Starbucks customers seeing red

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Aaron Sanghera, Staff Writer

Starbucks is one of the biggest names in the industry, however this holiday season the coffee giant made a change that has sparked a lot of controversy. They changed their once festive holiday cup to one that is completely red.

    To the naked eye, this change seems irrelevant but to dedicated Christians this seemed like an insult towards not only their religion but themselves as well. Many thought that Starbucks did not care enough about their customers and began to group together in order to battle the company.

    Since the new cup has been introduced, there have been several rallies of customers across all of social media. This media, Twitter especially, was how customers ranted about Starbucks and their lack of respect for religion and is a key factor to why the issue became as big as it is.

    However, not everyone agrees that this issue is as problematic as others are making it to be and a couple students working at Starbucks had some thoughts.

    “Well first of all people are making a big deal about the cups but in reality Starbucks is just going back to the basic plain colors and they have told us this,” Senior Brandon Hamblin said.

    “I don’t particularly care about what the cups look like; I care more about what’s in the cup,” Senior Carolyn Polo said. “I don’t think it’s a big deal that they’re just red.”

    Furthermore, customers have began to shift their hate from social media to the real world. They are beginning to argue with workers, complain to managers, and also saying that their name is Merry Christmas. Yes, some people believe that because Starbucks is not being festive enough that in order to fight this they should force workers to have to say “Merry Christmas.”

    Although Starbucks has been receiving a lot of hate for their decision, their business is still thriving. Customers continue to go back every morning for that sweet taste of a peppermint mocha that quenches their needs in the morning. Nevertheless, the business is still expected to prosper and nobody predicts that this cup will be their downfall.

    “No, it’s just drama that customers can talk about but in the end they will still come back once the red cups are gone,” Hamblin said. “My store has seen more customers maybe it’s just the season but in my opinion this won’t hurt Starbucks at all.”