Cold Stone, I stab at thee

Cold Stone Creamery is evil. They are a soul-less corporation who ruin girls' birthdays, and it is for this reason that I am starting a campaign to bring down Coldstone. But I know what you're thinking, 'But Cold Stone tastes so good, why should I stop going there?' Well, I'm glad you asked. Cold Stone is bad for the following reasons:

a) Cold Stone creamery ruined my birthday! I joined their "birthday club" which supposedly entitles you to a free ice cream "creation" on the day of your birth. So I joined this club at the beginning of February, and that free ice cream was all I was looking forward to for my birthday. Literally, I woke up that day looking forward only to that free ice cream. And then my birthday comes and goes, and no coupon for free ice cream. And I know that I'm signed up too because they keep sending me dumb advertising emails. Classic corporate bastardness: entice someone with false promises and then just cram ice cream propaganda down their craw via email.

b) Cold Stone creamery makes people sick. I always thought that their cake batter ice cream tasted exactly like cake batter, and it turns out because those morons just actually put uncooked cake batter into their ice cream. How could they not have known that was a bad idea?? Raw eggs are generally the number one ingredient if the flavor you're going for is food poisoning, so why did they do it? I bet that they did know and that that they just didn't care. If you did some digging through their records you'd probably find out what I'm saying is true -- they're worse than Phillip Morris.

c) Cold Stone creamery is passing off its mix-ins as a "choice" for you, when really it's just that they didn't feel like making up their own flavor combos. There's candy pieces and baked goods and regular toppings and then some different ice cream flavors. There's too many damn choices there. It's all so sneaky -- those lazy jackasses at Cold Stone clearly just quit their job only half way through. They never actually came up with anything besides some different base flavors and then they force you to do the rest of the work. You're the one who's supposed to decide if you want a caramel swirl or some marshmallows. You're the one who has to make all the decisions, and you're the one who has to pay $5 for a half of a cup of ice cream even if the thing you've created tastes like crap. Granted, if you know what you're doing you could come up with something good, but it takes a lot of time and money to get to the point where you know what you're doing. That's why it's supposed to be the job of a trained ice cream professional -- that's why I pay all that money. Dammit Cold Stone, do your job and stop making me do it.

d) Cold Stone creamery is a plantation. Now before you go comparing me to H.Rod-Clin. for invoking the image of slavery, bare with me here. When you walk into a Ben&Jerry's, one of the first things you notice (besides the yummy brownie smell) is the laid-back, dude-put-down-your-bong-there's-customers here atmosphere. At Haagen Dazs you feel simultaneously boring and European, and at Baskin Robbins you feel like you walked into the 90s. But when you walk into a Cold Stone you feel overwhelmed. Much of this feeling can be attributed to the sheer pressure of having to decide what you want. But a lot of that feeling is also because you pity the workers there. Those poor minimum wage ice cream slingers have to work really hard to mix everything together. They toil on that marble block, cutting up snickers and crumbling cake pieces and mixing it all together -- their forearms trembling under the repetitive stress of making the same motion all day long. They sing hackneyed spirituals about Cold Stone to pass the time and also when you tip them -- a sneaky way that Cold Stone corporate no doubt devised to keep you from tipping them. After all, do you really want to give them your change if you know they will have to sing for it? When they hand you your creation, they have a mournful, find-me-a-better-job look in their eyes that makes the ice cream taste a little bit worse.

e) Cold Stone wants to run the world. Gaze at this pyramid of success and shudder with fear my friends -- this is Cold Stone's plan for world domination. I'm actually not kidding either, this is their plan to corner the American ice cream market by December 31, 2009. If you have worked for a food service or restaurant corporation, well then look away because this pyramid may be too painful. It will no doubt cause flash backs to any time you were taken aside and told the correct, employee-handbook-sanctioned way to do things. This pyramid is worse than a Mao poster: "Be the best first job" "Bring out the best in our people" "Acheive daily operational excellence" That just conjures images in my mind of some community college drop out manager breathing down the neck of some poor ice cream field hand because he's not pushing the new flavor hard enough or not singing loud enough. Furthermore, they suck at fulfilling their daily purpose, because if they actually fulfilled their daily purpose then I wouldn't be spending an hour of my time on this work day to talk about how how they are an awful, soul-less corporation. "Make today a great day for ice cream by selling more ice cream, to more people, more often, in more locations, so that the Cold Stone Community can profit by making more people happy."


So guess what Cold Stone you may have won the birthday battle, but I'm going to win the war. I begin today by telling far and wide of your misdeeds to me. Make no doubt, it will be a loong day in ice cream hell before I eat your salmanella laced cake batter ever again! May your profits whither, your employees steal from you, your stores burn to the ground, and your customers sue you for making them fat. And to the CEOs specifically, may you be covered in a 100 painful boils, may you become so obese that you need a ventilator to breathe, and may your wives cheat on you with executives from Ben & Jerry's!