During the weekdays I drive to a small downtown and pick up a coffee at Starbucks. There’s something about the energy of walking a downtown at 6:30 a.m. that gets me fired up for the day. When I walk into the coffee shop it feels like an episode of Cheers—everyone knows my name. It’s a bright way to start the morning.
One day, I noticed a message penned on my cup with a sharpie that said “Have a great day.”
How thoughtful, I thought. I recognized it as being a small but powerful touch to help Starbucks connect with their customers. Even though I recognized this card, it still put a smile on my face.
Then the next day, my cup had a smiley face.
Then another smiley face.
Then a “Happy Fri-yay!”
My coffee drink is the same each time (I guess I’m not too adventurous in the coffee world), but every day there was something new. Some messages repeated, and nearly every cup had a smiley face.
Can You Have Too Many Smiley Faces?
Shortly after noticing this pattern I read an article about how Starbucks is mandating that their employees write messages on every customer cup. Ah, the system secret came out.
But here’s the thing: they still worked. Those notes still made me smile. They still shifted my energy in the morning. They still gave me a tiny spark of connection in a world where genuine ones often feel scarce.
So no, I don’t think you can have too many smiley faces on a coffee cup. You can’t have too many “Have a nice day’s” or “Happy Fri-yay’s.”
Because sometimes it’s not about whether the act is required—it’s about the fact that it happened. And if a Sharpie smiley face on a paper cup can brighten someone’s morning, maybe that’s proof we don’t need fewer of them. We need more.
What do you think?