Rucksack weighs a ton today (23 June 2011); apples, towel, trunk and deodorant, I can’t remember what else but having reached 52 I’m beginning to forget lots of stuff. I’m also beginning to get more intolerant especially with queues and in particular queues in chain coffee shops like Starbucks.
The whole process of making a drink can be so complex and confusing adding to the frustration of waiting in the queue. Often the baristas (stupid word, blatantly pretentious) play a game of trying to guess your order, when they do eventually get it right, hilarity ensues which leads to more time-wasting, banal conversations. As a point of principle I vary my order at the last minute to confuse the barista and always refuse to accept a correctly guessed order, childish I know. And when did this whole “skinny” thing creep into coffee shop vocabulary? Skinny latte and skinny caramelocinno sound ridiculous. Throw “skimmed” into your order and it always throws the trainee baristas. Several weeks ago I exchanged the following words with a Costa acne-infested barista:
Obsequious grin (barista)
Medium tea with skimmed milk please (me)
Skimmed? (barista)
Yeah skimmed, is that ok? (me)
Grande? (barista)
Well I suppose, I want a medium cup of tea – on the board there are 3 sizes, I want the one in between the small cup and the large cup, please (me)
Jez, the guy wants skinny milk with his drink (barista)
And then there’s the over the top obsession with hygiene. I’ve developed a taste for camomile tea lately and its quite comical seeing a new barista lifting out a camomile tea bag with a pair of tongs! And as you leave there’s always the desperate squeal, pleading with you to have a “nice day” and “too come back soon.”
Then again everybody knows it’s a branded scam. A conspiracy if you like. Package a simple process into a complex procedure then you’re more likely to pay more for the end product, and the waiting, the queue is part of the scam, part of the conspiracy and that’s why I’m pissed off right now.
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