I too refuse to go along with this affectation. I avoid Starbucks as much as possible but on the rare occasions that I go to one, I order a small coffee and the baristas know perfectly well what I mean.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
I live in the uk. For several years i lived less than a mile’s walk through pleasant countryside from a starbucks. I went there quite a lot, especially when my first son was born and when I was recovering from a catastrophic leg injury. In all that time i never pandered to this attempt to import stupid Americanised bullshit and, crucially, i never once heard a single other customer OR member of staff indulge it either.
Why do Americans tolerate this crap?
(observes craven pathetic capitulation to the rise of fascism over there)
Ah, yeah, i get it now.
Like all down-to-earth, hard-working folk, I just ask for a doppio espresso alla francese. If they don’t understand plain English, they can sod off.
@ sonofroj
Dude. You live under a monarchy.
@ ^
Your national anthem is literally:
Get some perspective is all I’m sayin’.
@silentbob
According to Freedomhouse.org, the UK has a Freedom Index of 92, the US has a Freedom Index of 84. What’s your point?
I mostly don’t care about the Starbucks thing. I think it’s a marketing trick to make you believe you’re part of a clever in-group. They’re certainly not the only food or beverage place to try this.
What always bothered me more was the incredibly stupid ads for fast food places when I was working at them. You know, the dumb ones that try to imply eating a burger can fix everything that’s wrong in your life and/or just make you happy. This felt especially egregious because the times when I was stuck working at places like that were not happy times.
michaelhuffman @5: Yeah, all the European constitutional monarchies, as well as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, score well above the US.
I do the same as Mano, and probably with the same (in)frequency.
I remember when Starbucks sent out a pamphlet maybe 20 years ago explaining its terms so YOU, yes YOU could sound as pretentious and ridiculous as they do. I do think it’s an in-group thing, and I’m not a frequent drinker of coffee, so I don’t care to join their in-group. If you order tea there, they hand you a teabag of Tazo (and why does every Tazo type have licorice root in the list of ingredients?!?!) and a wax cup of hot water. So when I do get a drink out, it’s at one of a couple of local shops that do it right, and at all of them you order small, medium, large, or (if you’re going to drink it there), the option of a real teapot and not just a cup. They also serve coffee at those places, but I have no idea how good it is because if I have a choice of coffee or tea, I’m always going to pick tea.
Starbucks employees like me because I only order the easiest espresso drink to make: doppio to go.
I usually avoid Starbucks because I am loathe to patronize corporate chain stores whenever possible. But I do find their presence helpful: whenever I am in an unfamiliar location and feeling like having a coffee, I will look around for the familiar Starbucks logo then I’ll look across the street to find the locally owned coffee shop that was there long before the Starbucks opened up.
I think the Starbucks folks are quietly giving up on the tall-grande-vente thing. The few I’ve been to recently take my order in plain effing English without a word of complaint or correction.
@kenbakermn
I had a conversation with a barista about this while drinking my doppio, his opinion was that it’s actually a challenge because he actually had to do it properly rather than use milk to hide a slightly sub-par coffee
I think that I have had a Starbucks coffee only once.
I needed interwebs and I got a coffee to use theirs.
df #3
Australia is Constitutional Monarchy.
Starbucks originally had 2 cup sizes: Small (8 oz), and Tall (12 oz), plus a 3 oz Demi for espresso. Given that a typical cup of coffee at the time was 6 oz, I think the Small should have been called the Tall and the Tall should have been called a Double. In any case, Americans being Americans, Starbucks saw demand for even larger sizes so they created the Grande (16 oz), and eventually the Venti (20 oz; Venti is Italian for 20). Now, they even have a Trenta (30 oz, but only for the cold drinks -- for now). Eventually, demand for the Small petered out, and they started putting espresso into Tall cups, so those sizes were discontinued and we find ourselves in the situation where the Tall is now the smallest size, even though it is double the size of what cups of coffee used to be.
So… I am expected to convert the idiosyncratic size name to a measurement in ounces, convert them into fluid ounces (or vice versa?), then convert those into something sensible like millilitres?
“What now? I should bring my own container? Great! Here’s my mug; fill that please, barista. The mug’s size? A hemi-demi cubic decimetre, thanks for asking.”
i always order the “extra medium” size
What is he doing at a department store instead of getting three hour delivery from an online source? It’s not like a CEO of Starbucks would care about retail too much (except for the loss of customers at the malls they’re still stuck at?). He can fail about size with their AI bot as it doesn’t recognize ‘venti’ or does and sells him a Pratt and Whitney aircraft engine.
I propose we have just three sizes of coffee cup: the “twifty”, the “thrifty” and the “halfer”. They are not especially awkward names, and they make it obvious enough how much each one holds.
Yeah (and BTW I’m a republican in British terminology, i.e. I advocate the abolition of the monarchy), but at least it’s a limited monarchy, unlike yours! If Charles Windsor tried behaving like Trump, He’d be forced to abdicate within a week.