Neuro Linguistic Programming: How to get free Chai Tea at Starbucks

Hello fellow students.

I’m sitting in Starbucks right now in my favorite comfy leather chair sipping a hot, tasty and most importantly FREE organic chai tea.  Many of you that have read the my book have read the section on Neuro-Linguistic-Programming and how to get your prof to hand you over higher marks through using NLP techniques.  Well I’ve been experimenting as of late with NLP on regular people and have recently been performing a little study on my Starbucks barista’s.

Oh and if my barista is reading this… umm sorry?

I go to my coffee shop usually a few days a week as it’s a great study space.  I can write and do work without the distractions of media and roommates constantly interrupting my flow.  Due in part to boredom and the desire to get free stuff, I’ve been experimenting with getting a free morning tea when I come in through the door using a low level form of hypnotization.  I’ve refined the process down to a success rate of approximately 90% based on a count of 11 interactions after the initial programming took place which took about two weeks.  If you love free tea like me, I highly suggest you give this a try. This may require some time and practice as this is in master Jedi territory.  But once you get it, you should be getting free tea almost all the time!

What you will need for your NLP experiment:

- Approximately two weeks to program your barista

- A warm and friendly personality

- Enough cash to buy the same thing each day for the duration of the programming period

- 3-4 hours a day to become a coffee shop bum and steal their electricity while you work on your laptop

Programming Stage:

When you head into the coffee shop you want to be able to target the same employee each time you make your order.  If this means getting into the longer line in the morning then do it.  Each day you’re going to be placing mental cues in his/her mind in order to make your target believe that you deserve a free drink.  I personally targeted a girl in her early twenties; she was relatively cute but no Angelina Jolie.  It is important to target an employee that you feel confident interacting with.  As an example, there is another girl at Starbucks who is drop dead gorgeous, if you feel intimidated most of the mental cues you want to implement will not be effective.

So each day I go into the coffee shop and ask for the SAME EXACT THING.  This is crucial to getting your freebies as the target will now your order(s) before you go up to get it.  At this point I don’t even say anything, I walk up to the counter she makes me a chai tea, hands it to me and says no charge.  The second thing I did was chat with the target each day and pepper in control words in my conversation.  One of the most important words I threw in was the word ‘free’.  Every time I said the word ‘free’ I would take my left hand and touch my chest or adjust my tie, collar etc.  Here is an example of a discussion I would have with my target.

“Hey (target), I was just crossing the street and there is a guy giving away free lottery tickets in front of the cell phone store if you walk in, did you know about this?”

It’s important you use your left hand if the target is right handed as this relates to mirroring which you can learn more about in my VTA Method.  Every day on your walk to the coffee shop make sure to come up with a story where you’re going to work in words like free, open, good, etc into your conversation and touch your chest each time you say them.  This programs the target into thinking that you are a good person, an open person or a person who deserves free things.

I usually keep the chat to under a minute each day, I also only buy one tea per day which I believe makes it easier for my barista to give over a freebie if she knows I won’t be coming back for seconds.  I work at my coffee shop for approximately 3-4 hours each time I go.  I haven’t experimented with the length of my stay as impacting my freebies, but I think staying there for a significant amount of time is important to further cement the cues you are placing in your target.  In my experiment, this process took approximately two weeks before I got my first free tea.

Once you start getting free stuff:

Once you start getting free stuff, keep going to the coffee shop on a regular basis.  You have put enough verbal cues in the targets mind that she is handing over free stuff, if you leave for a few weeks you’re probably going to lose the majority of the work you put into programming your target.  You can reduce the amount of times you pepper in cues as your target is already convinced that you ‘for some reason’ deserve free drinks.  Thank your target each day and make sure you stay on good terms by chatting for under that minute each day.

My experiment has also resulted in other free things like a free cookie on two separate occasions.  Also, I wouldn’t feel guilty about you taking free drinks.  First off, the tea only costs about 10-15 cents including the cup and Starbucks usually sells their drinks at 8-10 times the cost of production.  Second, barista’s are able to hand out freebies all the time.  I worked at a bar during my youth and the same concept applied there, where we were allowed to hand out so many free drinks per night.

You might be thinking that there could be some selector bias, IE I’m getting free tea just because I’m always around.  Well, I also have a friend of mine who goes to the exact same coffee shop and has never gotten a freebie EVER; even though he goes more often than I do.

Here is a review of Operation FCT or “Free Chai Tea”:

	NLP Keyword	Duration at Shop	Freebie
Day 1	Free	4 hours	No
Day 2	Free	6 hours	No
Day 3	Free	3 hours	No
Day 4	Free	4 hours	No
Day 5	Opened	4 hours	No
Day 6	Free	6 hours	No
Day 7	Free	5 hours	No
Day 8	Free	3 hours	No
Day 9	Free	4 hours	No
Day 10	Free	4 hours	No
Day 11	Free, Good	4 hours	No
Day 12	Free, Good	4 hours	No
Day 13	Free	4 hours	No
Day 14	Free	4 hours	Yes
Day 15	Free	4 hours	Yes
Day 16	Free	4 hours	No
Day 17	Free	3 hours	Yes
Day 18	Free	3 hours	Yes
Day 19	No Keywords	5 hours	Yes
Day 20	No Keywords	4 hours	Yes
Day 21	No Keywords	4 hours	Yes
Day 22	No Keywords	4 hours	No
Day 23	Free	4 hours	Yes + cookie
Day 24	No Keywords	3 hours	Yes
Day 25	No Keywords	3 hours	Yes
Day 26	No Keywords	2 hours	Yes
Day 27	No Keywords	3 hours	Yes
Day 28	No Keywords	4 hours	Yes
Day 29	No Keywords	5 hours	Yes
Day 30	No Keywords	4 hours	Yes
Day 31	No Keywords	4 hours	No
Day 32	Free	4 hours	No
Day 33	Free	4 hours	No
Day 34	Free	4 hours	Yes
Day 35	Free	2 hours	Yes

Please give this a try and tell me if it works.  Also if anybody has any stories of their own Jedi Mind Tricks please comment.  If you’re interested in learning more tips and tricks like this in application towards academic success or online tutoring go check out my book for more of the same.

Tagged as: NLP, online tutoring, Starbucks, studyhacks