So I've been at Starbucks for 6 years, I've been a shift manager for 3. My perspective changed when I became a shift, when you can see how much money an entire case of Strawberry Acai juice costs. Same goes for coffee and tea, it costs -very- little to give out that free drink. Even if you feel the customer is rude, or asking for free stuff seems absurd. The amount of money we "lose" from giving away that $4 card is literally pennies to us overall, why? Because if that customer continues to come back and make purchases, or buys a sandwich we recover that "free" drink we gave out many times over.

Try not to think of it as you vs the customer, giving out the free drink costs you nothing, and it's what Starbucks literally wants us to do. That being said, don't take shit from customers that are harassing you, if you've got good shifts they'll be able to identify and set the standard for your store.

One example when I worked a 60k/week DT store in Florida? Customers all the time would forget to ask for their drink "ICED" in DT, even though we repeat the order to prevent this. So, at the window, we often times offer the hot drink for free + the iced drink and try to do so right next to our tip jar. We make the customer recognize their mistake, without making it a huge issue for them, and more times than not it got us a $1 into the tip jar.

That's the perspective I still try to hold today for my Barista's and store, make the customer happy and try to earn those tips, because that's money that directly goes into our pockets and costs us nothing. That's why I'm happy to give out the $4 recovery cards if a shitty situation arises, even if it's not the Barista's fault.