Receiving a perk on your birthday from your favorite retailer is a nice bonus, but one man took it too far. Kitchenette originally published a story from a Starbucks employee going by the name "Brad Halsey."
Halsey told the story of a man who would come into Starbucks every day and claim that his Starbucks app was malfunctioning and that he had received a free birthday drink for the past 12 days.
What the customer did was purchase 365 Starbucks cards and registered every card with a different birthday so that the customer would receive a free drink every day of the year. Halsey admits that he would let the customer slide if he was polite, but the customer was anything but.
Halsey writes in an email to Kitchenette:
I reluctantly give him the cup and marker. He draws lines and arrows and writes all over the cup while telling me: "Two pumps of white mocha here, then add five pumps of vanilla. That should take us to this line here where you’re gonna add cold heavy cream up to this ridge here...it should be halfway between this line and this line. Make sure to add the heavy whipping cream before the espresso, it changes the taste if you do it out of order. Then add your four shots, three regular and one long shot. That long shot is important, since you guys reformulated your machines, it’s been Hell trying to get my drink right. That long shot helps balance it. Then stir it for me, Mister Brad. Now do me a favor and add ice to the top there and it’ll be easy as pie. I’m not picky so don’t worry about shaking it or anything like that." The customer then asks Halsey to ring the ridiculous drink as "one quad espresso, add white mocha, sub vanilla sub heavy cream." The drink ends up being $3 instead of $6.50.
Eater reached out to Starbucks for a comment:
"We are aware of this customer’s misuse of the Starbucks Card program. We are investigating this matter as our card program terms prohibit such schemes."
Halsey ended every transaction with wishing the worst customer ever to have a great day and a happy birthday.