Slashdot Mirror
The Traveling Salesman Problem Meets Starbucks
Call Me Black Cloud writes "John 'Winter' Smith, a contract computer programmer, is living the traveling salesman problem. His personal quest is to visit every company-owned Starbucks and he's not doing too badly. After 7 years he's hit over 4,000 locations in the United States and 167 in Britain and Japan. What motivates him? That's one for the professionals to answer, but since Starbucks opens an average of 10 stores per week it doesn't look like Winter will be stopping any time soon. His website offers insight into why he does this ('to be different') and has pictures of the 4000+ Starbucks he's visited."
Just wondering if he's been keeping track of the health effects of going to Starbuck's so offten...
Let's see... 4000 stores, multiplied by an average of $8 per cup of coffee, comes to what?
Exactly. Why some people pay that kind of money for coffee is beyond me. This guy must have a wealthy benefactor or something.
The only coffee product I drink is 'plain black coffee', so needless to say I don't stop in their establishments very often, but occasionally when in an airport, or walking around Manhattan. What really irks me about Starbucks though is how irritated they seem when I order a small (or whatever size that equates to in starbucks land), black, coffee.
Starbucks runs all of the small coffee shops out of town, and then gets irritated when I want to order something that these small shops easily provided. What kind of business model is that. Doesn't anyone in this world drink regular coffee anymore!
Oh wait ... a handful of /.ers are now doing this!!!
While the traditionl travelling salesman problem is NPC and anyone who has taken a proper CS track will have heard of it and studied it to death, are there any proofs, algorithims for it when the graph is adding new nodes?
/. and gett 12.50 an hour)
The biggest thing wrong right now is that when you add a new Vertex to the graph it could change the shortest path between two other verticies.
Damn I knew I shouldn't have picked up the coffee of the day on my lunch break.(Right now my job is testing the wireless network in several areas so I am wandering around with a laptop surfing
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
What a sad indictment of society that people have some desperate need to be different and decide that the best way to satisfy that urge is to do something completely pointless like purchase products at every store of a multinational conglomerate. How exactly is becoming a complete and utter corporate slave a demonstration of how unique you are? I'd be much more impressed if this guy was attempting to visit every NON-Starbucks coffee shop. But that wouldn't garner him headlines, would it?
Let's face it: this guy doesn't want to be different, he wants to be famous, in his own pathetic way. You want to be different? How about volunteering for your local chapter of the non-profit organization of your choice? Not too many people do that. If that's not different enough for you, how about starting your own non-profit organization? Even fewer people do that. Hell, as long as you have this need to show everyone how different you are, might as well make it something that can benefit someone other than Starbuck's shareholders. Of course, none of these causes would get him a mention on slashdot, or the evening news, or anything else.
Call me a party-poorer but when I see stories about people following such pathetic attempts at gaining recognition, it makes me want to retch.
GMD
watch this
This chap is a freak, nuff said.
NEXT >
I can't think of a more retarded way to waste your precious time.
Here in Portland, we firebomb new Starbucks facilities. Fuck you and your corporate coffee. Quit Walmarting the good old coffee shops out of existence. They've just opened another one across the street from the tiny espresso shack I love to frequent in the mornings. If she ends up going under because of it, I think I might get in the mood for a little firebombing myself...
If that coffee shop goes under, it's not the fault of Starbucks, but the cheap customers. We have plenty of indy coffee shops in NYC that survive because there's enough people willing to put their money where their mouths are. If the shop goes under, then go rant to the PATRONS who decided the fate of the small shop; SB and WM only gives them the choice, they don't make it.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
I'm no psychologist, but I do wonder why people are driven to collect things, and, very often, they are driven to the point of mental illness. For example, people went nuts over those McDonalds Beanie Babies a while ago. Trash cans were filled with Happy Meals discarded uneaten, because people wanted only that 15-cent imported toy. Visiting every Starbucks is no different, where a person spends personal resources just playing catch-up to someone else's marketing scheme. I wish people were more resistent to this "collector's disease."
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
You're right! Firebombing companies we disagree with is the wave of the future! Screw laws!
F'en idiots couldn't even firebomb the place right. THEY DIDN"T EVEN START THE PLACE ON FIRE. YOU BREAK THE WINDOWS FIRST, THEN THROUGH THE FIREBOMB IN.
I'm definitely not a Starbucks fan (I prefer Caribou (the #2 chain)), but maybe some people like to get coffee at a place where they're not treated like they're interupting the employees by wanting to order. Or, they can get service even though they happen to be in a good mood and aren't wearing a completely black outfit to show that they're deep, dark people. IT'S FUCKING COFFEE PEOPLE! COFFEE! THEY SELL COFFEE!!
Fuckin nitwit.
Best quote from your article:
"if neighbors don't want the Starbucks, they should stay away from the store"
Casual Games/Downloads
I don't think it takes a wealthy benefactor to drink a cup of starbucks coffee. After all, that's cheaper then a pack of cigarettes, and that has never stopped people (predominantly lower income) from smoking.
Hey, Winter here. The traveling salesman problem (as I remember if from my comp. sci courses) comes into play when I reach a city where I've numerous Starbucks to visit as quickly as possible before leaving. For example, today, Around Atlanta--Hiram, Austell, Suwanee, Kennsaw, and Conyers. Or anywhere in California.
I think it was Whirlpool who made a middle of the road washer and dryer set. They didn't sell very well, so they upped the price over 1 grand each and they sold like crazy.
I think this is the same phenomenon we are seeing with Starbucks coffee, and the proliferation of legion's of coffee related drinks ending with chino or latte.
OK, I'll bite.
The mom and pop's can't compete due to VOLUME. Walmart can buy at higher volumes. They can also hire more people (at low wages... who in turn can't afford to shop anywhere but Walmart). They also have more corporate backing to push them into places where they aren't wanted. To say that the consumers decide is a bit of a joke. It takes heavy sustained resistance to keep one out (as just happened in California), but Walmart can keep coming back again and again, plus they can advertise the shit out of their image and try to sway public opinion in the meantime.
Mom and Pops have a hard (if not impossible) time competing with that.
>What really irks me about Starbucks though is how irritated they seem when I order a small
How do they display this "irritation"?
You know that the guy serving you doesn't give a care what you buy since he gets paid by the hour regardless of what you order? In fact, he might be happy that you have such a simple order since it doesn't involve alot of work or thinking.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
easy - many people do their best thinking in the John.
unless they are a kiosk inside another retailer (Safeway or Barnes & Noble for example.
Those are also not franchises. They just sell Starbucks coffee products exclusively, but are owned by the parent store. Starbucks only gets the profits from volume sales of coffee to these resellers, just like selling to a grocery story.