Sometimes You Just Gotta Root for Venti Goliath

Yes, Starbucks fucked up. Their "complimentary iced grande beverage" email coupon rapidly escalated beyond its intended audience, to no-one's surprise but Starbucks management's. They're embarrassed, and they should be -- it's a rookie Internet mistake, the kind of thing that we associate with the wild-'n'-woolly days of early '00 or so.

But last Friday, the Goliath that is SBUX found its David -- a NY attorney with an overinflated sense of betrayal. From Starbucks Gossip:

Attorney Peter Sullivan sued on behalf of Kelly Coakley, a 23-year-old Starbucks regular who felt "betrayed" when her coupon wasn't honored. The lawyer accuses the company of fraud and says he'll request class-action status to include the "thousands who were misled" by the free-drink offer, which Starbucks intended to go to a limited number of employees and their friends.

That post? 95 comments. And though you might think it's mostly disappointed people looking to get in on some of that class action, it's mostly people who think Sullivan and Coakley are, well, full of beans:

"The law suit is just plain stupid, Mr. Sullivan obviously needs to get a life."

"If this girl feels betrayed by this, I'd hate to see her reaction if her significant other cheats on her. How much do you think she'd sue for then? A trillion bajillion eleventy-million dollars!!!"

"Kelly Coakley is really stupid. Doesn't she know that if ever she wins her lawsuit, she'll get $4 in Starbucks coupons and the lawyer will get $50 million? If they for some stupid reason they ever won, then the lawyer should get $50 million in Starbucks coupons."

You get the drift. More professional commentators, like Motley Fool's Alyce Lomax, aren't much more sympathetic:

As both a shareholder and a customer, I think Starbucks made a dumb move by offering the coupon only to rescind it. But a lawsuit over lost drinks worth a couple dollars apiece just gives lawyers and lawsuits a bad name.

And isn't "betrayed" a ridiculous way to describe losing out on a free beverage? Bummed out? Sure. But betrayed? According to Merriam-Webster, to betray means "to lead astray," "to deliver to an enemy by treachery," or "to fail or desert especially in a time of need." Let's get real.