Caffeine is My Friend?

Today I received my twentieth FREEEEE Starbuck$ coffee. I have no recollection of at least fifteen of those twenty lattes, not to mention the seven coffees for each one I had to drink to get one free.

You read that right - for every seven coffees I drink at Starbucks, I get the eighth one free. How, you might ask, can this be? Well, in our little hamlet of a town, as in many a U.S. westcoast town, we have a grocery store called Safeway. Just about every time I go shopping for the family groceries, that time seems to coincide with an irresistable urge to drink large, expensive amounts of favorful caffeine.

I always have a "triple grande 3-splenda latte, please." Always. In my world, there is no other drink that I would be willing to pay more than $3.00 for. Unless, of course, it has alcohol in it. (There's always an exception, isn't there?)

Anyway, Safeway's Starbucks kiosks are deadly handy in their placement in the store. Afterall, it reminds me that if I didn't get some coffee, I might have to lay down and take a snooze in the cereal aisle. So, to keep me awake, and to make it worth my while to actually buy my expensive coffee right there, Safeway has a program that when you buy 7 drinks (not kid-sized, darn-it, or I would've gotten to that twentieth just that much quicker!), the 8th drink is "on the house." All you do is scan the little Safeway Card

when you pay the bill - the tabulations are all done in a computer somewhere...

However, someone in their programming dungeon decided not only to keep tabs on how many coffees until the next freebie, but they keep a running total of ALL the freebies.

So I find it quite shocking that today's Latte represents 140 paid coffees and 20 freebies. And that means that I have spent $504.00 ($3.60 x 140) to get a big whopping 20 free coffees ($72.00 worth).

I really have to cut back on my trips to Starbux - way too many of my $$$$dollar$$$$ are going into their bulging coffers!!!