I emailed Starbucks customer service about the scorpion in my coffee. Their reply:
“Due to the nature of your inquiry, we are unable to provide an ideal response via email. Therefore, we would like the opportunity to provide/gather more information in order to best assist you.
Please call our customer relations department at 1-800-###-####. Upon calling, please reference email case #….”
So, I called and twiddled my thumbs while the soothing recorded voice asked me:
What would you like to do?
Would you like to find a Starbucks location? Press 1
Would you like to purchase a Starbucks card? Press 2
Would you like to reload a Starbucks card? Press 3
Would you like to learn about Starbucks rewards? Press 4
and a bunch of other choices which I can’t remember but which had nothing to do with finding scorpions in one’s coffee.
Finally, when the voice was sure I wasn’t calling to find out how to buy something Starbucks related it offered me customer service.
The first tier customer service person, after looking up my case number, said: “OMG, I can’t handle this. I’ll have to put you through to someone in a different department.”
Good, I thought, this is too big for small fry. Get me the big fish.
The next one looked up my case number and said, “Wait, I need to get my supervisor’s attention for this.” Pause. “They all seem to busy just now. Do you have time to wait?”
Yes, thank you for asking.
Then we had a little conversation about scorpions. He informed me he was in New Mexico, where they have lots of the critters. He told me that it couldn’t survive long in a climate it hadn’t been born into, that it probably was from some exotic location with a climate completely different than Georgia’s, and that it would only live a day or two at the most.
I was reassured by this until I remembered that the bag of coffee had sat on my counter for several days before I opened it. If it was going to die in a couple days, I should have found a dead scorpion in my coffee. Which, frankly would have been just as creepy but less likely to keep me awake at night.
He then told me that a scorpion’s life expectancy is about 3 months.
I could have this thing hiding in my house for 3 months!!!
Then he continued to reassure me by stating that he wasn’t a expert on scorpions or an entomologist or anything like that. He got his information from watching Animal Planet.
He finally got his supervisor’s attention. He told me they were going to trace the coffee back to it’s processing plant and probably recall the entire batch.
Yes!
As he was filling out all the forms to get the coffee traced and probably to get me put on a “do not take calls from her, she’s crazy” list, he informed me that under the heading of “foreign object found in coffee”, he was the first person ever to type in “scorpion”.
They are sending me a gift card for $25.
I’m Ok with that.
I haven’t seen the creature since the night I tried to swat it. Even better.
Tangletale 