Advocacy & Safety - I got flipped off yesterday. Is Starbucks at fault?

Granted it wasn't major road rage, but it was interesting considering that W. Sac drivers are generally very courteous toward me when I ride through their most industrial and motorized city.

On my commute there's an undercrossing where I generally take the lane. There's a stoplight a short distance from either end so for a car to get behind me, then have to accelerate pretty good. And if they did pass me, they'd just have to stop anyway.

So this car is behind me for about 10 seconds. No big deal. As soon as I can, I move over and let him pass.

He flips me off. I smile and wave.

After that, he turned right and I moved on. I did save a snot rocket just in case he came up behind me, but I never saw him again.

But here is the interesting part. The last two drivers who have been unnecessarily rude to me at this exact point subsequently made right turns at the same spot.

And both incidents have been since a Starbucks has opened just down the street onto which they turned. Before that, no one was ever rude when I took the lane there.

So has the opening of the Starbucks caused more drivers to be impatient at that undercrossing because they are in a hurry to get their coffee and too stupid to budget their time accordingly?

I think if this happens again, I'll go into full sprint mode and get ahead of them in line at Starbucks and take forever ordering.

Getting between anyone and their coffee fix is never a good idea. :eek:

I get nearly the same reaction from my wife in the morning before she has coffee. :p

Bux boosts the caffeine in their brew... so their "users" are especially addicted.

I dare say you have a point. The problem here is not so much Starbucks as Tim Hortons. Everyone needs their coffee in the morning and never leave themselves time to get to their work on time. People get nasty before their morning double double. The drive throughs also get crammed full of vehicles and the spillover makes the morning commute that much harder. That makes even the people who fixed their coffee before leaving home more surly than usual.

I dare say you have a point. The problem here is not so much Starbucks as Tim Hortons. Everyone needs their coffee in the morning and never leave themselves time to get to their work on time. People get nasty before their morning double double. The drive throughs also get crammed full of vehicles and the spillover makes the morning commute that much harder. That makes even the people who fixed their coffee before leaving home more surly than usual.

Beware of Dunkin' Donuts 10 minutes before the hour in the morning!

Reason I prefer working PM shifts as opposed to AM shifts.
I get to observe all the chaos from a safe distance during off-time.

I don't think it's Starbuck's fault. ARen't there already 3 Starbucks on that block? What's one more?

Tim Hortons.

if we had a timmy hohos here i'd lose grip on rational behavior too!

:( timbits, poutine and old dutch ketchup chips :(

if we had a timmy hohos here i'd lose grip on rational behavior too!

:( timbits, poutine and old dutch ketchup chips :(

Oddly, we used to have some Timmy's in the Detroit area and the only thing of those three that we got were the Timbits.

... I'd love a Bread bowl stew right now though.... mmm.

Anyway, Starbucks like all big corporate things tends to breed it's own sort of culture with it's customers. Look at Wal-mart and the stereotypes implied. Look at Target and the stereotypes implied. Etc, etc.... The same can be said of resturants and coffee places... so I'm not going to say you're crazy.

I know that I'm probably a major $h!thead when I haven't had any coffee in the morning. But that's why at an early age I learned to use an electric coffee maker with a timer.

I read a book by Theodore Geisel once: The Sneetches

It was about plain bellied sneetches and Star(bucks') Bellyied Sneetches.

The Starbucks bellied sneetches looked down on the sneetches that weren't like them.

classism- one the most offensive discriminations in america. its funny, in a tragic way, how half of all american families make less than 50,000 dollars a year.