Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street: June 19

Grinders Gone Wild

Somebody hand the folks at Starbucks(SBUX) a grande espresso. They could seriously use a pick-me-up about now.

The Seattle-based coffee company announced Tuesday it was recalling about 530,000 coffee grinders because they either switch on unexpectedly or fail to turn off. Operating a malfunctioning piece of machinery clearly poses a great danger to consumers, especially those sleepy-eyed worker-bees desperately seeking their first cup of coffee.

Starbucks said it had received 176 reports involving the defective bean-crushers, including three reports of hand lacerations because the grinders turned on unexpectedly during cleaning. The Starbucks Barista Blade Grinders and Seattle's Best Coffee Blade Grinders that are being recalled were manufactured in China and sold in Starbucks and Seattle's Best Coffee stores between March 2002 and March 2009.

Sensibly, Starbucks is telling customers to stop using the faulty grinders forthwith and to contact the company for a free replacement. Customers also can visit their local Starbucks in person if they prefer to sacrifice their paychecks instead of their pinkies.

To be perfectly candid, the Five Dumbest would have given Starbucks a pass on this recall had it been an isolated case of grinders gone wild. But just last week the java giant made headlines for inadvertently double-charging one million customers over Memorial Day weekend.

Starbucks eventually resolved that problem which occurred at about 7,800 company-owned stores in the U.S. and Canada. But the combined episodes make us think that the company should focus more on quality control outside the brewing process.

And just maybe switch to decaf before somebody gets hurt.

Dumb-o-meter score: 95 -- Time for Starbucks to wake up and smell the venti mocha cappuccino with a twist.