I like Starbucks.

I don’t love them, I don’t hate them. I just like them.

I used to be an employee of Seattle’s Best Coffee, back in law school. Great job, tons of fun. When I was there, I thought of Starbucks as the great Satan.

Then Starbucks bought Seattle’s Best Coffee. The store I used to work at is now called City Coffee. Locally owned, generally locally roasted, and still the same great service as before. Well, not entirely true, because I’m not working there anymore. Nor is the owner’s son, who also was working there while going to law school. Nor is my wife, who I met there and who now is herself onto bigger and better things.

That’s all beside the point. Sort of. If I was going to get coffee today, it would be at City Coffee. Why? Because I like it and it would be free, to me, since I’m a former employee and the owner’s son’s best friend.

But, if I was crammed for time? I’d go to the Starbucks at the bottom of the building I work at. Why? Because I like it and it would be free, because Starbucks is giving away free coffee, which they don’t have to do but are doing anyway.

I say go get your free coffee. If you have a local place you like going, go there tomorrow. But why pass up a free cup? Look at it as a subversive act, if you must. Go get your cup and poor it out on the sidewalk, just to show Starbucks that they’ve wasted their money. Or drink it in the private gleeful knowledge that you won’t be going back and they’ve wasted their few cents on you as they’ve tried to buy your loyalty. Or whatever.

That’s just me, Rusty, the Metblog curmudgeon, throwing in my two cents as my brethren and sistren piss all over the Green Demon (that would be my best friend, the coffee shop owner’s son’s, characterization of Starbucks, which he hates more than all of the Metbloggers combined). Buck the trend. Drink free brew.