In This Economy?

It’s so charming and endearing, the language of Starbucks. It’s like Pig Latin for the snobby and overly-caffeinated. Have you ever ordered a “small coffee,” only to be ridiculed like a schoolchild for neglecting to correctly refer to the megachain’s smallest size cup as a “tall?” Oh the shame!

Well, recently one citizen stood up for customers’ rights and took a stand at her local ‘bucks. And she was thrown the eff out. Claiming to be simply a stickler for the rules of grammar over the rules of Starbucks, Ms. Lynne Rosenthal, a PHD-holding, certified English professor from Manhattan, sauntered into an Upper West Side Starbucks one day and ordered a multigrain bagel. The barista responded to her order by asking, “Do you want butter or cheese?”

photo credit: New York Post

THE HORROR!

Ms. Rosenthal was outraged and repeated that she just wanted the multigrain bagel. What. An. Idiot. Didn’t she know that the Starbucks lexicon requires her tell the barista what she did not want also? That she must verbally request her item in this manner: “Multigrain bagel no butter no cheese?” Whether she did or did not know, she was not interested in following such rules. So in pure Soup Nazi fashion, the barista had her “forcibly removed” from the Starbucks by the cops. THE COPS. The effing pride of New York. Those guys.

Anyway, my “point” is that one might think, in this economy, that Starbucks might consider implementing the commonly-held philosophy of “the customer’s always right.” But no! Quite the opposite, in fact. The customer is usually wrong. They make absolutely excruciating little mistakes like putting the word “iced” at the END of the order rather than in second spot. And in this economy, the strung-out, over-worked, under-paid baristas are just waiting for an excuse to jump down their erroneous throats. And refusing to tell them what you don’t want with your order just might be the opening they’re looking for. So watch out bitches. Nobody wants a Venti Extra Hot Mocha with Whip to the face. Not even Ms. Rosenthal.

Somebody get that bitch her damn bagel. Jeez.

I say we all send Starbucks a little message. Let’s all tweet at them with this little gem: “I’d like a multigrain bagel, please. RT if you agree that @inthiseconomy, the customer is always right.”

If you’d like to tell Breadwinner what your favorite ridiculous, Starbucks beverage sounds like, hit her up on the Twitter.

Tags: bagel, barista, economy, grammar, grande, lynne rosenthal, recession, starbucks, tall, venti

This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 4:36 PM and is filed under Human Encounters, WTF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.