Starbucks to pay $100 Million in back tips...it might be YOUR fault.

So Starbucks has to pay current and former counter help $100 million dollars as a result of this silly lawsuit.

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A Superior Court judge on Thursday ordered Starbucks Corp. to pay its California baristas more than $100 million in back tips and interest that the coffee chain paid to shift supervisors.

San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia Cowett also issued an injunction that prevents Starbucks' shift supervisors from sharing in future tips, saying state law prohibits managers and supervisors from sharing in employee gratuities.

Starbucks spokeswoman Valerie O'Neil said the company planned an immediate appeal of the ruling, calling it "fundamentally unfair and beyond all common sense and reason."

The lawsuit was filed in October 2004 by Jou Chou, a former Starbucks barista in La Jolla, who complained shift supervisors were sharing in employee tips.

The lawsuit gained ground in 2006 when it was granted class-action status, allowing the suit to go forward for as many as 100,000 former and current baristas in the coffee chain's California stores.

It was not immediately clear how many current and former employees are affected by the ruling.

"I feel vindicated," Chou said in a written statement released by attorneys. "Tips really help those receiving the lowest wages. I think Starbucks should pay shift supervisors higher wages instead of taking money from the tip pool."

First of all, I'll tell you all right now that I have never contributed to this mess, despite being a semi-regular patron of Starbucks coffee. That's because I don't tip people who do nothing more than stand behind a counter, fill a cup with coffee, then hand it to me. Screw that. Tips are for people who actually do something that a trained orangutan could not do, such as take my order correctly at a full-service restaurant and otherwise provide service while I'm dining. If slackers like Jou Chou want to earn tips, maybe they should get jobs that actually involve work.

What we have here is just another example of the second-handers and non-producers in this country ganging up to attack the people that actually provide the service--the franchise owners and corporate managers without whom there wouldn't be any coffee for the cud-chewing counter monkeys to hand across the counter.

And while this may look like a victory for the poor, oppressed baristas, most of whom have never worked up a sweat during the course of their employment with Starbucks, the only real winners will be the trial lawyer extortionists from the firm that brought this class-action suit. They'll get millions deposited into their corporate coffers while each identified current or former barista will get about seven dollars.

But this sort of thing is the reason that California's economy is in the toilet. They have a surplus of people who don't want to work for what they get and a court system that punishes the producers that actually turn the wheels of the economic engine of that state. This is why businesses and successful people flee the state in droves every year, leaving that socialist paradise to the slacker beach brats and the illegal aliens.

Again, this isn't my fault because I don't I tip unless I actually get a service, but if you've ever put money in a counter "tip" jar just because it's there, you're partly to blame for encouraging the counter monkeys to believe that they've actually got something coming.

And just FYI, when I DO get an actual service rendered--and when the service is actually good--then I tip well. Just so I don't get barraged with comments calling me "cheap".