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Microsoft Outlook's new Starbucks feature is probably good and useful

Microsoft Outlook's new Starbucks feature is probably good and useful

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If you can download it!

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Microsoft added a Starbucks feature to its Outlook software yesterday, and I bet it's very useful if you can download it. I can't, because it is not supported by Outlook for Mac. The rub: Vox Media provided me with this MacBook Air and with my Microsoft Office software suite. Did Vox know that it was effectively shooting me in the foot? If so, that's a bad way to start off an employer-employee relationship!

With the new Starbucks for Outlook feature, one can schedule one's meetings to take place in a local Starbucks. That does not mean that Starbucks is going to reserve a table in your local Starbucks for you to sit at. It means that whoever you send a Starbucks-branded evite to will know to meet you in your local Starbucks and that you're very boring. If there's no room in that Starbucks for you to sit, you can always go to a second location together (unless your date / appointment is with a stranger, in which case be safe and don't do that!).

starbucks outlook

Also with the Starbucks feature in Outlook, you can send Starbucks gift cards to friends and acquaintances. I assume this will really come in handy when you are emailing your niece.

it's very sleek!

There are 10 customer reviews on the download page for Starbucks for Outlook. Five of them are from people who cannot get the feature to install correctly on their computer, while one is from a person named simply M, who notes that the app is "very sleek!" I am willing to take M's word for it, because someone with a single letter for a name really knows what "sleek" means.

If only I could install Starbucks for Outlook. There are so many meetings I would love to plan through Microsoft Outlook and then take in a Starbucks. For example:

  • My new gynecologist: we'll both be clothed, I'll get there first as a power move, and I'll recommend the salted caramel mocha (which is revolting) to throw her off her game.
  • My great uncle: I haven't seen him in 15 years because he only uses Microsoft Outlook. It will be a beautiful reunion! We will talk about the weather so happily.
  • My college roommate who used to read Cosmopolitan sex tips out loud to me even after I expressly asked her to stop so many times: I will look her coolly in the eye and tell her that I used to steal her olive oil to make popcorn every night after she left for a cappella rehearsals.
  • My junior prom date who called me the "c" word one time.
  • My new landlord, whose door I broke.
  • My boyfriend, who doesn't have discerning taste in coffee.
  • My sister, who doesn't drink coffee but would probably like an outing anyway as she is 14.
  • My boss, Nilay. We really don't talk about me enough.
  • My celebrity boyfriend, Jake Gyllenhaal (I already know he likes maple lattes).
  • My celebrity we're-just-flirting, Kristofer Hivju (he's too tall for other coffee shops).
  • Myself in 10 years.
  • People I buy stuff from off of Craig's List (this one is serious!).

Alas, all these meetings will have to wait. Probably until never, which is when Starbucks will find it financially worthwhile to make Starbucks for Outlook compatible with Macs.