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Coffee at Starbucks
This question brought to you by the peppermint mocha I am currently sipping, obtained from the Starbucks drive-thru during today's burst of ill-advised last-minute holiday shopping. I know, I know. Go me with the terrible life planning skills. Anyway, I was thinking about something.
There is a persistent joke in the media in which people, usually old people, go into a Starbucks and try to order a coffee, the baristas don't know what "a coffee" means, the old people are baffled by the menu options and end up walking out with a tall skinny mochacchino or something, and the punch line is basically that you cannot get a regular cup of coffee in a Starbucks and the baristas will be baffled if you try. I just ran across a variant of this in a book I was reading a few days ago.
... Except Starbucks does have regular coffee! All coffee shops do, at least as far as I know. If you ask a barista for a coffee, they're not going to be like "I'm sorry sir, we don't have coffee, we only have lattes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" It's usually in a pump dispenser instead of a pot, but I mean ... it's coffee?? And having to specify if you want a large or small one is something you have to do if you're buying cheap gas station coffee too???
I mean, my experience isn't necessarily universal, and it's not like I habitually look around for coffee machines when I'm not usually ordering it, but it's not that rare, is it?
Does Starbucks, or indy coffee shops or local equivalent, have ordinary coffee where you live? Have you been in ones that didn't? Have you ever seen someone try to order coffee in a Starbucks and be met with confusion and condescension? Are these jokes invariably written by people who have never been in a Starbucks and are too afraid of them to actually look up the menu?
There is a persistent joke in the media in which people, usually old people, go into a Starbucks and try to order a coffee, the baristas don't know what "a coffee" means, the old people are baffled by the menu options and end up walking out with a tall skinny mochacchino or something, and the punch line is basically that you cannot get a regular cup of coffee in a Starbucks and the baristas will be baffled if you try. I just ran across a variant of this in a book I was reading a few days ago.
... Except Starbucks does have regular coffee! All coffee shops do, at least as far as I know. If you ask a barista for a coffee, they're not going to be like "I'm sorry sir, we don't have coffee, we only have lattes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" It's usually in a pump dispenser instead of a pot, but I mean ... it's coffee?? And having to specify if you want a large or small one is something you have to do if you're buying cheap gas station coffee too???
I mean, my experience isn't necessarily universal, and it's not like I habitually look around for coffee machines when I'm not usually ordering it, but it's not that rare, is it?
Does Starbucks, or indy coffee shops or local equivalent, have ordinary coffee where you live? Have you been in ones that didn't? Have you ever seen someone try to order coffee in a Starbucks and be met with confusion and condescension? Are these jokes invariably written by people who have never been in a Starbucks and are too afraid of them to actually look up the menu?