Funny? (Starbucks)

[Originally posted on January 28, 2008]


So...does anyone like Starbucks? Personally, I think it's a bunch of shit. Terrible overcooked crap that costs way too much for a sub-par taste experience.


Here's the first problem: it's over-roasted. Sure, that gives Starbucks coffee its nasty, bitter taste, but it also has another more insidious effect...that's right: dark-roasting coffee lowers its caffeine content. Now that's all well and good for the crappa-rappa-frappa-alpaccino-swilling dilettantes who view coffee as a type of recreational activity instead of how I view it which is comparable to, say, heroin. I feel that if someone in front of me in line hasn't figured out what they want in the half-hour it took for them to get to the register, I should, legally, be allowed to kill them.



Have you ever tried to order a proper coffee at Starbucks? They look at you weird. "I'd like a regular coffee, with milk and sugar, please." See? I ask nice and polite. Like a good boy scout. What's the response? A blank stare, a $4 cash grab, some shitty coffee, and an extended index finger, pointing at the milk and sugar behind me.


That reminds me (and completely distracts me from my central point): What the fuck is with tip jars at coffee places where you make it yourself? If the entirety of your side of the coffee transaction is pouring it, handing it to me, and charging me way too much, you get nothing but the price. Because in that scenario, what makes you any different than a coffee machine? Nothing. If I have to add the milk & sugar myself, I should get paid for it by being charged less, not more! But places that make you do it yourself are always more expensive. And so I hate them a little.


So, getting back to the point: Starbucks sucks ass. If you get a light-roasted coffee at Starbucks, there's at least a little bit of caffeine in it. Some. But let's face it, Starbucks's light-roast is to Tim Horton's what tap water is to...rocket fuel. Robin's Donuts, before they went under, was even better. So, do you know what happens when you go to a Starbucks and try to order a (word for word) "strong coffee with milk and sugar"? They answer you. Know what that answer is?


Me neither. At that point my blood pressure went up and I blacked out. When I woke up...*sob*...it was horrible...there were grounds EVERYWHERE. The barrista was weeping in the corner, swearing her allegiance to Tim Hortons; the manager was crying and offering me everything from the tills; and I had a strange feeling of satisfaction and lack of caffeine.


That being said, if you work at or run a coffee shop, please recognize that, in the mornings, some of us have a genuine medical need for highly-caffeinated starters. Put the dilettantes in another line, and just let us get on with the next-hardest task to procuring wake-up juice: opening our eyes all the way. And maybe, if I can find a good cup of coffee in this town, I'll write about that next.