A guy tried to do something nice for his fiancée by getting up early to buy her one of those popular Starbucks Teddy Bear cups, but his plan fell apart when he found out that store workers had grabbed nearly all of them first.
Starbucks released the Bearista cup on Nov. 6 as part of their holiday stuff this year. The cup is made of glass and meant for cold drinks. It sells for $29.95 and tons of people want to get their hands on one. One person shared what happened to him on TikTok when he got up super early hoping to surprise his fiancée with the cup.
But when he walked into the store, there were only two cups sitting there. One employee had bought one for themselves, and another employee had set aside the other one for a friend. He ended up going back home with nothing and said he was just going to get more sleep since the whole thing was a waste of time.
This is exactly why people are losing trust in limited releases
What happened to him was not a one-time thing. Lots of other people ran into the same problem at different stores. Someone who runs a fan page for Trisha Paytas posted their own experience. They got to a Kroger that has a Starbucks inside at 2 in the morning even though the place would not open until 6. There were already other folks waiting outside too.
Once the doors finally opened, everyone rushed over to where the Starbucks was. But when they got there, they saw workers from both Kroger and Starbucks buying up the cups before any customers could grab them. After standing around for hours, this person walked away without getting a single cup. This whole mess is just like other viral stories about retail controversies that have gotten people talking online.
Some stores had it even worse. There is a video going around showing a bunch of guys actually fighting each other over one of these teddy bear cups. Another person wrote that they watched someone scream at a barista that morning because they really wanted a cup after waiting outside for so long. The yelling got so bad that it made the barista start crying.
Tons of people went online to vent about the whole situation. A lot of them wanted to know why employees were allowed to buy every single cup while customers who actually waited in line walked away with nothing.
Someone mentioned that these cups are now going for $300 on resale sites. They felt terrible because their local store apparently only got one cup total. Someone else pointed out that Starbucks should have just made way more of these since it was obvious people would buy them. Just like other viral fast food incidents that gained attention, this whole thing blew up on social media and got everyone talking.
Not everybody thought the employees were in the wrong though. One person mentioned they actually got their cups but only because they camped out in front of their Starbucks starting at 8 at night. Others said people should be mad at Starbucks instead of the workers.
They argued that employees have every right to buy these cups just like anyone else. The real problem is that Starbucks knew these would be huge sellers but still only sent somewhere between one and eight cups to each location.
