Use Your Illusion

After a weekend away camping and hiking high up in the highlands I had found an inner peace away from the rat race of social conformity that is everyday life in the 'real' world.

Once again my coffee dependency was about to wreak havoc on my soul.

Hacking across country and back down the M6, chasing rainbows and little pots of gold, I decided to pull over for this coffee, the black gold that keeps you going through the night.
The first service station was a Costa stop, much to the dislike of copilot Keane. Starbucks however was over 100 miles away, unfortunately for her she lucked out this time round, and I was about to reap the comeuppance for the next two hours.

Walking up to the door I warned against the Costa shop being closed, after all it was only 20:30. As the automatic doors opened I saw that Costa was shut. There were signs for one upstairs but I was not going to hold my breath. This was just as well because it was shut too.
The 'Eat In' franchise Costa shop opposite was open so I bit the bullet and ordered my drink from there. The service was frosty, I had only asked for it to be made with soya and you would have thought I'd asked to sleep with his wife. He did inform me however that they just "didn't do soya". I paid my three bucks and walked out.

2100hrs....

I rejoined the motorway and continued due south pressing on towards Starbucks for my lovely copilot. When we got there this too was shut.  The manager informed me that both North and Southbound Starbucks were shut.  Once again I headed upstairs to be confronted by some clown that informed me that KFC was shut, which was fine because I am a vegetarian.  I did however notice some self service tills, thinking smugly and secretly to myself that one day it will all be run by machines and jobs worth's like that will be complaining heartily about the monetary system.
I was now getting annoyed by the lack of coffee available to me at a reasonable time of 2100 on a busy motorway.  After a couple of minutes ranting in the entrance and a small discussion on weather or not I would get arrested for bringing my camping stove into the service station to brew some coffee we got back in the car and continued our journey which was now starting to descend into farce.

I was adamant I would get my fix.

So back on the road, the mood had turned and the music had gone from sweet soul to some angsty grunge, the signs about tiredness killing appearing every hundred yards it seemed, take a break they told me.  Manchester was in sight and the Knutsford service station I had been to time and again was just down the road.  I was on to a winner.

Or so I thought...

Choice...

New venue, same drill.  Downstairs Costa? Shut.  Upstairs Costa? Shut.  Only the Eat in franchise Costa remained but once again I asked for "soya cappuccino" but this time the woman lied to my face.  "we haven't had a delivery today."  Now usually I am quite a placid guy but I draw the line at blatant lies, as my colleagues can attest too, so I informed her that the previous Eat in told me that they just did not do soya.  I thanked her for her lies and walked back down to the WHSmiths shop, fuming about the lack of service at a service station for the third time in an hour.
As we left the shop to leave we noticed a self service coffee machine by the entrance with a huge 'OUT OF ORDER' sign on it.  Upon taking a look it was obvious there was still power to the machine.  Nicola touched a button and it started to flicker.  She wondered if it was still working.  We had a little debate and headed back to the car to sit and defuse me from my latest caffeine set back.  Whilst we sat chewing away about everything being closed we started to talk about the coffee machine by the entrance and why it may be broken.  The more we spoke about it the less we believed it was out of order.
Being a student of International Marketing Nicola started to break it down to me how the principle of a franchise shop works and it became obvious.

The machine was in full working order but the sign was put on it to force people upstairs to buy from the franchise Costa at the Eat in restaurant.

It was all too much for me.  The illusion of choice that is forced upon us everyday made me snap.  I felt like Michael Douglas in 'Falling Down' and I needed to do something.

I stormed out of my car, flip flops flicking up rain and stumbled into the lobby area looking for a cash machine.  This was about to become the most expensive coffee of my life because service station ATMs, as you will know I am sure, charge you £1.99 to access your own money which is a scandal in itself but it would be worth it if I was right.
One of two things was about to happen.  I would either throw in my money only for the machine to chew it up and tell me it doesn't work, making me look like an utter prat OR it was going to work and I was about to get a coffee that would taste so great it would be fitting to be my last.

I walked up, put my money in and pressed the cappuccino button.  Some whirring happened, it went through a cleaning process and I started to deflate thinking that it was indeed out of order and I was in fact a little crazy seeing the con in everything.

Crazy eyes

Then something magical happened, a cup appeared, black gold poured from the dispenser and the air filled with aroma of conflict coffee beans, a smile spread across my face.  I grabbed my coffee, looked over my shoulder at the shop assistant in WHSmiths and gave him my best Grandma impression "mmmmm hmmm" and ran out to the car.

The 'Out of Order' Coffee

We took a sniff and a sip and it was golden,  I took a drop of my own soya milk to put in it and it was like little drops of heaven.  The shakes were leaving me and I was back.  Nicola could not believe we were right but upon reflection, of course we were right.  It made perfect 'profitability' sense.  Screw the consumer, and screw them as hard as we can for a buck.  Why would any sane, or unsane for that matter, person walk passed a £1.99 coffee machine to go upstairs for a £3.00 plus bit of fake Costa???

My anger was back and I decided to storm back into the lobby and up to the machine, doing a little Bambi dance in between with my wet flip flops, and rip the out of order sign clear off the machine so that the next poor sucker stopping at Kuntsford service station did not get screwed because they do not know any better.

The last supper

I decided my crazy had enough of an outing and I needed to get out of there before I got myself into some trouble.  We hit the motorway again, having a laugh at my craziness and a little hysterical at what we had just witnessed.  More questions than answers came to us.  Was the sign there in the day or only at night?  Had the company had any calls informing them of a fault? Did Costa really need to squeeze the market that tight for a few pennies?

That is all

We made a conscious decision to boycott Costa in future because they were now in the mould of Tesco...coming to think of it Costa have opened up IN Tesco!

The illusion of choice is real people,  it may only be a small example but things like this occur everywhere if you look hard enough.
Are you listening to me, or are you looking at the woman in the red dress?