There is no love greater, no passion deeper, and no connection stronger than that of yourself and your coffee. And let’s be honest, we all know the holy grail of coffee is the one, the only, Starbucks. You’d rather spend your last dollar on an iced caramel macchiato than put it in your gas tank, you would snort a pumpkin spice latte if it were humanly possible, and you go through withdrawal, depression, and irritation when the secret summer menu becomes a real life secret again.
You wake up every single morning pining for your favorite daily pick me up. It always comes in a white and green cup, in a size that you cant spell let alone pronounce. Whatever it is, it isn’t English. But here you are, spending $4.25 per cup of coffee. But what do you care, you have The Starbucks App.
With great power, comes great responsibility. The burden that comes with The Starbucks App is heavy, and only the strong will survive to Gold Member status, but when you get there, the victory is as rewarding as the prize: your Salted Caramel Mocha Frappe. There are many emotions that come with becoming a Starbucks Gold Member, especially once you reach addict-status for the first time.
Joy
You have been waiting for this moment for a long freaking time. You’ve been using your Starbucks app, gaining stars, even though you aren’t really sure what the stars really meant until now. You have reached the pinnacle of all cool coffee drinkers. You are a gold member. You get monthly double-star days, where you rack those stars up like numbers you get at a bar on your typical Friday night because you’re the hottest one there. You get a *~*personalized~*~ gold card, and star rewards, which ultimately results in free drinks. And not just on your birthday!
Arrogance
You’ve grown accustomed to the Green Level lifestyle. Ordering ahead and having your order ready for you when you walk in the door, because what diva actually waits in a line for a cup of coffee? Free birthday rewards, free in-store refills, special offers. But unlocking this gold highway to heaven gives you the extra confidence boost you desperately need in your cup of coffee. Running late to work? Who cares? You’re a gold member now. Fighting with your boyfriend? What gold member loses an argument? Oh that’s right, none. You are a Gold Member. You sweat gold. You exhale gold. You are Beyoncé.
Sadness
After the newness and shock of finally accepting your bid to the Starbucks upper echelon. You realize what this all means. Gold member status means you’ve spent more than $150 on Starbucks. In three months.
Fear
You frantically search for your phone and pull up the calculator app (because Gold Members don’t waste their intellect on stupid math) and realize if you keep up your Gold Member status at this rate you will have spent $600 on Starbucks in one year. You freak out about how many things you could buy with $600. That’s one month’s rent. That’s a cruise vacation to the Bahamas. That’s 12 Naked Eye Shadow pallets with free primer. All wasted on the same coffee you can buy in the grocery store for $12 and brew at your house every single morning.
Anger
They tricked you. They knew you wouldn’t do the math. They knew they could manipulate your pumpkin spice brain into drinking your weight in cold brewed coffee. They put Starbucks stores on every single corner so that you can’t resist the temptation to earn another two or ten stars. Screw your stupid stars Starbucks, those stars are really my hard earned dollars that you try to glamorize so it doesn’t sound as bad. “You reached 300 stars!!” Sounds a lot better than “You’ve spent 150 DOLLARS!” We feel cheap. Used. And drained of energy.
We do some breathing techniques because gold members don’t have bad lives, just bad days. We’ve come to terms with all of our emotions. We’ve learned to deal with them and cope with them in a positive way. The first step to recovery is admitting we have a problem. And our problem is that we are addicted to Starbucks, but at least we get free drinks on our birthdays..