Starbucks - coffee shop or status symbol? I'm going to vote for the latter.
Every product sold in a Starbucks shop strikes me as pretentious. Merriam-Webster provides the relevant definition: "expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature". I can't help thinking this is, as the Brits would say, spot-on. And while I'm at it, I might as well write this article using intermittent British slang I picked up while over there 8 years ago. So I'm going to take the piss out of Starbucks.
To begin with, ordering a drink there gives you an exaggerated sense of accomplishment. Ordering a drink in Starbucks is like learning Italian. When you finally learn how to say something, it sounds beautiful. Whispering a complicated drink order into a woman's ear is guaranteed to get her naked in under 30 minutes - "Double shot tall non-fat macchiatto with whip, baby". I might as well be saying, "Hey slut, let's get naked and rub up against each other". I've never used that line, though, so I'm not sure if it works. And learning to order can be just as or more difficult than learning a foreign language.
I know how to order two Coca-Colas in Italian - I can't even order Coke at Starbucks, for fuck's sake! Just look at the expression on the faces of people who order drinks at Starbucks, you can see the overwhelming sense of accomplishment when they place their order in one smooth, sexy sentence, feeling as if they've impressed the cashier, the barista, and any mere mortals who may be standing in line behind them. Bollucks. I study at Starbucks - if you watch enough people, you can actually see a few people experience that moment when they first place a complicated order flawlessly - they smile and giggle, like small children learning to ride a bike for the first time without their parents holding them by the belt loop of their pants. Total shite.
Thankfully, I only order a handful of things at Starbucks. My drinks of choice? First, a short hot chocolate. I never, under any circumstance, order hot cocoa. You want pretension? There you go, order cocoa. Makes people sound like they long for the days when the only people who drank hot chocolate were members of the European elite, who imported the bean from The New World, probably harvested through the efforts of enslaved indigenous people. Those were my ancestors. I am still mad at their exploitation. Don't be fooled by the picture, it wasn't much fun to be a slave in The New World. Can anybody say reparations? Second, I order a short drip. One cashier always alters this order into "one short cafe verona", but I quickly correct him. Don't call me cafe verona you ass! But seriously, I don't want cafe, and I don't want verona. Just give me a small white paper cup full of coffee, and NO, I DON'T NEED ROOM FOR CREAM!
Cashiers always seem perplexed by the simplicity of my orders. Perhaps I mistake bemusement for confusion. Insert picture of Ross the Intern here. Maybe they hear me order and hearken back to simpler times, when they too ordered such unsophisticated drinks. Maybe they view me as aliens view us, prisoners to our lack of intellectual advancement. Or maybe not. Bloody hell, I don't really know.
But what really got me going on this rant against Starbucks and it's giant ego has me conflicted: sausage breakfast sandwiches. The damn things are just delicious.
I don't really know what to say - they really and truly are delicious. I used to eat them all the time. But then I had a sobering experience. I ate a sausage breakfast sandwich at work, prepared in the office cafeteria. It too was delicious. It too was tasty. Et tu, sausage breakfast sandwich prepared by line cooks? So I tried a Jimmy Dean sausage breakfast sandwich from my local grocery store, prepared first thing in the morning and held in a persistent vegetative state under the heat lamp until I plucked it around 10am. And wouldn't you know, it was delicious. I'd made a right mess of it. The Starbucks mystique had been destroyed. I had paid attention to the man behind the curtain. The Starbucks breakfast sandwich had been exposed for what it was - an overpriced fraud.
To date, I am uncertain how to proceed. Starbucks is everywhere. It's stores are more pervasive than Jazzercise. If I want coffee, I need only lift my eyes and look around, and I can find a Starbucks. 
And with it comes temptation. Adam didn't know temptation like I do, unless the apple was Satan's Starbucks sausage breakfast sandwich. In which case, Adam, I apologize. Just look at that B, forcing the apple upon Adam. Starbucks is my Eve. Forcing me to buy into its pretentious attitude, to devour its delicious breakfast snacks, to crave them as I craved gummy worms as a child. Damn you Starbucks. In the words of Charlton Heston, "Get your filthy hands off me, you damn dirty ape!"
