A Twitch streamer and TikToker, Mariah Okane (@mariahokane), learned the hard way that some Starbucks stores really hate it when customers use employee partner codes for discounts.
She shared an embarrassing story of how she was caught lying while pretending to be a Starbucks worker named Haley at one of her favorite locations. The store’s workers reamed her out for the impersonation, but Mariah says that she relayed the story to workers at another store who thought the situation was funny and even offered to let her use the partner code there.
@mariahokane My bad starbucks. They also tried to hit up my friend for my phone number but hes the homie and didnt snitch me out #fyp #foryoupage #foryou #viral ♬ Cumbia Buena – Grupo La Cumbia
“Always forget that I’m literally banned from the local Starbucks in my city for stealing,” Mariah begins the video.
She goes on to explain why she put the word “stealing” in finger quotation marks. “I used to go to Starbucks every single day and my friend gave me his friend’s partner code and was like, ‘hey, use this. You’ll save money,’” she recalls.
Mariah says the employee discount took about 20-30% off her final price and used the partner code of an actual barista named Haley.
“I would go through the drive-thru, and I would use her code,” Mariah recalls. “The people at my Starbucks would be like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s Haley, and she also works at Starbucks but not this one.’”
The TikToker says that she didn’t correct the employees whenever they would call her by the Starbucks’ worker’s name. “So I was just going with it,” she says. “They’d be like hey Haley and I would be like, ‘heeeyyy it’s me Haley.’”
The trouble began when Mariah ended up placing an order with someone at her local Starbucks that she never encountered previously. When she requested to use her partner code, the worker asked her for her name—her last name.
“Uh-oh. And there’s where I fucked up because I didn’t know Haley’s last name,” Mariah says. “But I know that she could see it, so I couldn’t lie, and so I just look at her and I go, ‘I don’t know.’”
“And she goes, ‘You don’t know?’” she recalls. “And I’m like, ‘Yep, that’s what I said.’ The manager comes over because she sees that we’re taking a really long time at the drive-thru and she’s like, ‘What’s going on?’ … They pretty much figured out that I’m lying and getting discounts.”
Upon discovering that Mariah was using a Starbucks employee’s partner code, the workers were not happy.
“They start freaking out on me,” she claims. “And they’re like, ‘This is company fraud. You’re stealing from us.’ They were just geeking. And so, I was like, ‘I’m sorry.’”
While the manager asked for Mariah’s name and phone number, she says she gave them a fake name and phone number again.
“As I was leaving, she yells and she’s like, ‘You can’t come back to this store, and I’m alerting all of our neighboring stores about your ways,’” she says. “And I was like, ‘OK. I probably wasn’t gonna come back here anyway bitch, but…’”
But Mariah didn’t heed their warning about visiting another location, as she went to grab something at another store immediately afterwards. She says she told the Starbucks employees what happened at the other location.
“They were dying,” she says. “And they were like you want to use the code here? And I tried to use it and it didn’t work! They jumped on that shit fast.”
Mariah then concluded with an apology to Haley—the Starbucks employee whose partner code she used.
“So, Haley, if you’re watching this, and I got you fired from your job, I’m so fucking sorry,” she says. “I literally did not know that they would make such a huge deal out of 30%!”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Mariah via TikTok comment and Starbucks via email for further information.
