Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Day 1 - Starbucks

Okay, so it's the very first day of my 'stupidity project' and I'm already going to break the rules.   This event didn't actually happen to me today.   However, I thought it would be apropos to begin with a coffee shop story (if you don't understand why I'm deeming that scenario appropriate, you may very well be appearing in future blogs), and since I don't have any readers yet, I'm not letting anyone down. To further confuse the issue, I'm not writing about an event at all, but rather a recurring situation at one of my favorite places to grab coffee – Starbucks.

Starbucks is generally staffed with some pretty intelligent people.   I have been to enough of them over the years to feel safe in making that statement.   I have no idea what percentage of them have college degrees, but I can think of a number of degrees that don't have any other employment prospects, so I'm guessing it's pretty high.  And I completely understand the frustration that comes from spending $50,000 on a degree and still having a career with no prestige, mediocre pay, and little or no authority.   I majored in English, after all.  These are my people.

There is an interesting phenomenon that happens with people who have very little authoritative power – they exercise what power they do have at every opportunity.   It's understandable, really . We all need to feel superior at some point.  In fact, that's the basis for this very project. (Seriously. My people.)   But Starbucks has created an interesting outlet for that power-wielding desire by giving a unique and specific name to each menu item.   The sizes of coffee, for example . A drink-sizing name system was already worked out and used successfully in the food service industry for many years.  Small, medium, and large are our agreed upon drink sizes.   You can argue extra large and other variances if you really want to, but do you really want to be that guy?   The point is that Starbucks took the entire accepted sizing system and threw it out the window.   At Starbucks, small is tall, medium is grande, and large is venti.

Since this project is about stupidity, I feel I should take a moment to point out that the names that were chosen in their attempt to rename the accepted sizing system are inconsistent and don't make sense either...are they trying to be Italian or not?   I don't even speak Italian, but I know that 'tall' is not an Italian word.   It's an English one that does not mean 'small'.   I also know from my Spanish classes that grande means 'big', and I'm sure it's the same in Italian.   Even if I'm wrong and Italian differs from Spanish on that, I guarantee it doesn't mean 'medium'.  And venti means 20, which would denote ounces (which an Italian would not use to measure the volume of his drink), and means nothing when ordering an iced drink at Starbucks since those are 24 ounces.

But even if the new names made sense, do the employees have to correct patrons who cling to the outdated naming system?   Why is it that if I order a 'large', the barista cannot silently translate that into 'venti'?   Surely she has also used the small, medium and large system at some point, and recognizes the correlation between the Starbucks terminology and the standard.   So why does it get repeated back to me in the new phraseology as a question?   “Large iced white chocolate mocha, please.” “Iced venti white chocolate mocha?” “I believe so, yes.   You tell me.  Is venti 24 ounces?”

Besides my affinity for the white chocolate mocha, I often enjoy a double shot of espresso with a dollop of whipped cream.   Seems simple enough, right?   I mean, I get that some people may struggle with 'dollop', but overall, it's a fairly simplistic drink order.   Not at Starbucks.   A double shot of espresso is a dopio, and although with every other drink on the menu, “with whip” is the correct way to request whipped cream, if you're ordering it with espresso, it's 'con panna' (which I assume means 'with whip' in Italian).   I was corrected on this order so many times, that I decided to actually learn the Starbucks terminology.   It seemed so important to them that I do so.   And believe it or not, 'con panna' is not an intuitively obvious phrase when it's only been heard out loud by baristas who are attempting a mandated second language.  Copama?  Compana?   I finally looked it up online, and armed with my new language arsinal (as it were), I stepped up to the counter with confidence and with perfect pronunciation ordered a dopio con panna.

The barista smiled at me pleasantly and said, “A what?”

No comments:

Post a Comment