full priced drink. From then on, everyone will take that receipt with them when they go to get their morning beverage. Status Quo, as everyone is still buying one drink a week. Yes, ethically this is totally over-the-top, but I am really curious how this arms race will turn out. Personally, I'll probably buy more tea, as it didn't really occur to me that I wasn't giving them *any* money aside from my Monday purchase.