Every product sold in a Starbucks shop strikes me as pretentious. Merriam-Webster provides the relevant definition: "expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature". I can't help thinking this is, as the Brits would say, spot-on. And while I'm at it, I might as well write this article using intermittent British slang I picked up while over there 8 years ago. So I'm going to take the piss out of Starbucks.
To begin with, ordering a drink there gives you an exaggerated sense of accomplishment. Ordering a drink in Starbucks is like learning Italian. When you finally learn how to say something, it sounds beautiful. Whispering a complicated drink order into a woman's ear is guaranteed to get her naked in under 30 minutes - "Double shot tall non-fat macchiatto with whip, baby". I might as well be saying, "Hey slut, let's get naked and rub up against each other". I've never used that line, though, so I'm not sure if it works. And learning to order can be just as or more difficult than learning a foreign language.
I know how to order two Coca-Colas in Italian - I can't even order Coke at Starbucks, for fuck's sake! Just look at the expression on the faces of people who order drinks at Starbucks, you can see the overwhelming sense of accomplishment when they place their order in one smooth, sexy sentence, feeling as if they've impressed the cashier, the barista, and any mere mortals who may be standing in line behind them. Bollucks. I study at Starbucks - if you watch enough people, you can actually see a few people experience that moment when they first place a complicated order flawlessly - they smile and giggle, like small children learning to ride a bike for the first time without their parents holding them by the belt loop of their pants. Total shite.
Thankfully, I only order a handful of things at Starbucks. My drinks of choice? First, a short hot chocolate. I never, under any circumstance, order hot cocoa. You want pretension? There you go, order cocoa. Makes people sound like they long for the days when the only people who drank hot chocolate were members of the European elite, who imported the bean from The New World, probably harvested through the efforts of enslaved indigenous people. Those were my ancestors. I am still mad at their exploitation. Don't be fooled by the picture, it wasn't much fun to be a slave in The New World. Can anybody say reparations? Second, I order a short drip. One cashier always alters this order into "one short cafe verona", but I quickly correct him. Don't call me cafe verona you ass! But seriously, I don't want cafe, and I don't want verona. Just give me a small white paper cup full of coffee, and NO, I DON'T NEED ROOM FOR CREAM!
Cashiers always seem perplexed by the simplicity of my orders. Perhaps I mistake bemusement for confusion. Insert picture of Ross the Intern here. Maybe they hear me order and hearken back to simpler times, when they too ordered such unsophisticated drinks. Maybe they view me as aliens view us, prisoners to our lack of intellectual advancement. Or maybe not. Bloody hell, I don't really know.But what really got me going on this rant against Starbucks and it's giant ego has me conflicted: sausage breakfast sandwiches. The damn things are just delicious.
I don't really know what to say - they really and truly are delicious. I used to eat them all the time. But then I had a sobering experience. I ate a sausage breakfast sandwich at work, prepared in the office cafeteria. It too was delicious. It too was tasty. Et tu, sausage breakfast sandwich prepared by line cooks? So I tried a Jimmy Dean sausage breakfast sandwich from my local grocery store, prepared first thing in the morning and held in a persistent vegetative state under the heat lamp until I plucked it around 10am. And wouldn't you know, it was delicious. I'd made a right mess of it. The Starbucks mystique had been destroyed. I had paid attention to the man behind the curtain. The Starbucks breakfast sandwich had been exposed for what it was - an overpriced fraud.
To date, I am uncertain how to proceed. Starbucks is everywhere. It's stores are more pervasive than Jazzercise. If I want coffee, I need only lift my eyes and look around, and I can find a Starbucks. 
And with it comes temptation. Adam didn't know temptation like I do, unless the apple was Satan's Starbucks sausage breakfast sandwich. In which case, Adam, I apologize. Just look at that B, forcing the apple upon Adam. Starbucks is my Eve. Forcing me to buy into its pretentious attitude, to devour its delicious breakfast snacks, to crave them as I craved gummy worms as a child. Damn you Starbucks. In the words of Charlton Heston, "Get your filthy hands off me, you damn dirty ape!"
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