Earth Day: UR Doin' It Wrong

So, yesterday was Earth Day; I am all about being green, and was quite excited in particular about Starbucks' Earth Day offer: bring your own travel mug, and your coffee is free!

So I enter the drive-thru at Starbucks, assessing that the 4-5 cars in front of me shouldn't take that long. This was the first mistake. No offense, Starbucks, but the Second Cup people are better than you guys at keeping things moving in the morning. Anyway, I'm almost at the front when I think about the fact that any benefit of saving paper by using my own mug has just been nullified by the amount of gas I've used idling my car for the last ten minutes. I won two rounds of solitaire on my iPod, though, so that's a bonus.

But whatever--I'm trying; I'm still saving a cup. Anyway, so I get to the window, and the lady takes my mug. She sets it down, then walks away, and returns, and I can half see her carrying a disposable cup of coffee. Sure enough, she pours the coffee from that paper cup INTO my travel mug! ...Seriously?! Did I really just see that go down?

So now I really haven't done the earth any good (although it's not my fault she didn't remember that I had a travel mug. Maybe if people moved faster through the line up, it wouldn't be so long between taking the order and greeting the customer at the window. Anyway...). I honestly felt like asking if she had been doing that all morning, or just with my coffee, but she was so nice (gave me extra sugar in case I needed it), I couldn't bring myself to do it. So I took my "earth-friendly" coffee, and headed to work.

Oh, well.