The double (double) secret conspiracy

I have consumed nine medium double-double coffees since Tim Hortons’ roll-up-the-rim contest began and I haven’t won a thing.

No free coffee, no measly doughnut, no $5,000 prepaid credit, no new car and certainly no new 55-inch 4K TV.

That lusciously large television is the prize I hope for with wellcaffeinated breath every time I use my teeth to unfurl that waxy paper ridge only to confirm my loser status after every cup. (I’d hope for the car but I know from experience that I’m just not that lucky.)

The only thing I’ve won is a whole lot of ‘Please Play Again.’ That and $1.70 will get me another cup of coffee.

I’ve come to the conclusion there is a large double-double conspiracy: Tim Hortons simply doesn’t want those of us prone to jacking our bodies with substantial dosages of caffeine, sugar and fatty milk products to win.

Every time we large doubledouble drinkers shout our order into the crackly speaker, the Tim Hortons’ jockey inside that hermetically sealed booth grabs a cup from the pile marked “suckers” and fills it up with jitter-inducing goodness.

We’re addicts and they know we need no additional incentive to return. Nor do we need to feel good about ourselves by winning something because we’re already seriously bent on a sugar and caffeine high.

Everywhere around me, people are winning free stuff. A friend tries a small French vanilla — which isn’t even real coffee for cripe’s sake — and wins a doughnut. My wife orders a medium decaf and wins for the second time in two days. They roll-up-the-rimto-win while I roll-up-the-rim-tobe-disappointed again and again.

And I would be an entirely gracious winner, should I ever be so lucky. I wouldn’t complain about having free potato wedges foisted upon me as many ungrateful tuber haters have done on social media. So what if nearly 10 per cent of all prizes – five million in all – will be gastronomically dubious spuds: win enough of them and I could probably shape them into a little model car.

Nor will I go to extreme lengths to win, as a group of (alleged) morons from Belleville did, stealing boxes of cups from a store with the help on an employee who was also charged. Those people deserve to be run over with my free car – or at least have potato wedges chucked at them.

No, were it not for the large double-double conspiracy, I’d be exceedingly gracious. I’d split my free doughnut with a co-worker or I’d invite all my friends over to watch my big new TV or I’d use that $5,000 to buy my wife something nice, like a new bike I’ve had my eye on.

It has been suggested that my failure to win is not a conspiracy, after all, but a curse that could be broken if I was willing to sample a variety of Tim Hortons products in an array of serving sizes.

I’ve only got one thing to say to that bit of foolishness: I’ll take a large double-double, please.

In the sucker cup.