I'll bet that's true in suburban areas, but not so much in the city. For instance, my neighborhood is nice, but it's full of indie coffee shops that pretty much negate the need for a Starbucks. In fact, there are only two Starbucks that are close enough to walk to.

Tommy Lee has a Star Bucks in his house. Do you think it'll show up on the official Star Bucks locator? Hmmmm.....

Yesterday at the Starbucks, their cooler for all the bottled drinks was broken. So they had a guy in there trying to repair it in the middle of the day. I was trying to study with my friends for our exam, but the guy started using a blowtorch to weld stuff in the cooler in the middle of the store. Why they couldn't have waited until after hours, I have no idea. I was just waiting for the tank from the blowtorch to explode, or a fire to start, or something else to go horribly wrong.

So my friends and I, being the law school dorks that we are started making up a torts fact pattern revolving around the events of our adventures at Starbucks in the past 2 weeks. I could write a book on this stuff, there's never a dull moment at our Starbucks.

I don't know about around you, but here the Starbucks closes at 10 pm and reopens at 5 or 6am. Good luck finding a repairman who works those hours. And when you do, check the bill, I'm sure it would be 3x what it would be for someone during the day. Plus they ususally keep perishable things in that cooler that I'm sure they didn't want to have to throw away. Things happen, and the store was doing what it could to get it fixed.

Friendly Advice
 

The library is usually a nice, quiet place for studying -- rarely do they have blowtorches during finals. :D

It's starbucks. Not some mom and pop shop. Pay the extra cost for a repairman that late and don't put your customers at risk. Besides, if anything did happen then the potential lawsuits definately would have outweighed the cost of a late hour repairman.

Ooooo -- I bet that's why their stock is down 1.71 today! LOL

SBUX

Where the fuck do you live ? Freakin compton?

Yes, the operation as a whole is very profitable, but each individual store still has a budget and has to stay within it. Plus I'm sure the General/Regional Managers get bonuses for keeping their overhead down.

Once again. If someone happened then No more bonuses, the GM/RM gets fired, Starbucks gets sued.

I sure hope you're not a GM/RM Alphafrog! You'd save company money, but you'd get a buncha people killed!

Re: Friendly Advice
 

Eew, I avoid our library at all costs during finals. The crazy people come out.

Love Starbucks -- can't get the morning without it.

I get a Sugar Free Skim Vanilla Latte...yum yum good.

On my way to work I pass about 4 of them and I am only 3 miles from work...

That sounds like a fancy way of saying that you pay $4 for hot water.:p ;)

A) "someone" would not happen:p

B) He was probably not using a blowtorch, he was probably using a simple butane torch for soldering, which is nothing more then a giant cigarette lighter, which has about a 1% chance in extreme circumstances of blowing up.

30 Starbucks within 5 miles of my home. And I'm in a suburb of Seattle. My local Starbucks is the only one with a domed roof (I think that's our claim to fame. :) )

I wouldn't be surprised if Starbucks buys Barnies Coffee. They DID buy Seattle's Best Coffee (not sure if the rest of the U.S. has SBC stores like we do?)

BTW, Starbucks purposely builds lots of stores nearby each other in order to keep the lines shorter. ("60 Minutes" did a segment on Starbucks a couple weeks ago & said this.)