Saturday, October 21, 2006

It is hard out here

Saturday Morning Last Ever Starbucks Caffeine Fueled Rant:

As you all know, Blockbuster, through their repeated violations of free speech, their slow recognition of advancing technology, and their adamant pursuit of lousy service and surly employees, is going the way of the Buffalo. Good. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving company.

Although they do make a tasty coffee drink, Starbucks is quickly surpassing McDonalds as a punch line to all the jokes about rude service, long lines, over-expansion and over-priced products. It should be called Everything-That-is-Wrong-With-Our-Society Bucks. The only thing missing is a shrine to Paris Hilton.

Is Starbucks the new Blockbuster? (Wow, I suddenly got all Carrie Bradshaw “Sex and the City” on my rumpus)

Every now and again, I like to go in there to remind myself why I hate Starbucks, the people who work there and their customers. Today they did not let me down. Long line, although it did move quickly, my cashier was so over-hurried that he did that amazing thing where he talks over you so you have to repeat what you said about three times instead of just listening once.

The shop was crowded with aging Yuppies and their un-mannered, overly-entitled spawn running amok. To pass the time for my coffee, as the Yuppie spawn ran screaming up and down, I wrongly fantasized about sticking my foot out and sending one flying headlong into an exploding display of over-priced stainless steel coffee related devices.

“Oh, Cooper, what did you do? Bailee, Tylre, go help dig your brother out from there, we’re late for Pilates.”

(Pilates is the name of their family counselor, not the exercise)

Now my focus was on our Barista, which is snotty Italian for coffee drink maker. She had that same smug look that drunk-with-pathetic-power pharmacists have when they make people wait for their order to be filled for no good reason.

In addition to that, she was mumbling out the orders so that everyone who thought their drink was up had to walk up and handle everyone else’s drink to see if it was theirs. Why is it a rule that any retail food store where food or drink orders come up, the one employee least qualified, in terms of meek personality or lack of knowledge of the English language, is assigned to call out the orders?

No lie, Jamba Juice must spend a fortune finding and training people until they are incapable of calling out a name and a drink description. Original Strawberry Nirvana, Alex comes out;

“Origami-straw-nurf-ball-alwah”

Thank you, mumbling snotty Barista. Thank you rude and unmannered aging Yuppies and their vile spawn, Teegan, Ashlee, Aiden, Darrick and Jessika. Thank you wildly over-priced non-fat, no-foam, one equal, double shot Vente (whatever the F#@k that is) Latte. Thank you CD’s no person with soul would dream of buying. Thank you thoughtless coffee related products that you give to people who buy their coffee from Starbucks rather than make it anyway.

I have made my last visit to a Starbucks, ala four years ago as I did with Blockbuster.

But that Latte was damn tasty.