Dude, Where’s my Thank You?
10 May 2010
I love almost everything about Starbucks.
The coffee.
The coffee gift thingies they carry. (When I’m in there, somehow it seems like I need another travel mug. I mean, this one’s all green and spring-looking … I don’t have a green, spring-looking one…)
How even after I leave, my hair and clothes smell like coffee for hours afterward. (My husband, a non-coffee drinker, is definitely not a fan of this.)
But there are two things I strongly dislike. One is being corrected when I order a medium sized coffee. “Oh, a grande dark cherry mocha?” Excuse me, but I think spending $4 on my coffee grants me the right to order in English.
Then on Friday, I was reminded of something else I dislike about Starbucks—the people who are there to just grab their coffee and go. And don’t you dare get in their way.
I’m guessing they favor the drive thru, but my Starbucks doesn’t have one, forcing those who are there simply to “caf-up” to mingle with the rest of us.
It was about 10am when I pulled into the parking lot. I opened the back door to get my 2-year-old, McKenna, out of her car seat when in my peripheral I noticed a guy blazing our direction. He had on what I would describe as a power suit and carried a very large—er, venti —coffee. My guess was he drove the snazzy SUV parked beside us.
As he approached, I stepped aside and closed McKenna’s door so he could get by. I even said to him, “Excuse me, sir,” so he’d realize I was intentionally moving out of his way.
He barely glanced at me before getting in his car and buzzing out of there.
Now, I don’t think my actions deserved a medal or anything, but I did stop what I was doing rather than forcing him to wait for me to unbuckle McKenna. A grunt of acknowledgement would have been nice.
Fortunately, my dark cherry mocha lived up to the hype. Otherwise dealing with rude coffee drinkers and being corrected during the ordering process would have left a serious black mark on my visit.
See, when one’s Starbucks experience is by necessity limited to the pre-bottled selections in one’s grocer’s coffee aisle, one does not have to deal with this stuff. ;-)
Though when I HAVE gone to Starbucks or the like, I took great delight in how my mom always orders, “Something cold, decaf, and chocolately please. The small one.” Such blatant disregard for their titling system makes me grin.
Posted by Roseanna White on 10 May 2010