Went to starbucks this morning to buy a gift, and well… I would need a whole lot more self control to actually set foot in that place without getting a little caffeinated goodness.
…it’s all I can do just to drive by the place…
Anyways, instead of ‘The Way I See It’ series, which is on the usual cups, the holiday cups have ‘Pass the Cheer’.
Mine says,
“At a Starbucks drive-thru in Riverside, California, a customer spontaneously decided to pay for the drink of the person behind him. That delighted person was then inspired to pay for the drink of the person behind her, who then did likewise. What then transpired was an amazing chain reaction of cheer passing that lasted for seven cars.”
It caught my attention because I grew up in Riverside :0)
Filed under: distractionary | Tagged: distractionary, pass the cheer, starbucks |
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HA. Yea. That is rad
Funny, I have the same cup in front of me. I wouldn’t have noticed If I hadn’t read your blog post.
that’s a really cool thing to see happen… it happened four or five times when I worked at a drive through store. a three dollar gift of spontaneity and anonymity can go a really long way to uplift a person…
There was a movement a few years ago about Random Acts of Kindness. I was teaching at a high school in Colorado Springs when teachers were encouraged to get their students to participate. As a result of that movement I ended up meeting Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul and Mary, who was active with the movement and wrote a song called “Don’t Laugh at Me.”
Anyway… even though it has been years and I run a language company now and don’t teach high school anymore, I occasionally perform acts of random kindness just for fun.
I was on a business trip in southern California and driving from San Fernando where I visited my grandparents for a couple of days and stopped in Riverside to go through a Starbucks drive-through. When I went to pay, it tickled me to think how cool it would be to pay for the car behind me and then drive away as quickly as I could. In my rear view mirror I could see a couple. I paid for my drink and asked to pay for theirs. They had ordered not just drinks but pumpkin bread and yadda yadda and I thought… oh well… just my luck. =D I paid and drove quickly back to the highway in my rental car.
It wasn’t until I got a Chai this morning and read my cup that I knew that there was a possiblity that the couple behind me paid for the car behind them…. and that it caused a chain reaction.
It’s a Pay it Forward kind of thing… and today…. small as the world is… that random act of kindness from more than a year ago came back to me on a Starbucks cup. I was absolutely overwhelmed and drove to the Starbucks drive-through near Old Colorado City and did it again.
Hi Karen,
Thanks for your visit to my little space on the web.
So it sounds like you may be the very person written about on the cup! What a small stinkin’ world!
I’m with you about the ‘pay it forward’ idea, except that I call it ‘love’. And that’s why I can’t wait for the teaching of Jesus to be understood and applied around the world! Imagine if everyone always loved their neighbor….